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INTRODUCTION 
 
 Tue nature of man can be regarded from many points 
 of view, and upon it much has been written, without 
 being in any way exhaustive. Itis probably true that all 
 subdivision and classification is ultimately only a con- 
 cession to finite intelligence, but one of the simplest 
 modes of dealing with human nature is to think of it as 
 divided into two regions—the region of the soul with its 
 continuity of transcendental existence, and the region 
 of the body with its physical and terrestrial ancestry. 
 Likewise, concerning the nature of Christ, volumes have 
 been written; and the same kind of simplifying treat- 
 ment has been found useful here also. It can be re- 
 garded from the eternal and Divine point of view, being 
 thought of as the Logos which existed before all worlds, 
 and as such can be worked into an elaborate ideal- 
 istic philosophy, with weighty and beneficent results; 
 or it can be considered from the human point of view, 
 and dealt with as belonging to a being born upon this 
 planet, subject to the difficulties attendant upon partial 
 knowledge and growing powers, and living a life as 
 troubled and as strenuous as any other of the sons of 
 men. 
 
 That something of this latter treatment is necessary, 
 is obvious to a person of any lucidity who contem- 
 plates the development of a human being from earliest 
 infancy. 
 
 Writers of all ages have emphasised one or other of 
 these aspects, and they are both conspicuous in the New 
 Testament itself. The one treatment is found especially 
 in the fourth Gospel and in the Epistles of Paul, the 
 other treatment chiefly in the other three Gospels. 
 
 Emphasis on the humanity is no novelty, and is per- 
 
 vil 
 
Vili Introduction 
 
 fectly orthodox; and yet in some ages of the world 
 it has seemed a novelty, and has occasionally struck 
 devout persons as almost blasphemous. 
 
 Forty years ago the majority of religious people were 
 surprised and somewhat shocked when a book was 
 written to recall them to a recognition of the thorough 
 humanity of Christ. It appears that the generation 
 of that day had let this aspect slide out of its field 
 of view, its attention being focussed upon another. 
 Consequently, when “‘ Ecce Homo” was published, it 
 was received with a chorus of disapprobation, broken 
 only by a few judicious utterances in its favour from 
 leaders of thought: one of these—a notable article in 
 “Good Words ”’ by Gladstone—having a great influence 
 in making the book more widely known and better 
 appreciated. 
 
 Nowadays the pendulum has swung so far in the 
 direction advocated by this book that it is difficult to 
 realise the shock experienced when an historian set to 
 work to deal with the life of Christ as he would deal with 
 any other history, and to make an attempt to trace the 
 career of the “‘ young man of promise,” spoken of in the 
 originally anonymous and much-criticised brief preface, 
 on the basis of the bare facts as deducible by historical 
 methods from the documents themselves, without 
 explicit attention to the mass of subsequent tradition 
 and theoretic gloss which the Church had imevitably, 
 and to a great extent rightly, superadded. 
 
 The attempt thus made by Sir John Seeley was singu- 
 larly able; and, being undertaken in a reverent and 
 scholarly spirit, has achieved much towards the im- 
 proved mode of thought on these subjects now pre- 
 valent. The book was admittedly somewhat one- 
 sided, but it was amply justified by the needs of the 
 time. Nor is it at all out of date now. In the treat- 
 ment of any great subject, vivid attention to one 
 aspect at a time is all that average human beings are 
 capable of; but he is a poor reasoner, or has a pitiful 
 intellect, who is thereby blinded to the existence of 
 other aspects equally worthy of attention in their turn. 
 
Introduction ix 
 
 And whenever a generation has concentrated itself too 
 exclusively on one side, it behoves some prophet or 
 leader of thought to restore the balance by calling atten- 
 tion to another; and to expound it forcibly, in spite of 
 what, to his contemporaries, may seem a painfully in- 
 adequate treatment of the side with which they were 
 already familiar. 
 
 The author was accused of dogmatism: but in reply 
 explained that throughout he addressed free inquirers 
 like himself; that his book was not one of authority, but 
 one of inquiry and suggestion, intended not to close dis- 
 cussion but to open it. He dealt with the matter as a 
 lay historian rather than as a theologian; and the result 
 is a very living picture. He collects a considerable 
 body of illustrations both of Christ’s character and of 
 the great Christian moral principle, ‘‘ the divine inspira- 
 tion which makes virtue natural, active, tender, ele- 
 vated, resentful, forgiving.” This he regards as the 
 foundation of the Teachings. 
 
 So also with regard to Christ’s acts. As an historian 
 he considers that those which are in harmony with his 
 character gain thereby in credibility, and that about 
 many of them there is ‘‘ something beyond the ordinary 
 reach, or beside the purpose, of invention.”’ Most of the 
 record is justified and rendered probable, by consistency 
 with character, when subjected to the ordinary historical 
 tests and criteria. 
 
 CHRISTIAN PRINCIPLES 
 
 Reading the book we must thankfully realise how great 
 progress has now been made, at any rate in thought, 
 towards a better understanding of genuine Christianity. 
 Our acts and practical achievement still fall terribly 
 short; but in thought there has been a distinct effort 
 in many parts of Europe to throw overboard needless 
 accumulations of tradition and return to the early and 
 simple Teachings. 
 
 It is remarkable that within such recent times it was 
 possible to write as follows:— 
 
x Introduction 
 
 “ The direct love of Christ, as it was felt by his first — 
 followers, is a rare thing among modern Christians. — 
 His character has been so much obscured by scholasti- 
 cism as to have lost in a great measure its attractive 
 power.” That can hardly be said so unreservedly now. 
 
 The virtues especially insisted on by early Christianity 
 were Love, Enthusiasm, and Faith: all lying in the 
 region where intellectual ideas are fertilised by emotion, 
 —the most actively motive-producing region of the mind. 
 
 It is easy to misunderstand what is meant by “ faith,” 
 sometimes wilfully to misunderstand it; but let no one 
 suppose that to the educated and thoughtful man belief 
 iseasy. A period of doubt and uncertainty must almost 
 inevitably be gone through, and the problems presented 
 require close study. 
 
 The author fully admits the difficulties of Christian 
 belief. ‘‘ We conclude,” he says, “that though it is 
 always easy for thoughtless men to be orthodox, yet to 
 grasp with any strong practical apprehension the theology 
 of.Christ is a thing as hard as to practise his moral law.” 
 
 Facile belief is of but little value: it often only means 
 that as certain words make no impression whatever upon 
 the mind, so they excite no opposition in it. There are 
 few things which Christ would have visited with sterner 
 censure than that short-cut to belief which consists of 
 abandonment of mental effort. 
 
 Yet faith is among the most important and expres- 
 sive ideas in Christianity, and it is an essential condition 
 for fellowship in the Kingdom. Properly understood, 
 it is the attitude in which the most neglected and most 
 ungifted of men may make a beginning. Even in half 
 brutal countenances faith will light up a glimmer of 
 nobleness. 
 
 “The savage, who can do little else, can wonder and 
 worship and enthusiastically obey. He who cannot 
 know what is right can know that some one else knows; 
 he who has no law may still have a master; he who is 
 incapable of justice may be capable of fidelity; he who 
 understands little may have his sins forgiven because 
 he loves much.” 2 
 
Introduction ee 
 
 Of all these virtues, it must be admitted, the average 
 product of modern education is liable to be quite incap- 
 able; unless he is something more than merely “ wise 
 and prudent ”—and often he is less—he may thus be, in 
 some respects, lower than the savage. 
 
 SEVERITY 
 
 Among the list of epithets applied to the Teachings, 
 as quoted on page ix, occurs one which sounds a harsh 
 note —the word “resentful.’’ But the author claims 
 that Christ was far from being weak, effeminate, tolerant 
 of hypocrisy and imposture, or even universally forgiving. 
 His personal injurers he could and did forgive; but the 
 obstruction of his kingdom, not through ignorance and 
 weakness but in the strength of warped authority and 
 self-satisfied bigotry, he strongly and to the end resented. 
 
 “ Christianity is not quite the mild and gentle system 
 it is sometimes represented to be. Christ was meek and 
 lowly, but he was something beside. What was he 
 when he faced the leading men among his countrymen 
 and denounced them as a brood of vipers on their way 
 to the infernal fires?’’ So says the author, and he 
 continues: 
 
 “The Enthusiasm of Humanity creates an intolerant 
 anger against all who do wrong to human beings, an 
 impatience of selfish enjoyment, a vindictive enmity to 
 tyrants and oppressors, a bitterness against sophistry, 
 superstition, self-complacent heartless speculation, an 
 irreconcilable hostility to every form of imposture, such 
 as the uninspired inhumane soul could never entertain.”’ 
 
 PRACTICAL EFFORT 
 
 The gospel is not all peace, it has a sword too. The 
 Church as founded by Christ was not an insipid prelude 
 to another world; it is an active and militant agent in 
 this. 
 
 “ As Christ habitually compared his Church to a state 
 or kingdom, so there are traces that its analogy to an 
 army was also present to his mind.” 
 
Xil Introduction 
 
 It has to fight against evil as well as to promote good. 
 
 “At the present day,” says the author, “ the Church 
 fails most in that which its Founder valued most— 
 originality ; it falls into that vice which he most earnestly 
 denounced—insipidity.”” He believes the root of all evil 
 in the Church to be ‘‘ the imagination that it exists for 
 any other purpose than to foster virtue, or can be 
 prosperous except so far as it does this.” 
 
 Nor is the modern reformer likely to forget that to 
 give people a fair chance of virtue and happiness in this 
 world their surroundings must be such as not to subject 
 their character to too hopeless a strain, and that it is 
 part of the Church’s duty to endeavour with all its might 
 to carry out the meaning and spirit of the Divine petition 
 which, among those who acquiesce in the submergence 
 of children in our slums and criminal haunts, is too 
 grievously ignored—Lead us not into temptation. 
 
 Not the pulpit alone, but also the best part of literature 
 and of the stage is emphasising this to-day. 
 
 The practical doctrines of Christianity are all general, 
 so that they are not limited in their application to a 
 specific period but apply to all time. One of them is 
 that to make the fruit of a tree good you must put the 
 tree into a healthy state; that a man’s actions result 
 from the state of his mind. If that is healthy they will 
 be right; if not, they will be wrong; and to amend his 
 acts effectually his disposition must be amended. Such - 
 language, the author says, was new in the mouth of a 
 legislator. Incidentally it may be remarked that this 
 is also the teaching of a good deal of modern drama, 
 and constitutes the key to some of its puzzles. 
 
 SUMMARY 
 
 Now to give a short summary of the principal con- 
 tents of the book:— 
 
 The first five chapters are a masterly synopsis of the 
 position and early outlook of the Nazarene Prophet 
 who felt that he had a Divine mission to found a Church 
 for all time. 
 
Introduction Xili 
 
 The prelude to and the anticipation of some such work, 
 in the light of the religious state of the country in that 
 age, are glanced at in the first chapter called ‘‘ The 
 Baptist.”” Then comes an analysis of the period which 
 followed close upon Christ’s Baptism, with its extra- 
 ordinary soul-stirring episodes; the time when he spent 
 weeks in solitude and passed through the strange ex- 
 periences which we know as the Temptation. The inner 
 meaning of these temptations has been made so familiar 
 now, by innumerable sermons, that it is difficult to 
 suppose that this rational and illuminating treatment 
 of them was new forty years ago. I would not venture 
 to assert that it was really new then, yet from the book 
 it so appears; and if so, this treatment was a great con- 
 tribution to the atmosphere of Christian thought. 
 
 Then follow chapters on the idea of the Kingdom, on 
 his conception of his own Royalty, and the striking 
 means he took to enforce his claims and to exhibit his 
 credentials,—which were not what the superficial reader 
 may suppose them to have been. 
 
 After this the Founding and the nature of the Chris- 
 tian Society or Church is dealt with; and then the 
 second part deals with the Laws of the new kingdom; 
 the keynote of the whole being the meaning underlying 
 the phrase “‘ Enthusiasm of Humanity.’’ And it may 
 be explained that this much-emphasised and highly- 
 valued concomitant of living Faith, namely Enthusiasm, 
 is not a mere sound of doubtful significance but has a 
 derivation (from Geos) which associates it directly with 
 the perception and felt influence of God. It means uni- 
 fication with the Divine, and is thus closely akin to the 
 true idea of Atonement. 
 
 TREATMENT OF MIRACLES 
 
 There is one thing which, in fairness to the author, it is 
 desirable to make clear. Few will accuse him of hetero- 
 doxy now, but some will accuse him of over orthodoxy, 
 by reason of his treatment of miracles. As an historian 
 he finds it impossible to dissociate a certain amount of 
 
Xiv Introduction 
 
 super-normal power from Christ—power which he became 
 aware of and frequently used for purposes of benefi- 
 cence and compassion, though he scrupulously refrained 
 from using it for any other purpose,—never for a moment 
 to benefit himself, even though he were starving; nor 
 did he wish to use it in order to call attention to and 
 enforce his mission. He evidently mistrusts the atti- 
 tude of mind which can depend much upon external 
 evidence of that kind. He will not give them a sign; 
 and where candour does not pre-exist mighty works 
 become impossible. No conversion is to be effected by 
 main force: he always appealed to free volition. His 
 credentials were not so much the super-normal power, 
 as the discriminating use he made of that power. This 
 scrupulous reticence, according to the author, impressed 
 his immediate followers as the most superhuman thing 
 about him, so far as his acts were concerned. 
 
 The point of view thus indicated is an important 
 feature in the book, though it is not a feature upon 
 which it is considered safe to dwell at the present day. 
 Some are now in favour of rejecting all miraculous 
 narratives wholesale; others would accept the acts of 
 healing, but would reject all others. Such a miracle as 
 the feeding of five thousand, for instance—one of the 
 most difficult to accept as it stands—is liable to be 
 treated nowadays as if it had only a spiritual signifi- 
 cance, was in fact only a parable and was understood by 
 contemporaries as such and no more. The author does 
 not go to this length, nor do I feel called upon to go to 
 this length either. 
 
 An easy way to truth is not to be found by rejecting 
 wholesale, any more than by admitting wholesale. The 
 risk of error lurks on both sides. It has been easy to 
 believe uncritically in the past; it is easy to reject too 
 readily in the present. Truth lies in a middle way, 
 and it is our business to pick our steps carefully. 
 
 I would, however, urge people to lay no particular 
 stress on any one miracle, though they may fancy it to 
 be fundamental and certain, for such a foundation is 
 apt to prove a sandy one. These signs and wonders 
 
 —— 
 
Introduction XV 
 
 were never foundations, and were never meant to be 
 foundations; the truth of the Christian religion cannot 
 be dependent upon them. But they may be facts of 
 nature for all that. And just at this epoch, when many 
 things are being investigated, and when discoveries are 
 being made in strange and unlooked for regions, it be- 
 hoves the wise man to reserve his judgment; to decline 
 to build, indeed, upon unproved phenomena, but also to 
 hesitate to reject them as untrue. We are immensely 
 far from understanding all the laws of nature. For only 
 a few centuries, and under much discouragement, have 
 a few members of the human race been investigating 
 them; and already fresh chapters, fresh volumes, seem 
 likely to be opening before us. Now is no time for dog- 
 matic denial of anything, however remarkable, however 
 weird. Nor is there need for loud-voiced assertion 
 either. The truth concerning these things will appear 
 in due time. That can be depended on. Meanwhile 
 we can attentively wait. 
 
 Listen to the historian as to the documentary evidence 
 for these things—some of them will undoubtedly prove to 
 be invention, for others the literary evidence may be good 
 —and then keep your ears open to the men of science 
 also, when in good time they have something to say on 
 present-day occurrences not wholly unallied to what is 
 asserted of the past, and on subjects which are receiving 
 the strenuous and thoughtful attention of more and more 
 among them. 
 
 The truths of the universe are far greater, and the 
 ultimate outlook wider, than has been thought possible 
 even by the vagaries of undisciplined imagination; 
 and, under the touch of a lofty spirit, detents spring 
 open revealing secret chambers which to the majority, 
 in their smug contentment, must be for ever closed. 
 
 OLIVER LODGE. 
 December 1907. 
 
xvi Bibliography 
 
 The following is a list of the chief published works of 
 John Robert Seeley:— 
 
 David and Samuel, with other poems (under the pseudonym of 
 John Robertson), 1859; Ecce Homo, 1865; Lectures and Essays, 
 1870, with Preface by Lady Seeley, 1895; The First Book of Livy, 
 with an Introduction, Historical Examination, and Notes, 1871; 
 English Lessons for English People(in collaboration with Dr. Abbott), 
 1871; The Life and Times of Stein: or Germany and Prussia in 
 the Napoleonic Age, 1878; Natural Religion, 1882, 4th Edition, 
 1895; The Expansion of England: Two Courses of Lectures, 1883, 
 1895; A Short History of Napoleon I. (expanded from an “article 
 in the ‘‘ Encyclopedia Britannica ”), 1886; Goethe Reviewed after 
 Sixty Years, 1894; The Growth of British Policy: An Historical 
 Essay, 1895; Lectures on Political Science, 1895; Introduction to 
 Political Science: Two Series of Lectures, ed. H. Sidgwick, 1896; 
 Ethics and Religion (address delivered before the Ethical iety 
 at Cambridge), 1900. 
 
 He was also Editor of the Student’s Guide to the University of 
 Cambridge, 1863, etc. 
 
 ee by Professor Prothero, prefixed to ‘‘ The Growth of British 
 Policy.” 
 
XVI. 
 XVII. 
 XVIII. 
 XIX. 
 XX. 
 XXI. 
 XXII. 
 XXIII. 
 XXIV. 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 FIRST PART 
 
 . THe Baptist 
 
 . THE TEMPTATION 
 
 . THE Kinepom or Gop 
 
 . CHRIST’S ROYALTY . : : 4 f 
 
 . Curist’s CREDENTIALS 
 
 . Curist’s WINNOWING Fan . a : 
 
 . CONDITIONS OF MEMBERSHIP IN CnrRisT’s KINGDOM 
 
 Baptism 
 
 . REFLECTIONS ON THE NATURE OF CHRIST’S SOCIETY 
 
 SECOND PART 
 
 CHRIST’S LEGISLATION 
 
 . Curist’s LEGISLATION COMPARED WITH PHILOSOPHIC 
 
 SysTEMS 
 
 . THE CHRISTIAN REPUBLIC . : 5 
 . UNIVERSALITY OF THE CHRISTIAN REPUBLIC 
 . THE CHRISTIAN A Law To HIMSELF 
 
 . THE ENTHUSIASM OF HUMANITY 
 
 . THE Lorp’s SUPPER . 
 
 PositTivE MorALity 
 
 THe Law oF PHILANTHROPY 
 
 THe Law or EDIFICATION . 
 
 Tue Law or MERcy . 
 
 Tue Law oF Mercy (continued) 
 
 THe Law or RESENTMENT 
 
 Ture LAw oF ForGivenrEss . 
 Tue Law oF ForGIvENESS (continued) 
 
 CONCLUSION : 
 xVl 
 
 86 
 96 
 102 
 Ir4 
 125 
 
 144 
 152 
 162 
 181 
 194 
 207 
 225 
 241 
 252 
 

 
ECCE HOMO Y7 
 FIRST PART 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 THE BAPTIST 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH sprang from a movement which 
 was not begun by Christ. When he appeared upon the 
 scene the first wave of this movement had already passed 
 over the surface of the Jewish nation. He found their 
 hearts recently stirred by thoughts and hopes which 
 prepared them to listen to his words. It is indeed true 
 that not Judza only but the whole Roman Empire was 
 in a condition singularly favourable to the reception of a 
 doctrine and an organisation such as that of the Christian 
 Church. The drama of ancient society had been played 
 out; the ancient city life, with the traditions and morality 
 belonging to it, was obsolete; a vast empire, built upon 
 the ruins of so many nationalities and upon the disgrace 
 of so many national gods, demanded new usages and new 
 objects of worship; a vast peace, where war between 
 neighbouring cities had been the accustomed condition of 
 life and the only recognised teacher of virtue, called for a 
 new morality. There was a clear stage, as it afterwards 
 appeared, for a Universal Church. But Palestine was 
 not only ready to receive such an innovation, but pre- 
 pared, even before the predestined Founder appeared, to 
 make more or less abortive essays towards it. At the 
 moment of his almost unobserved entrance, the whole 
 nation were intent upon the career of one who was attempt- 
 ing in an imperfect manner that which Christ afterwards 
 fully accomplished. 
 
 It was the glory of John the Baptist to have success- 
 
 A 
 
2 Ecce Homo 
 
 fully revived the function of the prophet. For several 
 centuries the function had remained in abeyance. It had 
 become a remote, though it was still a fondly-cherished, 
 tradition that there had been a time when the nation had 
 received guidance from commissioned representatives of 
 its invisible King. We possess still the utterances of 
 many of these prophets, and when we consider the age in 
 which they were delivered, we can clearly perceive that 
 no more precious treasure was ever bestowed upon a nation 
 than these oracles of God which were committed to the 
 Jews. They unite in what was then the most effective 
 way all that is highest in poetry and most fundamental in 
 political science with what is most practical in philosophy 
 and most inspiring in religion. But prophecy was one of 
 those gifts which, like poetry or high art, are particularly 
 apt to die out under change of times. Several centuries 
 had succeeded each other which were all alike incapable 
 of producing it. When John the Baptist appeared, not 
 the oldest man in Palestine could remember to have 
 spoken even in his earliest childhood with any man who 
 had seen a prophet. The ancient scrolls remained, as 
 amongst ourselves those Gothic cathedrals remain, of 
 which we may produce more or less faithful imitations, 
 but to the number of which we shall never add another. 
 In these circumstances it was an occurrence of the first 
 magnitude, more important far than war or revolution, 
 when a new prophet actually appeared. John the Bap- 
 tist defied all the opposition of those scribes, who in the 
 long silence of the prophetic inspiration had become the 
 teachers of the nation, and who resisted him with the con- 
 servatism of lawyers united to the bigotry of priests. He 
 made his way back to the hidden fountains; and received 
 at last that national acknowledgment which silenced even 
 these professional jealousies, that irresistible voice of the 
 people in which the Jew was accustomed to hear the voice 
 of God. Armed with the prophetic authority, he under- 
 took a singular enterprise, of which probably most of 
 those who witnessed it died without suspecting the im- 
 portance, but which we can see to have been the founda- 
 tion of the Universal Church. 
 
The Baptist 3 
 
 There may have been many who listened with awe to 
 his prophetic summons, and presented themselves as can- 
 didates for his baptism in implicit faith that the ordinance 
 was divine, who nevertheless in after years asked them- 
 selves what purpose it had served. It was a solemn 
 scene doubtless, when crowds from every part of Palestine 
 gathered by the side of Jordan, and there renewed, as 
 it were, the covenant made between their ancestor and 
 Jehovah. It seemed the beginning of a new age, the 
 restoration of the ancient theocracy, the final close of 
 that dismal period in which the race had lost its pecu- 
 liarity, had taken a varnish of Greek manners, and had 
 contributed nothing but a few dull chapters of profane 
 history, filled with the usual chaos of faction fights, 
 usurpations, royal crimes, and outbreaks, blind and brave, 
 of patriotism and the love of liberty. But many of those 
 
 who witnessed the scene and shared in the enthusiasm 
 which it awakened must have remembered it in later days 
 as having inspired hopes which had not been realised. 
 Tt must have seemed to many that the theocracy had not 
 in fact been restored, that the old routine had been inter- 
 rupted only for a moment, that the baptised nation had 
 speedily contracted new pollution, and that no deliverance 
 had been wrought from the “ wrath to come.” And they 
 may have asked in doubt, Is God so little parsimonious of 
 His noblest gift, as to waste upon a doomed generation 
 that which He did not vouchsafe to many nobler genera- 
 tions that had preceded them, and to send a second and 
 far greater Elijah to prophesy in vain? 
 
 But if there were such persons, they were ignorant of 
 one important fact. John the Baptist was like the Em- 
 peror Nerva. In his career it was given him to do two 
 things—to inaugurate a new régime, and also to nominate 
 a successor who was far greater than himself. And by this 
 successor his work was taken up, developed, completed, 
 and made permanent; so that, however John may have 
 seemed to his own generation to have lived in vain, and 
 those scenes on the banks of Jordan to have been the de- 
 lusive promise of a future that was never to be, at the dis- 
 tance of near two thousand years he appears not less but 
 
 : 
 : 
 
4 Ecce Homo 
 
 far greater than he appeared to his contemporaries, and 
 all that his baptism promised to do appears utterly insig- 
 nificant compared with what it has actually done. 
 
 The Baptist addressed all who came to him in the same 
 stern tone of authority. Young and old gathered round 
 him, and among them must have been many whom he had 
 known in earlier life, and some to whom he had been 
 taught to look up to with humility and respect. But in his 
 capacity of prophet he made no distinction. All alike he 
 exhorted to repentance; all alike he found courage to 
 baptise. In a single case, however, his confidence failed 
 him. There appeared among the candidates a young 
 man of nearly his own age, who was related to his family. 
 We must suppose that he had had personal intercourse 
 with Christ before; for though one of our authorities re- 
 presents John as saying that he knew him not except by 
 the supernatural sign that pointed him out at his baptism, 
 yet we must interpret this as meaning only that he did 
 not before know him for his successor. For it appears 
 that before the appearance of the sign John had addressed 
 Christ with expressions of reverence, and had declared 
 himself unfit to baptise him. After this meeting we are 
 told that on several occasions he pointed out Christ as the 
 hope of the nation, as destined to develop the work he 
 himself had begun into something far more memorable, 
 and as so greatly superior to himself, that, to repeat his 
 emphatic words, he was not worthy to untie his shoe. 
 
 Now, before we enter into an examination of Christ’s 
 own public career, it will be interesting to consider what 
 definite qualities this contemporary and sagacious observer 
 remarked in him, and exactly what he expected him to 
 do. The Baptist’s opinion of Christ’s character then is 
 summed up for us in the title he gave him—the Lamb of 
 God taking away the sins of the world. There seems to 
 be in the last part of this description an allusion to the 
 usages of the Jewish sacrificial system, and in order to 
 explain it fully it would be necessary to anticipate much 
 that will come more conveniently later in this treatise. 
 But when we remember that the Baptist’s mind was 
 doubtless full of imagery drawn from the Old Testament, 
 
The Baptist 5 
 
 and that the conception of a lamb of God makes the sub- 
 ject of one of the most striking of the Psalms, we shall 
 perceive what he meant to convey by this phrase. The 
 Psalmist describes himself as one of Jehovah’s flock, safe 
 under His care, absolved from all anxieties by the sense of 
 His protection, and gaining from this confidence of safety 
 the leisure to enjoy without satiety all the simple pleasures 
 which make up life, the freshness of the meadow, the 
 coolness of the stream. It is the most complete picture 
 of happiness that ever was or can be drawn. It repre- 
 sents that state of mind for which all alike sigh, and the 
 want of which makes life a failure to most; it represents 
 that Heaven which is everywhere if we could but enter it, 
 and yet almost nowhere because so few of us can. The 
 two or three who win it may be called victors in life’s 
 conflict; to them belongs the regnum et diadema tutum. 
 They may pass obscure lives in humble dwellings, or like 
 Fra Angelico in a narrow monastic cell, but they are 
 vexed with no flap of unclean wings about the ceiling. 
 From some such humble dwelling Christ came to receive 
 the prophet’s baptism. The Baptist was no lamb of God. 
 He was a wrestler with life, one to whom peace of mind 
 does not come easily, but only after a long struggle. 
 His restlessness had driven him into the desert, where he 
 had contended for years with thoughts he could not 
 master, and from whence he had uttered his startling 
 alarum to the nation. He was among the dogs rather 
 than among the lambs of the Shepherd. He recognised 
 the superiority of him whose confidence had never been 
 disturbed, whose steadfast peace no agitations of life had 
 ever ruffled. He did obeisance to the royalty of inward 
 happiness. 
 
 One who was to earn the name of Saviour of mankind 
 had need of this gift more than of any other. He who 
 was to reconcile God and man needed to be first at peace 
 himself. The door of heaven, so to speak, can be opened 
 only from within. Such then was the impression of 
 Christ’s character which the Baptist formed. What now 
 did he expect him to do? 
 
 He said that Christ bore a fan in his hand, with which 
 
6 Ecce Homo 
 
 he would winnow the nation, gathering the good around 
 
 him, separating and rejecting the bad. We shall find 
 occasion soon to speak of this more particularly; at 
 present let us remark that it shows us what course the 
 Baptist imagined that the movement he had commenced 
 would take. He had renewed the old theocratic covenant 
 with the nation. But not all the nation was fit to remain 
 in such a covenant. A sifting was necessary; from the 
 approaching downfall of the Jewish nationality, from the 
 wrath to come, an election should be rescued who should 
 perpetuate the covenant. It is superfluous to remark 
 how just this anticipation was, and how precisely it de- 
 scribes Christ’s work, which consisted in collecting all the 
 better spirits of the nation, and bringing them under that 
 
 revised covenant which we call Christianity, and which” 
 
 survived and diffused itself after the fall of the Temple. 
 Further, Christ was to baptise with a holy spirit and 
 
 with fire. John felt his own baptism to have something 
 
 cold and negative about it. It was a renouncing of. de- 
 
 finite bad practices. The soldier bound himself to refrain | 
 
 from violence, the tax-gatherer from extortion. But 
 
 more than this was wanting. It was necessary that 
 
 an enthusiasm should be kindled. The phrase “ baptise 
 with fire” seems at first sight to contain a mixture of 
 metaphors. Baptism means cleansing, and fire means 
 warmth. How can warmth cleanse? The answer is that 
 moral warmth does cleanse. No heart is pure that is 
 not passionate; no virtue is safe that is not enthusiastic. 
 And such an enthusiastic virtue Christ was to introduce. 
 The whole of the present volume will be a comment on 
 this text. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 THE TEMPTATION 
 
 Let us delay a few more moments on the threshold of 
 our subject, while we consider an incident which is said 
 to have occurred just before Christ entered upon the 
 work of his life. 
 
 Signs miraculous or considered miraculous are said to 
 have attested the greatness of Christ’s mission at the 
 moment of his baptism. There settled on his head a dove, 
 in which the Baptist saw a visible incarnation of that 
 Holy Spirit with which he declared that Christ should 
 baptise. A sound was heard in the sky which was inter- 
 preted as the voice of God Himself, acknowledging His 
 beloved Son. In the agitation of mind caused by his 
 baptism, by the Baptist’s designation of him as the 
 future prophet, and by these signs, Christ retired into the 
 wilderness; and there in solitude, and after a mental 
 struggle such as John perhaps had undergone before he 
 appeared as the prophet of the nation, matured that plan 
 of action which we see him executing with the firmest 
 assurance and consistency from the moment of his return 
 to society. A particular account, also involving some 
 miraculous circumstances, of the temptations with which 
 he contended successfully in the wilderness, is given in 
 our biographies. 
 
 Miracles are, in themselves, extremely improbable 
 things, and cannot be admitted unless supported by a 
 great concurrence of evidence. For some of the Evan- 
 gelical miracles there is a concurrence of evidence which, 
 when fairly considered, is very great indeed; for example, 
 for the Resurrection, for the appearance of Christ to St. 
 Paul, for the general fact that Christ was a miraculous 
 healer of disease. The evidence by which these facts 
 
 7 
 
8 Ecce Homo 
 
 are supported cannot be tolerably accounted for by 
 any hypothesis except that of their being true. And if 
 they are once admitted, the antecedent improbability of 
 many miracles less strongly attested is much diminished. 
 Nevertheless nothing is more natural than that exaggera- 
 tions and even inventions should be mixed in our bio- 
 graphies with genuine facts. Now the miracles of the 
 baptism are not among those which are attested by 
 strong external evidence. There is nothing necessarily 
 miraculous in the appearance of the dove, and a peal 
 of thunder might be shaped into intelligible words by 
 the excited imagination of men accustomed to consider 
 thunder as the voice of God. Of the incidents of the 
 temptation it is to be remarked that they are not de- 
 scribed to us by eye-witnesses; they may have been com- 
 municated to his followers by Christ himself, the best of 
 witnesses, but we have no positive assurance that they 
 were so communicated. 
 
 On the other hand, a retirement of Christ into the 
 desert, and a remarkable mental struggle at the beginning 
 of his career, are incidents extremely probable in them- 
 selves; and the account of the temptation, from whatever 
 source derived, has a very striking internal consistency, 
 a certain inimitable probability of improbability, if the 
 expression may be allowed. That popular imagination 
 which gives birth to rumours and then believes them, is 
 not generally capable of great or sublime or well-sustained 
 efforts. 
 
 Wunderthatige Bilder sind meist nur schlechte Gemalde. 
 
 The popular imagination is fertile and tenacious, but 
 not very powerful or profound. Christ in the wilderness 
 was a subject upon which the imagination would very 
 readily work, but at the same time far too great a sub- 
 ject for it to work upon successfully; we should expect 
 strange stories to be told of his adventures in such a 
 solitude, but we should also expect the stories to be very 
 childish. Now the story of Christ’s temptation is as 
 unique as Christ’s character. It is such a temptation as 
 was never experienced by anyone else, yet just such a 
 
The Temptation 9 
 
 temptation as Christ, and Christ in those peculiar circum- 
 stances, might be expected to experience. And further, 
 this appropriateness of all the circumstances hardly seems 
 to be perceived by the Evangelists themselves who 
 narrate them. Their narrative is not like a poem, though 
 it affords the materials for a poem; it is rather a dry 
 chronicle. 
 
 Let us consider the situation. We are to fix in our 
 minds Christ’s peculiar character, as it has been gathered 
 from the Baptist’s description of him. His character then 
 was such that he was compared to a lamb, a lamb of 
 God. He was without ambition, and he had a pee 
 unrivalled simplicity of devout confidence in God. Such 
 is the person to whom it is now announced by a great 
 prophet that he has been called to a most peculiar, a 
 pre-eminent career. But this does not fully describe the 
 situation; a most important circumstance has yet to be 
 mentioned. From the time of his temptation Christ 
 appeared as a worker of miracles. We are expressly 
 told by St. John that he had wrought none before, but 
 all our authorities concur in representing him as possessing 
 and using the gift after this time. We are to conceive 
 him therefore as becoming now for the first time con- 
 scious of miraculous powers. Now none of our bio- 
 graphies point this out, and yet it is visibly the key to 
 the whole narration. What is called Christ’s temptation 
 is the excitement of his mind which was caused by the 
 nascent consciousness of supernatural power. 
 
 He finds himself in a barren region without food. The 
 tumult of his mind has hitherto kept him unconscious of 
 his bodily wants, but the overwhelming reaction of lassi- 
 tude now comes on. And with the hunger comes the 
 temptation, ‘“‘ Son of God, into whose service all natural 
 forces have been given, command that these stones 
 become bread.” The possession of special power, and 
 nothing else, constitutes the temptation here; it is the 
 greatest with which virtue can be assailed: By it the 
 virtuous man is removed from ordinary rules, from the 
 safe course which has been marked by the footsteps of 
 countless good men before him, and has to make, as it 
 
eRe Bie 
 
 10 Ecce Homo 
 
 were, a new morality for himself. In difficult circum-— 
 stances few men can wield extraordinary power long 
 without positively committing crime. But here we see the 
 good man placed in a position utterly strange, deprived 
 of the stay of all precedent or example, gifted with power 
 not only extraordinary but supernatural and unlimited, 
 and thrown for his morality entirely upon the instinct of 
 virtue within him. Philosophers had imagined some such 
 situation, and had presented it under the fable of the 
 ring of Gyges, but with them the only question was 
 whether distinctions of right and wrong would not vanish 
 altogether in such circumstances. The question by which 
 Christ’s mind was perplexed was far different; it was 
 what newer and stricter obligations are involved in the 
 possession of new powers. 
 
 A strange, and yet, given the exceptional circumstances, 
 a most natural and necessary temptation. Still more 
 unique, and yet at the same time natural, is Christ’s 
 resistance to it. Unique by its elevation, and natural. 
 by its appropriateness to his character. He is awe- 
 struck rather than elated by his new gifts; he declines 
 to use for his own convenience what he regards as a 
 sacred deposit committed to him for the good of others. 
 In his extreme need he prefers to suffer rather than to 
 help himself from resources which he conceives placed 
 in his hands in trust for the kingdom of God. Did ever 
 inventor or poet dare to picture to himself a self-denial ~ 
 like this? But, on the other hand, what course could so 
 exactly suit the character of Christ as the Baptist painted 
 it? What answer could more exquisitely become the 
 Lamb of God than that quotation—“ Man doth not live 
 by bread only, but by every word that proceeds out of 
 the mouth of God”? Is it not substantially the same as 
 that which the Psalmist uses in the very psalm in which 
 he pictures himself as one of God’s lambs, “ He prepareth 
 -for me a table in the wilderness ”’? 
 
 Then follows a temptation, which again is extremely 
 appropriate, because it is founded upon this very ¢on- 
 fidence of Divinepratection. A new temptation arises 
 by reaction out of the triumph of faith: “ Throw thyself 
 
The Temptation II 
 
 down, for it is written, He shall give His angels charge 
 over thee, and in their hands they shall bear thee up.’ 
 To no other person but Christ could such a temptation 
 occur; to him, we may boldly say, such a temptation 
 must, at some time, have occurred. And if in the Son of 
 God ‘there was filial reverence as well as filial confidence, 
 it must have been resisted, as it is recorded to have been 
 resisted, “‘ Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” 
 
 The third temptation is somewhat less easy to under- 
 stand, but its appropriateness to the character and condi- 
 tion of Christ, and its utter inappropriateness to every 
 other character and condition, are quite as clear. A vision 
 of universal monarchy rose before him. What suggested 
 such thoughts to the son of a carpenter? What but the 
 same new sense of supernatural power which tempted 
 him to turn stones into bread, and to throw himself into 
 the arms of ministering angels? This, together with the 
 Baptist’s predictions, and those Messianic predictions of 
 the ancient prophets, on which we can imagine that he 
 had been intensely brooding, might naturally suggest such 
 an imagination. He pictured himself enthroned in Jeru- 
 salem as Messiah, and the gold of Arabia offered in tribute 
 to him. But, says the narrative, the devil said to Him, 
 If thou wilt fall down and worship me, all shall be thine. 
 This, at least, it may be thought, was not a temptation 
 likely to overcome the Lamb of God. One remarkable for 
 simplicity of character, one who was struggling with the 
 fresh conviction that he was himself that Messiah, that 
 beloved Son of God, whose glorious reign wise men had 
 been permitted to foresee from a distance of centuries; 
 was he, in the moment of his first enthusiasm, and fresh 
 in the possession of sacred prerogatives of power, which 
 he feared to use in self-defence even against famine, likely 
 to do homage to a spirit of evil for that which he must 
 have believed to be surely his by gift of God? We 
 should remember that the report of these temptations, if 
 trustworthy, must have come to us through Christ him- 
 self, and that it may probably contain the facts mixed with 
 his comments upon them. We are perhaps to understand 
 that he was tempted to do something which on reflection 
 
12 Ecce Homo 
 appeared to him equivalent to an act of homage to the evil 
 
 spirit. What then could this be? It will explain much © 
 
 that follows in Christ’s life, and render the whole story 
 very complete and consistent, if we suppose that what he 
 was tempted to do ign am erys Jn the establish: 
 ment of his. Messianic On this hypothesis, the 
 
 ird temptation arises from the same source as the others; 
 the mental struggle is still caused by the question how to 
 use the supernatural power. Nothing more natural than 
 that it should occur to Christ that this power was ex- 
 pressly given to him for the purpose of establishing, in 
 defiance of all resistance, his everlasting kingdom. He 
 must have heard from his instructors that the Messiah 
 was to put all enemies under his feet, and to crush all 
 opposition by irresistible God-given might. This certainly 
 was the general expectation; this appeared legibly writ- 
 ten in the prophetical books. And, in the sequel, it was 
 because Christ refused to use his supernatural power in 
 this way that his countrymen rejected him. It was not 
 that they expected a king, and that he appeared only as 
 a teacher; on the contrary, he systematically described 
 himself as a king. The stumbling-block was this, that, 
 professing to be a king, he declined to use the weapons 
 of force and compulsion that belong to kings. And. as 
 this caused so much surprise to his countrymen, it is 
 natural that he should himself have undergone a struggle 
 before he determined thus to run counter to the traditional 
 theory of the Messiah and to all the prejudices of the 
 nation. The tempter, we may suppose, approached him 
 with the whisper, “ Gird thee with thy sword upon thy 
 thigh; ride on, and thy right hand shall teach thee 
 terrible things.” 
 
 If this was the temptation, then again how character- 
 istic of the Lamb of God was the resistance to it, and at 
 the same time how incomparably great the self-restraint 
 involved in that resistance! One who believes himself 
 born for universal monarchy, and capable by his rule of 
 giving happiness to the world, is entrusted with powers 
 which seem to afford the ready means of attaining that 
 supremacy. By the overwhelming force of visible miracle 
 
The Temptation 13 
 
 it is possible for him to establish an absolute dominion, 
 and to give to the race the laws which may make it 
 happy. But he deliberately determines to adopt another 
 course, to found his empire upon the consent and not the 
 fears of mankind, to trust himself with his royal claims 
 and his terrible purity and superiority defenceless among 
 mankind, and, however bitterly their envy may persecute 
 him, to use his supernatural powers only in doing them 
 good. This he actually did, and evidently in pursuance 
 of a fixed plan; he persevered in this course, although 
 politically, so to speak, it was fatal to his position, and 
 though it bewildered his most attached followers; but by 
 doing so he raised himself to a throne on which he has 
 been seated for nigh two thousand years, and gained an 
 authority over men greater far than they have allowed 
 to any legislator, greater than prophecy had ever attri- 
 buted to the Messiah himself. 
 
 As the time of his retirement in the wilderness was 
 the season in which we may suppose the plan of his 
 subsequent career was formed, and the only season in 
 which he betrayed any hesitation or mental perplexity, 
 it is natural to suppose that he formed this particular 
 determination at this time; and, if so, the narrative gains 
 completeness and consistency by the hypothesis that the 
 act of homage to the evil spirit to which Christ was 
 tempted, was the founding his Messianic kingdom upon 
 force. 
 
 Such then is the story of Christ’s temptation. It rests, 
 indeed, on no very strong external evidence, and there 
 may be exaggeration in its details; but in its substance 
 it can scarcely be other than true—first, because it is 
 so much stranger than fiction, and next because in its 
 strangeness it is so nicely adapted to the character of 
 Christ as we already know it, and still more as it will 
 unfold itself to us in the course of this investigation. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 It is the object of the present treatise to exhibit Christ’s 
 career in outline. No other career ever had so much 
 unity; no other biography is so simple, or can so well 
 afford to dispense with details. Men in general take up 
 scheme after scheme, as circumstances suggest one or 
 another, and therefore most biographies are compelled 
 to pass from one subject to another, and to enter into a 
 multitude of minute questions, to divide the life carefully 
 into periods by chronological landmarks accurately de- 
 termined, to trace the gradual development of character 
 and ripening or change of opinions. But Christ formed one 
 plan and executed it: no important change took place in 
 his mode of thinking, speaking, or acting; at least the 
 evidence before us does not enable us to trace any such 
 change. It is possible, indeed, for students of his life 
 to find details which they may occupy themselves with 
 discussing; they may map out the chronology of it, and 
 devise methods of harmonising the different accounts; but ; 
 such details are of little importance compared with the 
 one grand question, what was Christ’s plan, and throw 
 scarcely any light upon that question. What was Christ’s 
 plan, is the main question which will be investigated in 
 the present treatise, and that vision of universal monarchy 
 which we have just been considering affords an appropriate 
 introduction to it. 
 
 In discussing that vision we were obliged to anticipate. 
 Let us now enquire, as a new question, what course Christ 
 adopted when he mingled once more with his fellow- 
 countrymen after his seclusion in the wilderness, and 
 when he entered upon his public career? John’s message 
 to the nation had been, as we have seen, “ The kingdom 
 
 14 
 
" The Kingdom of God Nts 
 
 of God is at hand.” Now this proclamation Christ took 
 up from his lips and carried everywhere. For a while 
 the two prophets worked simultaneously, though, as it 
 seems, separately, and the preaching of the one was an 
 echo of that of the other. Our first object, then, must 
 be to ascertain what it was which they anticipated under 
 the name of the kingdom of God. And to ascertain this 
 we should not look onward to that which actually took 
 place, but placing ourselves in imagination among their 
 audience, consider what meaning a Jew would be likely 
 to attach to the proclamation they delivered. The con-, 
 ception of a kingdom of God was no new one, but familiar 
 
 to every Jew. Every Jew looked back to the time when . 
 
 Jehovah was regarded as the King of Israel. The title 
 had belonged to Jehovah in a very peculiar sense; it had 
 not been transferred to Him from the visible earthly king 
 as in many other countries, but appropriated to Him so 
 exclusively that for a long time no human king had been 
 appointed, and that when at last the people demanded 
 to be ruled by kings like the nations around them, the 
 demand was treated by the most ardent worshippers of 
 Jehovah as high treason against Him. And though a 
 dynasty was actually founded, yet the belief in the true 
 royalty of Jehovah was not destroyed or weakened, only 
 modified by the change. Every nation of originality has 
 its favourite principles, its political intuitions, to which it 
 clings with fondness. One nation admires free speech and 
 liberty, another the equality of all citizens; just in the 
 ‘same manner the Jews attached themselves to the principle 
 of the Sovereignty of God, and believed the happiness 
 of the nation to depend upon its free acknowledgment 
 of this principle. But in the time of. Christ all true 
 Jews were depressed with the feeling that the theocracy 
 was in a great degree a thing of the past, that they were 
 jn anew age with new things about them, that Greek and 
 Roman principles and ways of thinking were in the ascen- 
 dant, and that the face of the Invisible King no longer 
 shone full upon them. This feeling had become so deep 
 and habitual, that at a much earlier time the sect of the 
 Pharisees had been formed to preserve the peculiarity of 
 
16 Ecce Homo 
 
 the nation from the inroad of foreign thought, and what- 
 ever ancient Jewish feeling remained had gathered itself 
 into this sect as into a last citadel. In these circumstances 
 the cry, “‘ The kingdom of God is at hand,” could not be 
 mistaken. It meant that the theocracy was to be restored, 
 that the nation was called to commence a new era by fall- 
 ing back upon its first principles. 
 
 In making this proclamation John and Christ did not 
 assume any new character. They revived the obsolete 
 function of the prophet, and did for their generation what 
 a Samuel and an Elijah had done for theirs. As every 
 great nation has its favourite political principles, so it has 
 its peculiar type of statesmen. The nation which strives 
 after individual liberty produces statesmen whose prin- 
 cipal qualities are personal independence, moral courage, 
 and a certain skill in quarrelling by rule. The pursuit of 
 equality produces men of commanding will, who are able 
 to crush aristocratical insolence, and by ruling the country 
 themselves to prevent the citizens from tyrannising over 
 each other. In like manner the peculiar political genius 
 of the Jews produced a peculiar type of statesman. The 
 man who rose to eminence in that commonwealth was 
 the man who had a stronger sense than others of the 
 presence, power, and justice of the Invisible King, and his 
 great function was to awaken the same sense in others by 
 eloquent words and decided acts. The Jewish statesman 
 was the prophet, and his business was to redeliver to each 
 successive generation, in the language likely to prove most 
 convincing and persuasive to it, a proclamation of which 
 the meaning always was, “‘ The kingdom of God is at hand.” 
 The occasion of such proclamation might be peculiar and 
 determine it to a peculiar form, but one general descrip- 
 tion of the Jewish prophet will apply to all of them, 
 including John and Christ — viz. that he is one-who, 
 foreseeing the approach of great national calamities and 
 attributing them to the nation’s disloyalty to their Invisible 
 King, devotes himself to the task of averting them by a 
 reformation of manners and an emphatic republication, 
 of the Mosaic Law. All the Jewish prophets answer this 
 description, whether the calamity they foresee be a plague 
 
The Kingdom of God 17 
 
 of locusts, an Assyrian invasion, a Babylonish captivity, 
 or a Roman conquest with the abomination of desolation 
 standing in the holy place. 
 
 So far all prophets must of necessity resemble each 
 other, but there are other matters in which it is equally 
 necessary that they should differ. All prophets proclaim 
 one eternal principle, and so far are alike; but as it is their 
 duty to apply the principle to the special conditions of 
 their age, they must needs differ as much as those con- 
 ditions differ. As the prophet whose prophecy is new in 
 substance is no prophet but a deceiver, so the prophet 
 whose prophecy is old in form is no prophet but a pla- 
 giarist. And thus if the revived theocracy of Christ had 
 been simply and merely the theocracy of Moses or David, 
 his countrymen would have had as good a right to deny 
 his prophetic mission as if he had preached no theocracy 
 at all. To express the same thing in the language of our 
 own time, the destinies of a nation cannot be safely trusted 
 to a politician who does not recognise the difference be- 
 tween the present and the past, and who hopes to restore 
 the precise institutions under which the nation had pros- 
 pered centuries before. It is therefore most important to 
 enquire under what form Christ proposed to revive the 
 theocracy. 
 
 We have remarked that the ancient theocracy had 
 passed through two principal stages. In the first the 
 sense of Jehovah’s sovereignty had been so absorbing 
 that it had been thought impious to give the name of 
 king to any human being. It is true that in this stage 
 the notion of a human representative of Jehovah had been 
 familiar to the nation. In their dangers and difficulties, 
 when the sighs of the people were heard in heaven, the 
 hand of Jehovah had seemed to them as mighty, and His 
 arm as visibly outstretched, when He sent rescue through 
 a legislator or judge in whom His wisdom dwelt, as when 
 He divided the sea by immediate power. God’s presence in 
 men had been recognised as fully as His presence in nature. 
 “When the people come to me to enquire of God,” isa 
 phrase used by Moses. But it had been held impossible 
 to predict beforehand in what man God’s presence would 
 
 B 
 
 4 
 
18 Ecce Homo 
 
 manifest itself. The divine inspiration which made a man ' 
 capable of ruling had been considered to resemble that 
 which made a man a prophet, or makes in these days a 
 poet or inspired artist. And it was thought that to gives 
 a man the title of a king for life, and to transfer it r 
 
 larly to his descendants without demanding proofs that 
 the divine wisdom remained and descended with equal 
 regularity, was equivalent to depriving Jehovah of His 
 power of choosing His own ministers. 
 
 For a long time, therefore, a system of hero-worship 
 prevailed. Whenever the need of a central government 
 was strongly felt, it was committed to the man who ap- 
 peared ablest and wisest. At length, however, the wish 
 of the people for a government that might be permanent, 
 that might hold definite prerogatives and be transferred 
 according to a fixed rule, grew clamorous. Prophecy 
 protested solemnly, but at last yielded, and an hereditary 
 monarchy was founded. From this time forward until 
 the Babylonish captivity Judza was under the govern- 
 ment of Jehovah represented by a king of the house of 
 David. This new constitution had all the advantages 
 which we know to attach to hereditary monarchy. The 
 nation gained from it a tranquillity and security which 
 were not interrupted, as before, at the death of each ruler, 
 and the national pride and patriotism were fostered by 
 the splendour and antiquity of its royal house. But the 
 spirit of prophecy, which had at first protested against 
 the change, continued to be somewhat perplexed by the 
 new institution. The king, it reasoned, if he was not then 
 a usurper of Jehovah’s right, what was he? Could the 
 country have two kings, and could loyalty to the one 
 be reconciled with loyalty to the other? From this 
 perplexity it found an escape by picturing the earthly 
 king as standing in a peculiar relation to the heavenly. 
 If the inspired hero or legislator of early times had been a 
 favoured servant of Jehovah, the king must needs be 
 more. He who, not on some special occasion but always, 
 represented Jehovah, he who reflected not only His wisdom 
 or justice but His very majesty and royalty in the pre- 
 sence of His subjects, the assessor of Jehovah’s throne, 
 
 | 
 
: The Kingdom of God 19 
 
 the man that was the fellow of the Lord of Hosts, de- 
 served to be called not His servant but His Son. But 
 the more the dignity of a Jewish king appeared unutter- 
 able, the more unworthy of it did almost every individual 
 king appear. The ancient judge had been all that he pro- 
 fessed to be. His special endowment might be of a mean 
 order, but it was undeniable. No one questioned the 
 stoutness of Samson’s sinews. But the king, of whom so 
 much more was expected, might happen and did some- 
 times happen to have much less. The spirit of prophecy 
 consoled itself for these failures by painting upon the 
 future such a king as might satisfy all the conditions its 
 enthusiasm demanded, and might deserve to sit by Jeho- 
 vah’s right hand and judge the chosen people. 
 
 These were the two forms which the ancient theocracy 
 had assumed. Now under which form did Christ propose 
 to revive it? The vision of universal monarchy which 
 he saw in the desert suggests the answer. He conceived 
 the theocracy restored as it had been in the time of David, 
 with a visible monarch at its head, and that monarch 
 himself. 
 
 We are concerned at present simply with the fact that 
 Christ laid claim to the royal title, and not with the ques- 
 tion what special powers he claimed under that title. The 
 fact itself cannot be denied without rejecting all the evi- 
 dence before us. His biographers regard him as king by 
 hereditary right, and attach great importance to the 
 proofs of his lineal descent from David. It does not 
 appear, and it is not easy to believe, that he shared this 
 feeling. But if not, it was because he believed his 
 royalty to rest on a higher right. He could not derive 
 honour from David because he held himself far greater 
 than David. He was not king by a title derived from his 
 ancestor, but by the same title as his ancestor. David 
 had owed his sovereignty to that heroic will and wisdom 
 in which the prophet Samuel had recognised a divine 
 right to rule. The same title had Christ in a yet higher 
 degree, and it had been recognised and proclaimed with 
 equal solemnity by the greatest prophetic authority of the 
 age. The prophetic designation which had fallen upon 
 
20 Ecce Homo 
 
 him had perhaps revealed to himself for the first time his 
 own royal qualities, and the mental struggles which fol- 
 lowed, if they had led him to a peculiar view of the kind 
 of sovereignty to which he was destined, had left upon 
 his mind a most absolute and serene conviction of his 
 royal rights. During his whole public life he is distin- 
 guished from the other prominent characters of Jewish 
 history by his unbounded personal pretensions. He calls 
 ' himself habitually king and master, he claims expressly 
 the character of that divine Messiah for which the ancient 
 prophets had directed the nation to look. 
 
 So far, then, it appears that Christ proposed to revive 
 the theocracy in the form which it had worn in the age 
 of David and Solomon. A hero-king was to represent to 
 the nation their Jehovah, and to rule in the indefeasible 
 right of natural superiority. But was the new monarchy 
 to be a copy of the old? A thousand years had passed 
 since the age of David. A new world had come into being. 
 The cities through which Christ walked, the Jerusalem 
 at which he kept the annual feasts, were filled with men 
 compared with whom the contemporaries of David might 
 be called barbarous—men whose characters had been 
 moulded during many centuries by law, by trade and 
 foreign intercourse, by wealth and art, by literature and 
 prophecy. Was it possible that the old heroic monarchy 
 could be revived in the midst of a complicated and in- 
 tellectual civilisation? 
 
 This difficulty does not seem to have occurred to 
 Christ’s contemporaries. The religious Jews were looking 
 for the appearance of one who should be neither more 
 nor less than David had been. They expected, it seems, 
 to see once more a>warrior-king, judging in the gate of 
 Jerusalem, or surrounded by his mighty men, or carrying 
 his victorious arms into the neighbouring countries, or 
 receiving submissive embassies from Rome and Seleucia, 
 and in the meantime holding awful communication with 
 Jehovah, administering His law and singing His praise. 
 It was natural enough that such vague fancies should fill 
 the minds of ordinary men. It was as impossible for 
 them to conceive the true Christ, to imagine what he 
 

 
 The Kingdom of God 21 
 
 would do or how he would do it, as it was impossible for 
 
 them to fill his-place.” Meanwhile the Christ himself, 
 meditating upon his mission in the desert, saw difficulties 
 such as other men had no suspicion of. He saw that he 
 must lead a life altogether different from that of David, 
 _ that the pictures drawn by the prophets of an ideal 
 _ Jewish king were coloured by the manners of the times 
 _ in which they had lived; that those pictures bore indeed 
 a certain resemblance to the truth, but that the work 
 _ before him was far more complicated and more delicate 
 than the wisest prophet had suspected. 
 
 ___ It was in this way that the quarrel began between the 
 _ Jews and their divine Messiah. Their heads were full of 
 the languid dreams of commentators, the impracticable 
 _ pedantries of men who live in the past. He was grappling 
 with the facts of his age in the strength of an inspiration 
 to which no truth was hidden and no enterprise impossible. 
 _ Accordingly he appeared before them, as it were, under 
 _a disguise. He confounded their calculations, and pro- 
 fessing to be the king they expected, he did none of the 
 _ things which they expected the king to do. He revived 
 the theocracy, and the monarchy, but in a form not only 
 unlike the system of David but utterly new and unpre- 
 cedented. 
 
 It is not uncommon to describe the Jews as having 
 simply made the mistake of confounding a figurative ex- 
 pression with a literal one. It is said that when Christ 
 called himself a king he was speaking figuratively, and 
 that by “king ” he meant, as some say, God, as others, a 
 wise man and teacher of morality, but that the Jews 
 persisted in understanding the expression literally. Such 
 interpreters do not see that they attribute to intelligent 
 men a mistake worthy of children or savages. We do 
 not find in history whole nations misled, bloody catas- 
 trophes and revolutions produced, by verbal mistakes 
 that could be explained in a moment. Again, they attri- 
 bute to Christ. conduct which is quite unaccountable. A 
 wise man may at times dilate upon the authority which 
 _ his wisdom gives him, and in doing so may compare him- 
 _ self toa king; but if he saw that his words were so grossly 
 
22 Ecce Homo 
 
 misapprehended that he was in danger of involving him- — 
 
 self and others in political difficulties, he would certainly 
 withdraw or explain the metaphor. But it is evident 
 that Christ clung firmly to the title, and attached great 
 importance to it. This appears in the most signal manner 
 
 _ on the occasion of his last entry into Jerusalem. He ~ 
 entered in a public triumph preceded by those who hailed © 
 him as son of David, and when requested by those who 
 
 thought the populace guilty of this very misconception of 
 mistaking a wise man for a king to silence their enthu- 
 siastic cries, he pointedly refused. Again, it is clear that 
 this assumption of royalty was the ground of his execu- 
 tion. The inscription which was put upon His cross ran, 
 This is Jesus, the King of the Jews. He had himself pro- 
 voked this accusation of rebellion against the Roman 
 government; he must have known that the language he 
 used would be interpreted so. Was there then nothing 
 substantial in the royalty he claimed? Did he die for a 
 metaphor? 
 
 It will soon become necessary to consider at leisure in 
 what sense Christ understood His own royalty. At pre- 
 sent it is enough to remark that, though he understood it 
 in a very peculiar sense, and though he abdicated many 
 of the functions of a sovereign, he yet regarded it as a 
 
 
 
 royalty not less substantial, and far more dignified, than — 
 
 that of his ancestor David. We may go one step farther 
 
 before entering into the details, and note the exact ground ~ 
 
 of the quarrel which the Jews had with him. He under- 
 stood the work of the Messiah in one sense, and they in 
 another, but what was the point of irreconcilable differ- 
 ence? They laid information against him before the 
 Roman government as a dangerous character; their real 
 complaint against him was precisely this, that he was not 
 . dangerous. <Pilate executed him on the ground that his 
 kingdom was of this world;-the Jews procured his execu- 
 tion precisely because it was not. In other words, they 
 could not forgive him for claiming royalty and at the same 
 time rejecting the use of physical force. His royal pre- 
 tensions were not in themselves distasteful to them; 
 backed by a military force, and favoured by success, 
 
The Kingdom of God 29 
 
 those pretensions would have been enthusiastically re- 
 
 ceived. His tranquil life, passed in teaching and healing 
 the sick, could not in itself excite their hatred. An elo- 
 
 _ quent teacher, gathering disciples round him in Jerusalem 
 and offering a new and devout interpretation of the 
 Mosaic law, might have aroused a little spite, but not the 
 
 ery of “ Crucify him!” They did not object to the king, 
 they did not object to the philosopher; but they objected 
 to the king in the garb of the philosopher. They were 
 offended at what they thought the degradation of their 
 great ideal. A king who neither had not cared to have 
 a court or an army; a king who could not enforce a com- 
 mand; a king who preached and lectured like a scribe, 
 yet in his weakness and insignificance could not forget 
 his dignity, had his royal title often in his mouth, and 
 lectured with an authority that no scribe assumed—these 
 violent contrasts, this disappointment of their theories, 
 this homely parody of their hopes, inspired them with an 
 irritation, and at last a malignant disgust, which it is not 
 hard to understand. 
 
 That they were wrong we are all ready to admit. But 
 what Christ really meant to do, and in what new form 
 he proposed to revive the ancient monarchy, is not so 
 clear as the error of his adversaries. It is this which we 
 proceed to consider. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 CHRIST’S ROYALTY 
 
 From the perplexity in which the Jews were involved by 
 the contrast between Christ’s royal pretensions and the 
 homely tenor of his life, they sometimes endeavoured to 
 deliver themselves by applying practical tests. They 
 laid matters before him of which it might seem the 
 duty of a king to take cognisance. By this means they 
 discovered that he considered several of the ordinary 
 functions of a king not to lie within his province. For 
 example, they showed him some of the tribute-money, 
 and asked him whether they ought to pay it. It was 
 an obvious but at the same time a very effective way of 
 sifting his monarchical claims. In the times of David the 
 Jews had imposed tribute on the surrounding nations; 
 it was a thing scarcely conceivable that in the age of the 
 Messiah they should _pay_tribute. to the foreigner. If 
 Christ were a commissioned and worthy successor of the 
 national hero, it seemed certain that he would be fired 
 with indignation at the thought of so deep a national 
 degradation. Strange to say, he appeared little interested 
 in the question, and coldly bade them not be ashamed 
 ‘to pay back into Cesar’s treasury the coins that came 
 from Czsar’s mint. If there be one function more than 
 another which seems proper to a king, it is that of main- 
 taining and asserting the independence of his realm; yet 
 this function Christ peremptorily declined to undertake. 
 The ancient kings of Judah had been judges. Accord- 
 ingly the Jews invited Christ more than once to under- 
 take the office.of a judge. We read of a civil action x 
 concerning an inheritance which was submitted to hing; 
 and of a criminal case of adultery in which he was asked 
 to pronounce judgment. In both cases he declined the 
 24 
 
| Christ’s Royalty i 25 
 
 office, and in one of them with an express declaration 
 that he had received no commission to exercise judicial 
 functions. 
 
 The ancient kings of Judah had commanded the armies 
 of the nation. It has been already remarked that Christ 
 refrained in the most decided manner from undertaking 
 this function. He expressly told Pilate that his kingdom 
 was one the members of which did not fight, and, con- 
 sistently with this principle, he forbade his follower Peter 
 to take up arms even in order to save him from arrest. 
 
 What functions then did Christ undertake? We feel 
 baffled at the beginning of our investigation, and can 
 enter into the perplexity of the Jews, for those which 
 we have enumerated are the principal functions of the 
 ancient monarchy. All of them Christ declined, and yet 
 
 continued to speak of himself as king, and that with such 
 consistency and clearness that those who were nearest to 
 his person understood him most literally, and quarrelled 
 for places and dignities under him. Our perplexity 
 arises from this: that whereas Christ announced the 
 restoration of the Davidic monarchy, and presented him- 
 self to the nation as their king, yet, when we compare 
 the position he assumed with that of an ancient Jewish 
 king, we fail to find any point of resemblance. 
 
 But the truth is, as it appears after a little considera- 
 tion, that in this rough comparison we have not sufficiently 
 remembered the very peculiar view taken by the Jews— 
 perhaps originally by other ancient nations—of royalty. 
 It is possible, though it cannot be proved, that other 
 nations, such as the Greeks, gave the name of king, in the 
 first instance, to the god of the particular tribe, and after- 
 wards transferred it to the human being who was supposed 
 to be sprung from him, or beloved and inspired by him. 
 But that among the Jews the notion of royalty was derived 
 from that of divinity, seems clear. Human kings were 
 appointed late in Palestine, but from a much earlier time 
 the twelve tribes had lived under a monarchy. Their 
 national Divinity had been their king. He had been 
 believed to march at the head of their armies, and to 
 bestow victory, to punish wrong-doing, and to heal differ- 
 
26 Ecce Homo 
 
 ences when the tribes were at peace.” The human king 
 
 a 
 
 who was afterwards appointed was king but in a secondary © 
 
 sense, as the deputy of the Invisible King, and the inspired 
 
 depositary of His will. Now it is important to remark 
 
 that the human king represented the Divine King in 
 certain matters only, and not in others. In the habitual 
 acts of administration the king officiated, but there were 
 some acts which Jehovah had done for the nation once 
 for all, in which, as they were not to be repeated, none 
 of the house of David could represent Him. Yet these 
 acts were far greater than those which were regularly 
 repeated, and displayed much more magnificently the 
 royalty of Jehovah, 
 
 These acts were two—the calling of the nation, and the 
 institution of its laws. 
 
 It was believed, in the first place, that the nation 
 owed its separate existence to Jehovah’s election of 
 Abraham. The origin of other nations is lost in antiquity, 
 but we can still trace the movements of the primitive 
 shepherd who separated himself from his Chaldzan 
 countrymen in obedience to an irresistible divine impulse, 
 and lived a wandering life among his flocks and herds, 
 ennobled by his unborn descendants as other men are by 
 their dead ancestors, rich, as it were by a reversed in- 
 heritance from the ages after him, and actually bearing 
 in his body Moses and David and Christ. His life was 
 passed in mysterious communion with the Sovereign Will 
 which had isolated him in the present and given him for 
 compensation a home in the future. 
 
 This then was the first work which the Invisible King 
 did for his subjects. He created the nation over which 
 He was to reign. And the Jews in after times loved to 
 speak of Him as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, 
 the God, that is, who had watched over the growth of a 
 family into a nation, who had sealed that family for 
 Himself and chosen the nation. 
 
 But this had been done once for all. The king of the 
 house of David might represent to the people their In- 
 visible King at the head of an army, or on the judgment- 
 seat, but he could not represent to them the Founder of 
 
Christ’s Royalty 27 
 
 their commonwealth, the God who had been, as it were, 
 their dwelling-place in all generations. 
 
 The covenant between Abraham and his invisible 
 Guide had been simple. No condition but isolation and 
 the sign of it, circumcision, had been imposed upon the 
 
 first Hebrew; he received and obeyed occasional moni- 
 tions, and he was blessed with a continually increasing 
 prosperity. But the family grew into a nation, and then 
 the covenant was enlarged. He who had called the 
 nation now did for it the second work of a king and gave 
 -italaw. No longer special commands imposed on special 
 persons, but general laws binding on every Israelite at 
 all times alike, laws regulating the behaviour of every 
 Israelite towards his brother Israelite.and towards the 
 Invisible King, laws which turned a wandering tribe of 
 the desert into a nation worthy of the settled seat, the 
 mountain fastness girdled with plain and cornfield and 
 protected by Jordan and the sea, with which at the same 
 time their Patron endowed them. In this work of legis- 
 lation He was represented by Moses, of whom it therefore 
 is written that “ he was ksmg in Jeshurun.” This too was 
 a work done once for all. No king of the house of David 
 ever represented the Invisible King in His capacity of 
 legislator. To study the divine law diligently and ad- 
 minister it faithfully was the highest praise to which a 
 David or Hezekiah could aspire. 
 
 Thus the kings of the house of David were representa- 
 tives of the Invisible King in certain matters only. The 
 greatest works which can be done for a nation by its 
 shepherd were quite beyond their scope and province. 
 
 __ We may now perceive how Christ might abdicate all 
 the functions they had undertaken, and yet remain a king 
 in a much higher sense than they, and in what respect 
 the conception of the Messiah formed by the Jews of 
 Christ’s time might differ from that which Christ himself 
 formed of him. It was the fatal mistake of the most 
 influential body in the nation, that mixed body which is 
 called the Scribes and Pharisees, to regard the Mosaic 
 law as final and unalterable. They fell into the besetting 
 sin of lawyers in all ages. Assuming therefore that 
 
 
 
28 . Ecce Homo 
 
 nothing remained for the Messiah to do in legislation, they 
 were driven to suppose that he too, like the ancient kings, 
 would be but an imperfect representative of the Supreme 
 King. And so they were driven to conceive him as 
 occupied with administration or conquest, and, had their 
 dream been realised, the Christ would have appeared i in 
 history far inferior to Moses. 
 
 On the other hand, Christ fixed his thoughts solely on 
 the greater and more fundamental works of a heroic 
 royalty. He respected the Mosaic legislation not less 
 than his contemporaries, but he deliberately proposed to 
 himself to supersede it by a new one promulgated on his 
 own authority. He undertook the part rather of a second 
 Moses than of a second David, and though he declined | 
 to take cognisance of special legal cases that were sub- 
 mitted to him, we never find him refusing to deliver 
 judgment upon a general point of law. But he went 
 still deeper, and undertook a work yet more radical than 
 that of Moses. Not only did he boldly announce that 
 the work done on Sinai was to be done over again by 
 himself, but even the earlier and primary work of the 
 Invisible King done in Ur of the Chaldees, the Call which 
 had brought the nation into existence, he declared him- 
 self commissioned to repeat. In that proclamation, “ the 
 kingdom of heaven is at hand,” we have hitherto seen only 
 a restoration of the ancient theocracy, but a closer con- 
 sideration will show us that the restoration was no mere 
 resumption of the old system at the point at which it 
 had been left off and in the original form, but a recom- 
 mencement of the whole history from the beginning; not 
 a revival of the old covenant but a new covenant, a new 
 election, a new legislation, a new community. In the early 
 time there came a voice to Abraham which said, “ Get 
 thee out of thy kindred, and from thy country, and from 
 thy father’s house, into a land of which I shall tell thee: 
 and I will make of thee a great nation, and in thee shall 
 all families of the earth be blessed.” And now there was 
 heard throughout Palestine a voice proclaiming, “ There 
 is no man that hath given up father, or mother, or house, 
 or children, or lands, for my sake and the gospel’s, but he 
 
| Christ’s Royalty 29 
 
 shall receive an hundredfold more in this present life, and 
 
 in the world to come life everlasting.” The two calls 
 Tesemble each other in sound; in substance and meaning 
 ‘they are exactly parallel. The object of both was to, 
 create a new society which should stand in a peculiar 
 Telation to God, and which should have a legislation 
 different from and higher than that which springs up in 
 secular states. And from both such a society sprang, 
 from the first the ancient Jewish theocracy, from the 
 second the Christian Church. 
 
 It is not now so hard to understand Christ’s royal 
 pretensions. He declined, it is true, to command armies, 
 or preside in law courts, but higher works such as imply 
 equal control over the wills of men, the very works for 
 which the nation chiefly hymned their Jehovah, he under- 
 took in His name to do. He undertook to be the Father 
 of an everlasting state, and the Legislator of a world- 
 wide society. 
 
 But this is not yet all. Christ was more than a new 
 Moses and a new Abraham. For completeness we must 
 here touch on a mysterious subject, of which the full 
 discussion must be reserved for another place. Since the 
 time of the Mosaic legislation a revolution had happened 
 in the minds of men, which, though it is little considered 
 
 because it happened gradually, is surely the greatest , 
 
 which the human mind has ever experienced. Man had 
 in the interval come to consider or suspect himself to be 
 tmmortal. It is surprising that the early Jews, in whom. 
 the sense of God was so strong, and who were familiar 
 with the conception of an Eternal Being, should yet have 
 been behind rather than before other nations in suspect- 
 ing the immortality of the soul. The Greek did not even 
 in the earliest times believe death to be annihilation, 
 though he thought it was fatal to all joy and vigour; but 
 the early Jews, the Legislator himself and most of the 
 Psalmists, limit their hopes and fears to the present life, 
 and compare man to the beasts that perish. How strange 
 a revolution of thought when the area of human hopes 
 and fortunes suddenly extended itself without limit! 
 Then first man must have felt himself great. Then first, 
 
30 Ecce Homo 
 
 too, human relations gained a solidity and permanence 
 which they had never before seemed to have; then- the 
 great and wise of a remote past started into life again; 
 then the remote future moved nearer and became vivid like 
 the present. This revolution had in a great measure taken 
 place before the time of Christ. The suspicion of immor- 
 tality appears in the later prophets, that suspicion which ~ 
 Christ himself was to develop into a glorious confidence. — 
 
 This extension of the term of human life had a pro-— 
 digious effect upon morality. We have spoken of Jeho-— 
 vah as legislating for the Jews. But a law is nothing | 
 unless it is enforced. Now in what way did Jehovah > 
 enforce the law He had given? In the first place by 
 commissioned judges appointed from the people and > 
 inspired by Him with the necessary wisdom. But many 
 crimes pass undetected by the judge, or his wisdom fails 
 him and the wrong person is punished, or he takes a bribe 
 and perverts justice. In these cases, then, what did 
 Jehovah do? How did He enforce His law? Did He 
 suffer the guilty man to escape, or had He other ministers 
 of justice beside the judge and the king? It was sup- 
 posed that in such cases He called in the powers of nature 
 against the transgressor, destroyed his vines with hail- 
 stones and his mulberry-trees with the frost, or aban- 
 doned his flocks and herds to the Bedouins of the desert. 
 But this theory was found to be unsatisfactory. Life is a 
 short term. The transgressor has but to tide over a few 
 years, and he is in the haven beside the just man, where 
 the God of the living cannot touch him. And the Jew, 
 watching the ways of Jehovah, could not but observe 
 that this often happened. He was troubled to see over 
 and over again prosperous villany carried to an honoured 
 grave in the fullness of years and the satiety of en- 
 joyment. Another conjecture was hazarded. It was 
 said the bad man prospers sometimes, but he has no 
 children, or at least his house soon dies out. Among 
 Jews and Gentiles alike this theory found favour for a 
 time— 
 
 ovde Te puv waides rorl yotvacr wammafovew 
 €AOdvt éx roAeuoio Kal aivns Snidrytos. 
 
Christ’s Royalty 31 
 
 But again facts were too stubborn to be resisted, and the 
 Psalmist is obliged to admit that here too the wicked 
 
 _ prosper—“ They have children at their desire, and leave 
 the rest of their substance to their babes.” 
 
 In these circumstances morality must have preserved 
 but a precarious existence. Good and evil were almost 
 /on equal terms. The good man had sacrifices to make 
 and trials to undergo, but little reward to expect. The 
 bad man had the obvious gains of his villany, without 
 any very serious danger of punishment. In these circum- 
 stances, also, the Kingship of Jehovah Himself must have 
 
 | wanted majesty. Profoundly as some Jews felt His great- 
 ness, the common feeling towards Him must have been 
 one of far less awe than that which we feel for the Al- 
 : mighty God. For He seemed to have little power either 
 | to help His friends or punish His enemies. Human life 
 being essentially short, He could but lengthen or shorten 
 : it a little. And the little power He had He seemed not 
 to use. 
 _ The Jehovah, therefore, whom Christ came to repre- 
 sent, at a time when the immortality of the soul was a 
 doctrine extensively received or favoured, was practically 
 _a much more powerful and awful King than He who had 
 spoken by Moses, and His relation to His subjects was 
 far more intimate. In the earlier time He had enforced 
 His law mainly through the civil magistrate; His other 
 judgments were exceptional and rare. But now the 
 office of the civil magistrate retreated into the back- 
 ground, and Jehovah was conceived rather as holding 
 His assize in that mysterious region which had recently 
 become visible to men on the other side of death, as a 
 : distant land becomes visible on the other side of a river 
 : or strait,—the region which a Jew might compare to the 
 Holy Land itself, the residence of Jehovah, parted from 
 the desert and the unconsecrated earth by the stream of 
 | Jordan. 
 
 When Christ, therefore, declined the office of civil 
 
 judge, it does not follow that he declined all judicial 
 functions. Of the judgments of Jehovah we see that 
 those pronounced by the magistrate formed now but a 
 
 
 
32 Ecce Homo 
 
 small part. And in declining these he took all the others, 
 
 the diviner judgments, into his own hand. We cannot 
 here delay upon this subject, but the fact appears upon 
 the surface of our biographies that Christ, however care- 
 fully abstaining from the function of the civil magistrate, 
 was yet continually engaged in passing judgment upon 
 
 men. Some he assured of the forgiveness of their sins, 
 
 upon others he pronounced a severe sentence. But in all 
 cases he did so in a style which plainly showed, so as 
 sometimes to startle by its boldness those who heard, that 
 he considered the ultimate and highest decision upon 
 men’s deeds, that decision to which all the unjustly con- 
 demned at human tribunals appeal, and which weighs 
 not the deed only, but motives, and temptations, and 
 ignorances, and all the complex conditions of the deed— 
 that he considered, in short, heaven and hell to be in his 
 hand. 
 
 We conclude, then, that Christ in describing himself 
 as a king, and at the same time as king of the Kingdom 
 of God—in other words, as a king representing the 
 Majesty of the Invisible King of a theocracy—claimed the 
 character first of Founder, next of Legislator, thirdly, in 
 a certain high and peculiar sense, of Judge, of a new 
 divine society. 
 
 ’ 
 
 + 
 

 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 CHRIST’ S CREDENTIALS 
  nceahcniiibied 
 In defining as above the Posten which Christ assumed, 
 we have not entered into controvertible matter. We 
 have not rested upon single passages, nor drawn upon the 
 fourth Gospel. To deny that Christ did undertake to 
 found and to legislate for a new theocratic society, and 
 that he did claim the office of Judge of mankind, is 
 
 _ indeed possible, but only to those who altogether deny 
 
 the credibility of the extant biographies of Christ. If 
 those biographies be admitted to be generally trust- 
 worthy, then Christ undertook to be what we have de- 
 scribed; if not, then of course this, but also every other, 
 account of him falls to the ground. 
 
 When we contemplate this scheme as a whole, and 
 glance at the execution and results of it, three things 
 strike us with astonishment. First, its prodigious origin- 
 
 ality, if the expression may be used. What other man 
 has had the courage or elevation of mind to say, “I will 
 build up a state by the mere force of my will, without 
 help from the kings of the world, without taking advan- 
 tage of any of the secondary causes which unite men 
 together—unity of interest or speech, or blood-relation- 
 ship. I will make laws for my state which shall never be 
 repealed, and I will defy all the powers of destruction 
 that are at work in the world to destroy what I build ”? 
 
 Secondly, we are astonished at the calm confidence with 
 which the scheme was carried out. The reason why 
 statesmen can seldom work on this vast scale is that it 
 commonly requires a whole lifetime to gain that ascend- 
 
  ency over their fellow-men which such schemes presup- 
 _ pose. Some of the leading organisers of the world have 
 _ said, “I will work my way to supreme power, and then I 
 
 33 Cc 
 
34 Ecce Homo 
 
 will execute great plans.” But Christ overleaped the first 
 stage altogether. He did not work his way to royalty, 
 but simply said to all men, “ Iam yourking.” He did not 
 struggle forward to a position in which he could found a 
 new state, but simply founded it. 
 
 Thirdly, we are astonished at the prodigious success of 
 the scheme. It is not more certain that Christ presented 
 himself to men as the founder, legislator, and judge of a — 
 divine society than it is certain that men have accepted j 
 him in these characters, that the divine society has been 
 founded, that it has lasted nearly two thousand years, that 
 it has extended over a large and the most highly civilised 
 portion of the earth’s surface, and that it continues full of 
 vigour at the present day. 
 
 Between the astonishing design and its astonishing suc- 
 cess there intervenes an astonishing instrumentality—that 
 of miracles. It will be thought by some that in asserting 
 miracles to have been actually wrought by Christ we go 
 beyond what the evidence, perhaps beyond what any 
 possible evidence, is able to sustain. Waiving then for 
 the present the question whether miracles were actually 
 wrought, we may state a fact which is fully capable of 
 being established by ordinary evidence, and which is ac- 
 tually established by evidence as ample as any historical 
 fact whatever—the fact, namely, that Christ professed to 
 work miracles. We may go further, and assert with confi- 
 dence that Christ was believed by his followers really to 
 work miracles, and that it was mainly on this account that 
 they conceded to him the pre-eminent dignity and autho- 
 rity which he claimed. The accounts we have of these 
 miracles may be exaggerated; it is possible that in some 
 special cases stories have been related which have no 
 foundation whatever; but, on the whole, miracles play so 
 important a part in Christ’s scheme that any theory which 
 would represent them as due entirely to the imagination 
 of his followers or of a later age destroys the credibility 
 of the documents not partially but wholly, and leaves 
 Christ a personage as mythical as Hercules. Now the 
 present treatise aims to show that the Christ of the 
 Gospels is not mythical, by showing that the character 
 

 
 
 
 Christ’s Credentials 35 
 
 those biographies portray is in all its large features strik- 
 
 _ ingly consistent, and at the same time so peculiar as to 
 
 be altogether beyond the reach of invention both by in- 
 dividual genius and still more by what is called the “ con- 
 
 sciousness of anage.” Now if the character depicted in the 
 _ Gospels is in the main real and historical, they must be 
 _ generally trustworthy, and, if so, the responsibility of 
 _ miracles is fixed on Christ. In this case the reality of 
 
 the miracles themselves depends in a great degree on the 
 
 _ opinion we form of Christ’s veracity, and this opinion must 
 
 arise gradually from the careful examination of his whole 
 
 _ life. For our present purpose, which is to investigate the 
 _ plan which Christ formed and the way in which he exe- 
 
 cuted it, it matters nothing whether the miracles were 
 
 real or imaginary; in either case, being believed to be 
 
 real, they had the same effect. Provisionally therefore 
 
 | we may speak of them as real. 
 
 Assuming then that Christ performed genuine miracles, 
 
 | we have before us the explanation of the ascendency which 
 _ he was able to exert. Yet it is important to consider in 
 
 what precise manner men were affected by this super- 
 natural power. By itself, supernatural power would not 
 have procured for Christ the kind of ascendency he wanted, 
 but exactly that ascendency which he so decidedly re- 
 jected. We have seen him in the wilderness, as it ap- 
 peared, declining an empire founded on compulsion; and, 
 if this be conjectural, at least there is no doubt that it 
 was by declining to use compulsion that he offended his 
 countrymen. Nor can we have any doubt that, his ob- 
 ject being what we have ascertained it to be, he was right 
 
 in resting as little as possible upon force. A leader of 
 
 armies, a tyrant, may want physical force and may de- 
 
 _ sire the means of crushing opposition; but a wise legislator 
 
 would desire that the citizens should receive his laws 
 
 rather because they felt the value of them than from 
 
 terror; and a judge, such as Christ professed to be, would 
 prefer to influence the conscience and arouse the sense of 
 shame rather than to work upon the fear of punishment. 
 Supernatural power was not invariably connected in the 
 
 _ minds of the ancients with God and goodness; it was 
 
36 Ecce Homo 
 supposed to be in the gift of evil spirits as well as good; 
 
 —— 
 
 it was regarded with horror in as many cases as with rever- — 
 
 ence. And, indeed, when wielded by Christ, the first 
 impression which it produced upon those who witnessed 
 it was one of alarm and distress. Men were not so much 
 disposed to admire or adore as to escape precipitately from 
 the presence of one so formidable. The Gadarenes prayed 
 Christ to depart out of their coasts. Even Peter made 
 the same petition, and that at a time when he knew too 
 much of his Master utterly to misapprehend his character 
 and purpose. 
 
 It appears, then, that these supernatural powers freely 
 used were calculated to hinder Christ’s plan almost as 
 much as to further it. The sense of being in the hands 
 of a Divine Teacher is in itself elevating and beneficial, 
 but the close proximity of an overwhelming force crushes 
 freedom and reason. Had Christ used supernatural power 
 without restraint, as his countrymen seemed to expect of 
 him and as ancient prophecy seemed to justify them in 
 expecting, when it spoke of the Messiah ruling the nations 
 with a rod of iron and breaking them in pieces like a 
 potter’s vessel, we cannot imagine that any redemption 
 would have been wrought for man. The power would 
 have neutralised instead of seconding the wisdom and 
 goodness which wielded it. So long as it was present it 
 would have fettered and frozen the faculties of those on 
 whom it worked, so that the legislation which it was used 
 to introduce would have been placed on the same footing 
 as the commands of a tyrant, and, on the other hand, as 
 soon as it was removed, the legislation and it would have 
 passed into oblivion together. 
 
 We have anticipated in a former chapter the means 
 by which Christ avoided this result. He imposed upon 
 himself a strict restraint in the use of his supernatural 
 powers. He adopted the principle that he was not sent 
 to destroy men’s lives but to save them, and rigidly 
 abstained in practice from inflicting any kind of damage 
 or harm. In this course he persevered so steadily that 
 it became generally understood. Every one knew that 
 this king, whose royal pretensions were so prominent, had 
 
4 
 
 Christ’s Credentials 37 
 
 an absolutely unlimited patience, and that he would 
 endure the keenest criticism, the bitterest and most 
 
 _ malignant personal attacks. Men’s mouths were opened 
 
 to discuss his claims and character with entire freedom; so 
 far from regarding him with that excessive fear which 
 might have prevented them from receiving his doctrine 
 
 intelligently, they learnt gradually to treat him, even 
 
 while they acknowledged his extraordinary power, with 
 
 _a reckless animosity which they would have been afraid 
 _ to show towards an ordinary enemy. With curious in- 
 
 consistency they opcnly charged him with being leagued 
 with the devil; in other words, they acknowledged that he 
 was capable of boundless mischief, and yet they were so 
 little afraid of him that they were ready to provoke him to 
 
 use his whole power against themselves. The truth was, 
 
 that they believed him to be disarmed by his own de- 
 liberate resolution, and they judged rightly. He punished 
 
 _ their malice only by verbal reproofs, and they gradually 
 
 gathered courage to attack the life of one whose miracu- 
 lous powers they did not question. 
 
 Meantime, while this magnanimous self-restraint saved 
 him from false friends and mercenary or servile flatterers, 
 and saved the kingdom he founded from the corruption 
 of self-interest and worldliness, it gave him a power over 
 the good such as nothing else could have given. For the 
 noblest and most amiable thing that can be seen is power 
 mixed with gentleness, the reposing, self-restraining atti- 
 tude of strength. These are “ the fine strains of honour,” 
 these are “ the graces of the gods ”— 
 
 To tear with thunder the wide cheeks o’ the air, 
 
 And yet to charge the sulphur with a bolt 
 
 That shall but rive an oak. 
 And while he did no mischief under any provocation, his 
 power flowed in acts of beneficence on every side. Men 
 
 could approach near to him, could eat and drink with 
 
 him, could listen to his talk, and ask him questions, and 
 they found him not accessible only, but warm-hearted, 
 and not occupied so much with his own plans that he 
 could not attend to a case of distress or mental perplexity. 
 
 ‘They found him full of sympathy and appreciation, 
 
38 Ecce Homo 
 
 dropping words of praise, ejaculations of admiration, tears. 
 He surrounded himself with those who had tasted of his 
 
 bounty, sick people whom he had cured, lepers whose — 
 
 death-in-life, demoniacs whose hell-in-life, he had termin- 
 ated with a single powerful word. Among these came 
 loving hearts who thanked him for friends and relatives 
 rescued for them out of the jaws of premature death, and 
 others whom he had saved, by a power which did not 
 seem different, from vice and degradation. 
 
 This temperance in the use of supernatural power is 
 the masterpiece of Christ. It is a moral miracle super- 
 induced upon a physical one. This repose in greatness 
 makes him surely the most sublime image ever offered 
 to the human imagination. And it is precisely this trait 
 which gave him his immense and immediate ascendency 
 over men. If the question be put—Why was Christ so 
 successful? Why did men gather round him at his call, 
 form themselves into a new society according to his wish, 
 and accept him with unbounded devotion as their legis- 
 lator and judge? some will answer, “ Because of the 
 miracles which attested his divine character”; others, 
 “ Because of the intrinsic beauty and divinity of the great 
 law of love which he propounded.” But miracles, as we 
 have seen, have not by themselves this persuasive power. 
 That a man possesses a strange power which I cannot 
 understand is no reason why I should receive his words 
 as divine oracles of truth. The powerful man is not of 
 necessity also wise; his power may terrify, but not con- 
 vince. On the other hand, the law of love, however 
 divine, was but a precept. Undoubtedly it deserved that 
 men should accept it for its intrinsic worth, but men are 
 not commonly so eager to receive the words of wise men 
 nor so unbounded in their gratitude to them. It was 
 neither for his miracles nor for the beauty of his doctrine 
 that Christ was worshipped. Nor was it for his winning 
 personal character, nor for the persecutions he endured, 
 nor for his martyrdom. It was for the inimitable unity 
 which all these things made when taken together. In 
 other words, it was for this, that he whose power and 
 greatness as shown in his miracles were overwhelming 
 
 —_ 
 

 
 Christ’s Credentials 39 
 
 denied himself the use of his power, treated it as a slight © 
 thing, walked among men as though he were one of them, 
 relieved them in distress, taught them to love each other, 
 bore with undisturbed patience a perpetual hailstorm 
 of calumny; and when his enemies grew fiercer, con- 
 tinued still to endure their attacks in silence, until, 
 petrified and bewildered with astonishment, men saw him 
 arrested and put to death with torture, refusing steadfastly 
 to use in his own behalf the power he conceived he held 
 for the benefit of others. It was the combination of 
 greatness and self-sacrifice which won their hearts, the 
 mighty powers held under a mighty control, the unspeak- 
 able condescension, the Cross of Christ. 
 
 By this, and by nothing else, the enthusiasm of a Paul 
 was kindled. The statement rests on no hypothesis or 
 conjecture; his Epistles bear testimony to it throughout. 
 The trait in Christ which filled his whole mind was his 
 condescension. The charm of that condescension lay in 
 its being voluntary. The cross of Christ, of which Paul 
 so often speaks as the only thing he found worth glorying 
 in, as that in comparison with which everything in the 
 world was as dung, was the voluntary submission to death 
 of one who had the power to escape death; this he says 
 in express words. And what Paul constantly repeats in 
 impassioned language, the other apostles echo. Christ’s 
 voluntary surrender of power is their favourite subject, 
 the humiliation implied in his whole life and crowned by 
 his death. This sacrifice, which they regard as made for 
 them, demands in their opinion to be requited by an 
 absolute devotion on their part to Christ. Beyond con- 
 troversy such was their feeling, and this feeling was the 
 ground of that obedience to Christ and acceptance of his 
 legislation which made the success of his scheme. If we 
 suppose that Christ really performed no miracles, and 
 that those which are attributed to him were the product 
 of self-deception mixed in some proportion or other with 
 imposture, then no doubt the faith of St. Paul and St. 
 John was an empty chimera, a mere misconception; but 
 it is none the less true that those apparent miracles 
 were essential to Christ’s success, and that had he not 
 
4.0 Ecce Homo 
 
 pretended to perform them, the Christian Church would 
 never have been founded, and the name of Jesus of 
 Nazareth would be known at this day only to the curious 
 in Jewish antiquities. 
 
 We have represented Christ’s abstinence from the use 
 of his supernatural power as a device by which he avoided 
 certain inconveniences which would have arisen from 
 the free use of it. It is true that had he not practised 
 this abstinence, his legislation could not have gained 
 the worthy and intelligent acceptance it did gain; and 
 by adopting this contrivance he triumphantly attained 
 the object he proposed to himself. Still it was no mere 
 measure of prudence or policy. Christ himself probably 
 never thought of it as a contrivance or device; to him 
 such self-restraint no doubt appeared simply required by 
 duty, an essential part of fidelity to the commission he 
 bore. And when we have investigated the character of - 
 Christ’s legislation, we shall find that the great self-denial 
 of his life, besides being a means of introducing his legisla- 
 tion, was the greatest of all illustrations of the spirit of 
 that legislation. The kind of life he prescribed to his 
 followers he exemplified in his own person in the most 
 striking way, by dedicating all his extraordinary powers 
 to beneficent uses only, and deliberately placing himself 
 for all purposes of hostility and self-defence on a level with 
 the weakest. 
 
 To sum up the results of this chapter. We began by 
 remarking that an astonishing plan met with an astonish- 
 ing success, and we raised the question to what instru- 
 mentality that success was due. Christ announced him- 
 self as the Founder and Legislator of a new Society, and 
 as the Supreme Judge of men. Now by what means 
 did he procure that these immense pretensions should be 
 allowed? He might have done it by sheer power; he 
 might have adopted persuasion, and pointed out the 
 merits of the scheme and of the legislation he proposed 
 to introduce. But he adopted a third plan, which had 
 the effect not merely of securing obedience, but of exciting | 
 enthusiasm and devotion. He laid men under animmense — 
 obligation. He convinced them that he was a person of 
 
Christ’s Credentials iy 
 
 altogether transcendent greatness, one who needed 
 nothing at their hands, one whom it was impossible to 
 benefit by conferring riches, or fame, or dominion upon him, 
 and that, being so great, he had devoted himself of mere 
 benevolence to their good. He showed them that for 
 their sakes he lived a hard and laborious life, and ex- 
 posed himself to the utmost malice of powerful men. 
 They saw him hungry, though they believed him able 
 to turn stones into bread; they saw his royal pretensions 
 spurned, though they believed that he could in a moment 
 take into his hand all the kingdoms of the world and the 
 glory of them; they saw his life in danger; they saw him 
 at last expire in agonies, though they believed that, had 
 he so willed it, no danger could harm him, and that had he 
 thrown himself from the topmost pinnacle of the temple 
 he would have been softly received in the arms of minister- 
 ing angels. Witnessing his sufferings, and convinced by 
 the miracles they saw him work that they were voluntarily 
 endured, men’s hearts were touched, and pity for weak- 
 ‘ness blending strangely with wondering admiration of 
 unlimited power, an agitation of gratitude, sympathy, and 
 astonishment, such as nothing else could ever excite, 
 sprang up in them, and when, turning from his deeds to 
 his words, they found this very self-denial which had guided 
 his own life prescribed as the principle which should guide 
 theirs, gratitude broke forth in joyful obedience, self- 
 denial produced self-denial, and the Law and Law-Giver 
 together were enshrined in their inmost hearts for in- 
 separable veneration. 
 
 
 
 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 CHRIST’S WINNOWING FAN 
 
 THE first step in our investigation is now taken. We 
 have considered the Christian Church in its idea, that is 
 to say, as it existed in the mind of its founder and before 
 it was realised. Our task will now become more historical 
 and will deal with the actual establishment of the new 
 Theocracy; but we shall endeavour to keep the idea 
 always in view and sedulously to avoid all such details as 
 may have the effect of obscuring it. 
 
 The founder’s plan was simply this, to renew in a form 
 adapted to the new time that divine Society of which 
 the Old Testament contains the history. The essential 
 features of that ancient Theocracy were: (1) the divine 
 Call and Election of Abraham; (2) the divine legislation 
 given to the nation through Moses; (3) the personal re- 
 lation and responsibility of every individual member of 
 the Theocracy to its invisible King. As the new Theo- 
 cracy was to be the counterpart of the old, it was to be 
 expected that these three features would be reflected in it. 
 Accordingly we have found Christ undertaking to issue a 
 Call to men such as was given to Abraham, to deliver 
 a Legislation such as Israel had received from Moses, and 
 to occupy a personal relation of Judge and Master to 
 every man such as in the earlier Theocracy had been 
 occupied by Jehovah Himself without representative. 
 
 Such was the plan. In proceeding to consider the 
 execution of it, these three essential features will afford 
 the means of a convenient arrangement, and the corre- 
 spondence of the new Theocracy to the old in respect of 
 them will afford a constant instructive illustration. Our 
 investigation divides itself from this point into three 
 parts. We shall treat in order the Call, the Legislation, 
 
 42 
 

 
 ) 
 
 
 
 Christ’s Winnowing Fan 43 
 
 and the Divine Royalty of Christ, and in proceeding now 
 
 to consider the Call we shall ask the question, In what 
 
 respect did the Call issued by Christ differ from that 
 which came to Abraham? 
 
 The Call then which the first Christians received differed 
 from that received by Abraham, in the first place, in 
 this respect, that it did not separate them from civil 
 society. Abraham was commanded to isolate himself, 
 abandoning his family and his native country. The life he 
 
 _ adopted was one which was possible in his age and country. 
 
 All external authority whatsoever he threw off; his 
 actions were controlled by no power except that invisible 
 one which had decreed his isolation. In his case the 
 problem of the connection between Church and State 
 
 _was solved in the most simple manner, namely, by the 
 abolition of the State. There was but one Society, of 
 which God was king, the patriarch being His deputy. 
 | What intercourse he occasionally had with the world 
 
 outside his own pastoral encampment was not like the 
 intercourse of ene citizen with another, but consisted 
 of formal negotiations or wars such as are transacted 
 between states. Now the early Christians, it is true, 
 compare themselves with Abraham in this respect. They 
 
 call themselves strangers and pilgrims upon the earth, 
 _ wanderers without a country for the present, but expect- 
 
 ing one on the other side of death. Applied to them, 
 however, these expressions are not literally true but meta- 
 
 | phorical, and mean only that the secular states of which 
 
 they were members did not excite their interest or their 
 patriotism so strongly as the divine Society into which 
 Christ had called them. All of them were members of 
 
 some secular state as well as of the Christian Church; a 
 complex system of obligations lay upon all of them already 
 
 when the new Christian obligations were imposed, and 
 _ their activity was confined by a multitude of prohibitions. 
 
 In this respect the Christian commonwealth was not 
 
 only unlike the camp of Abraham but unlike the ancient 
 
 theocracy at every period of its history. For the political 
 organisation of the Israelites sprang up, as it were, in 
 
 the bosom of the ecclesiastical one, and was never re- 
 
44 Ecce Homo 
 
 garded as distinct from it. The ancient Hebrew never 
 regarded himself as living under two laws, one human 
 and the other divine. To him all law alike was divine, — 
 whether it punished theft or denounced death against 
 idolatry. He believed both tables of the law to have 
 been written with the finger of God. When he went 
 before the civil tribunals it was “to enquire of God.” 
 But the Christian regarded the civil power of his time 
 as external altogether to the divine society, and though 
 he might be ready to recognise it as in some sense a 
 divine ordinance and as having a right to his obedience, 
 yet on the other hand it knew nothing of that other 
 commonwealth to which he professed to belong, had no 
 respect for its laws, and would barely tolerate its existence. 
 The divine Society had therefore to make its choice 
 between declaring open war against the secular societies 
 in the midst of which it was established, or refraining 
 from all such acts as those societies would not allow. 
 Following his principle of abstaining from force, Christ 
 adopted the latter course. Now one principal thing no 
 secular government would tolerate, namely, judicial 
 tribunals and a penal administration independent of its 
 own. We arrive therefore at the first distinguishing 
 characteristic of the Society into which Christ called men. 
 It was a Society whose rules were enforced by no punish- 
 ments. The ancient Israelite who practised idolatry was 
 stoned to death, but the Christian who sacrificed to the 
 genius of Cesar could suffer nothing but exclusion from 
 the Society, and this in times of persecution was in its 
 immediate effects of the nature rather of a reward than of 
 a punishment. At first it may seem that a society could 
 exert no strong effect upon mankind which contained no 
 power of compulsion or punishment. But we are to 
 remember what was said above of the judicial power 
 of Jehovah under the old theocracy. That judicial power 
 was exerted through the civil law courts, it is true, but 
 also in another way. Jehovah was considered as judging 
 in heaven as well as in the law court, and as punishing 
 by providential visitations and by mysterious pains in- 
 flicted on the dead as well as by the hands of the execu- 
 
Christ’s Winnowing Fan 45 
 
 _tioners of civil justice. Now in relinquishing the ordinary 
 and administrative punishments, Christ retained for his 
 Society the supernatural ones. And, so long as faith 
 
 ‘in the truth of his words continued lively among his 
 followers, the state he founded was not distinguished 
 among the states of the world by laxity of obedience in 
 
 ‘its members; rather have these supernatural terrors and 
 
 hopes, intimately blended with other motives of which 
 
 _a time will come to speak, excited in the Christian Church 
 
 a more serious and enthusiastic loyalty than any secular 
 commonwealth has known. 
 
 __ We have learnt then thus much of the nature of Christ’s 
 Call. When he went everywhere proclaiming the king- 
 dom of God and summoning men to enrol themselves as 
 
 members of it, he did not command them to abandon the 
 
 national societies in which they were already enrolled. 
 
 The Jew did not cease to be a Jew nor to yield obedience 
 
 to Jewish and Roman authority, when he became a 
 
 Christian; nor did he even cease to take an interest in 
 
 ‘national affairs. Particular Christians might do so and 
 
 ‘might merge all patriotic feelings in their devotion to the 
 
 divine Society, but Christ himself never ceased to feel 
 
 keenly as a patriot. What the Jew did on becoming a 
 
 ‘Christian was to enter into a new relation which was 
 
 additional to those relations in which he stood already. 
 
 Besides the authorities which he acknowledged before, 
 he now acknowledged the authority of Christ; the law 
 of Christ became binding upon him as well as the law of 
 his country; and besides standing in awe of the civil 
 judge and of the punishments he might inflict, he now 
 stood in awe of Christ, whom he regarded as representing 
 the supreme judicial majesty of Jehovah i in the invisible 
 world. 
 
 Such then was the nature of Christ’s Call. We go on to 
 consider who were the objects of it. Here again the Call 
 of Abraham suggests by contrast a peculiarity in that 
 uttered by Christ. In the former case one man only was 
 called, in the latter all men whatsoever. The earlier Call 
 was rigidly exclusive, the latter infinitely comprehensive. 
 
 This comprehensiveness may take us by surprise when 
 
46 Ecce Homo 
 
 we consider the Baptist’s anticipations of Christ’s work. 
 The baptism of John seems to have been absolutely com- 
 prehensive; all those who came John accepted. But 
 he said in reference to Christ, “‘ There stands one among 
 you . . . whose fam is in his hand, and he will thor- 
 oughly purge his floor, and gather ‘his wheat into the 
 garner, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable 
 fire.” It seems evident that the Baptist meant to warn 
 those whom he had baptised without distinction or con- 
 dition, that Christ’s work would be more thorough and 
 searching than his, and that he would apply a test of 
 some kind, by which the insincere would be detected and 
 separated "from the good. It was the Baptist’s belief 
 that a divine judgment was impending over the nation, 
 and he seems to predict that Christ would make a selec- 
 tion of the sounder members of the nation who would 
 then be rescued from the catastrophe, while the others 
 would be left to their fate. This prediction assuredly 
 suggests to us a course of action different from that which 
 Christ pursued. We do not at first sight discern the fan 
 in his hand. We do not find him, as we might expect, 
 discriminating the good from the bad, and honouring the 
 former only with his call, but on the contragy we find 
 him summoning all in the same words and with the same 
 urgency. Nevertheless on a closer examination it will 
 appear that Christ did perform this work of discrimina- 
 tion, and that in a very remarkable manner, and that 
 no expressions could be more strikingly just than those 
 in which the Baptist described it. 
 
 The difficulty of determining whether a man is or is 
 not good has now become a commonplace of moralists 
 and satirists. It is almost impossible to discover any test 
 which is satisfactory, and the test which is actually ap- 
 plied by society is known to be unsatisfactory in the ex- 
 treme. The good man of society is simply the man who 
 keeps to the prescribed routine of what is commonly con- 
 sidered to be duty; the bad man he who deserts it. In 
 order to arrive at this view men start from a proposition 
 which is true, but they make the mistake of assuming the 
 converse proposition to be true. It is true that the good 
 
: Christ’s Winnowing Fan 47 
 
 an does good deeds, but it is not necessarily true that 
 he who does good deeds is a good man. Selfish prudence 
 dictates a virtuous course of action almost as imperatively 
 as virtue itself; on the other hand, bad deeds may be 
 caused by bad teaching, bad example or the pressure of 
 necessity, not less than by a vicious disposition. And 
 Christ showed throughout his life a remarkably strong 
 conviction of this. He found society in Palestine in an 
 especial degree wedded to the conventional standard. 
 He found one class regarded with the most excessive 
 reverence for their minute observance of proprieties, while 
 chose who sinned fell under a pitiless excommunication. 
 But the winnowings of this social fan did not satisfy him. 
 He was persuaded that it winnowed away much that was 
 valuable, and he occupied himself with rescuing the out- 
 sasts who had been thus hastily rejected; much, on the 
 other hand, which society stored up in its garner he vehe- 
 nently pronounced to be chaff. What standard then did 
 1e substitute in the place of this conventional one which 
 1e repudiated? The society which he formed was re- 
 ruited from all classes; no one was repelled on account 
 of his past life; publicans and prostitutes were freely ad- 
 nitted into it, and men of blameless lives and bred in 
 -harisaic sanctity learned in Christ’s circle to hold inter- 
 sourse with those whose company they would earlier have 
 tvoided as contaminating. As we have seen, no one was 
 xcluded who did but choose to enter. Christ compared 
 umself to a king who kept open house and surrounded 
 us dinner-table with beggars from the highway. And 
 et in those who became members of the society, certain 
 ommon qualities might be observed, and it will be gener- 
 ly admitted that they formed on the whole the sounder 
 mart of the nation. Doubtless there were traitors and 
 mworthy members among them; Christ early remarked 
 ind illustrated by a striking allegory the impossibility of 
 erfectly sifting the seed sown in the Gospel-field. Doubt- 
 ess, also, the fan in special cases winnowed out some 
 vheat, and there remained to the end in the Pharisaic 
 arty good men that were incurably mistaken. But on 
 he whole a winnowing was accomplished; and almost 
 
 
 
48 Ecce Homo 
 
 all the genuine worth and virtue of the nation 
 gathered into the Christian Church; what remained wi 
 out was perversity and prejudice, ignorance of the tim 
 ignorance of the truth, that mass of fierce infatuati 
 which was burnt up in the flames which consumed thi 
 temple or shared the fall of the Antichrist Barcochebah. 
 
 Some discriminating influence then was clearly at wor 
 nor is it very difficult to discern its nature. Christ di 
 not go out of his way to choose his followers; the 
 itself sifted them; the Call itself was the fan he bore i 
 his hand. For, though in form the same, it was in pra 
 tical power very different from that Call which John 
 issued. Both John and Christ proclaimed the advent of 
 new divine Society, but John only proclaimed it as m 
 while Christ exhibited it as present, and laid upon ce 
 who desired to become members of it the practical obliga- 
 tions and burdens which were involved in membershi 
 To obey John’s call was easy, it involved nothing beyond 
 submission to a ceremony; and when the prophet 
 acquired a certain amount of credit, no doubt it became 
 the fashion to receive baptism from him. This being so, 
 he may well have felt that his work was but skin deep: 
 his prophetic appeals to the conscience had created a 
 mighty stir but no real conviction, no division betweer 
 the good and bad, no national repentance. Idle people 
 resorted to his preaching for a new sensation, frivolous 
 people sought excitement in his baptism. With thal 
 honest humility so characteristic of him he confessed, no 
 precisely his failure, but the essentially imperfect. anc 
 preliminary nature of his work. No Messiah, no prophe 
 am I, he said. He said, I am a voice, a cry faintly hearc 
 in the distance; I command nothing; I exact nothing 
 I do but bid you be ready. 
 
 But after Aaron the eloquent speaker, there came th 
 new Moses, the Founder and Legislator. To listen to hin 
 was no amusement for an idle hour; his preaching formes 
 no convenient resort for light-minded people. His ton 
 was not more serious than John’s, and it was somewha 
 less vehement, but it was far more imperious and exacting 
 John was contented with hearers; when he had delivere 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Christ’s Winnowing Fan 49 
 
 _ those who had listened to subside into the easy tranquillity 
 which his eloquence had disturbed while it lasted. But _ 
 Christ demanded followers, recruits for the great work he 
 ‘had in hand, settlers for the new city that was to be 
 founded, subjects for the king he announced himself to be. 
 _ Those who listened to him must be prepared to change | 
 all their prospects, and to adopt a new mode of life. The 
 new mode of life was indeed not necessarily a hard one. 
 
 Christ did not impose ascetic exercises upon his followers. 
 
 his admonitions he relaxed his hold, and it was free to 
 
 _ He was an indulgent master, and for a considerable time 
 _ those who enrolled themselves in the new Theocracy had 
 fo reason to dread any serious persecution from Jew or 
 Roman. But he forewarned them that times would 
 change in this respect, and in the meanwhile the devotion 
 of a life to a new discipline, even though not a severe one, 
 ' demands at least a certain power of self-devotion which 
 
 many do not possess; and Christ’s discipline was in fact 
 harder to human nature than it seemed, for it demanded 
 a certain moral originality and strenuousness of self-re- 
 generation which men find in the long run more burden- 
 some than the severest physical endurances and austeri- 
 ties. Clearly, therefore, Christ’s Call imposed upon men 
 the necessity of making a great resolution, of sacrificing a 
 good deal. On the other hand, what did it offer? What 
 equivalent could be expected by those who made the 
 sacrifice? Perhaps those who gathered early about the 
 Messiah might expect places and dignities in his kingdom, 
 _to sit on thrones judging the tribes of Israel. This was . 
 undoubtedly the current belief, and it may have led many 
 to attach themselves to Christ from motives purely mer- 
 cenary. But in a little time such adventurers must have 
 ‘remarked that in Christ’s language which would strike 
 them with a sudden chill. They must have felt their 
 hopes gliding away beneath their feet as they listened. 
 The sacrifices they had made were unquestionable; many 
 had left their homes and adopted a wandering life with 
 their master; they had joined a suspected sect, they were 
 partisans of an extreme movement, they had placed them- 
 selves in opposition to the orthodoxy of the country. The 
 . D 
 
 
 
 P 
 
50 Ecce Homo 
 
 risk they ran was certain, but the rewards they had ex- — 
 
 pected in the coming kingdom of the Messiah were less — 
 
 certain. It would seem to them that Christ explained” 
 
 his promises away. The royalty which he professed to — 
 
 bear himself was to vulgar apprehensions a mock royalty. 
 
 \ 
 i 
 
 ) 
 : 
 
 It had no substance of power or wealth; yet he continued ~ 
 
 to call it royalty. They would soon begin to suspect that 
 the subordinate dignities in the new kingdom were of the 
 same insubstantial character. And many of them would 
 hear with bitter disappointment, and some with furious 
 hatred, exhortations to humility, to contentment with a 
 
 lowly place, from the lips of him whom they had expected — 
 
 to make their fortunes. In this way the interested and 
 mercenary would fall off from him. The Call, which had 
 acted as a test upon some directly by requiring from them 
 an effort which they were not prepared to make, would 
 winnow away others more gradually as soon as it was 
 understood to offer no prospects which could tempt a 
 worldly mind. 
 
 In this way, without excluding any, Christ suffered the 
 unworthy to exclude themselves. He kept them aloof by 
 offering them nothing which they could find attractive. 
 And all those who found Christ’s Call attractive were such 
 as were worthy to receive it. Some made up their minds 
 without hesitation. The worldly, the preoccupied turned 
 away with peremptory contempt; a few of rare devotion 
 closed with the Call at once. But the greater number 
 were placed by it in a state of painful suspense and hesita- 
 tion which lasted a long time. First, to understand dis- 
 tinctly what it was which was proposed to them; next, 
 to make up their minds as to the character of him who 
 made such novel proposals, and advanced pretensions so 
 unbounded; all this cost them much perplexity. But 
 when so much was done, and they had decided favourably 
 to the Prophet and his Theocracy, then came the greater 
 difficulty, that of resolving to embark in an enterprise so 
 unprecedented even at the beck of one whom they ac- 
 knowledged to hold a divine commission. To break with 
 prejudice and with convention, to enter upon a great and 
 free life, is not done until some doubts have been mastered 
 
Christ’s Winnowing Fan 51 
 
 and some coward hesitations silenced. In the midst of 
 men who were in one stage or other of this mental con- 
 flict, Christ moved. His words spread around him a per- 
 petual ferment, an ever-seething effervescence. Anxious 
 broodings, waxing or waning convictions, resolutions 
 
 _ Slowly shaping themselves, a great travail of hearts, went 
 
 on about him. An appeal had been made to what was 
 noblest in each; each had been summoned to shake off 
 
 routine and convention; some were gathering strength to 
 
 accomplish the feat, some abandoning the attempt in 
 
 despair. According to the issue of the conflict each 
 
 man’s worthiness would appear. This then was the win- 
 nowing which Christ did among men. The Call itself 
 was in his hand as a fan. 
 
 Of this effect produced by his words he was fully con- 
 scious. He watched it with constant interest, and of his 
 recorded sayings a large proportion are illustrative de- 
 scriptions of the different effect of the Call upon different 
 characters. At one time he described the ferment it pro- 
 duced and its gradual diffusion through the community 
 by comparing the kingdom of heaven to leaven which a 
 woman hides in three measures of meal until the whole is 
 leavened. At another time he compares the Call (the 
 Word) to seed sown in different sorts of ground, but bear- 
 ing a prosperous crop in one sort only. To one class he 
 found it was like a treasure hidden in a field, which not 
 to lose a man sells all his property and buys the field; to 
 another class it is an invitation which they decline with 
 civil excuses. Thus it shows each man in his genuine 
 character, and, on the whole, those who accept the Call 
 and abide by it are worthy of it. Yet to this rule there 
 are a good many exceptions. When the seed has been 
 sown in the best ground, tares will spring up with the 
 wheat; thrown in, as it were, by some spiteful neighbour. 
 And when the winnowing has thus failed through mishap, 
 we must not interfere further, says Christ; he will have 
 no artificial winnowing by mere presumptuous private 
 judgment of each other. 
 
 These are specimens of Christ’s reflections upon the 
 working of his proclamation. They offer nothing which 
 
52 Ecce Homo 
 
 need surprise us. Such a winnowing of men as he accom- 
 plished is not unique in kind. Every high-minded leader 
 who gathers followers round him for any great purpose, 
 
 when he calls to self-sacrifice and has no worldly rewards 
 
 to offer, does something similar. He too in his degree 
 
 a 
 
 winnows men. And therefore in tracing the history of © 
 
 many other movements which have agitated large numbers, 
 we are often reminded of those parables of Christ that 
 begin, “The kingdom of heaven is like—.” If those 
 parables are read together, they present an almost com- 
 plete account of the ferment produced in a large and 
 various society by a great principle presented to it im- 
 pressively and practically. In all such cases each indi- 
 vidual that comes within the influence may be said to 
 pass an ordeal, and some characters come out from it 
 vindicated that before were suspected to be worthless, and 
 others are unmasked that had before imposed upon the 
 world. But now what is the quality that carries a man 
 through the ordeal? Can we find a name for it? It is, 
 no doubt, neither more nor less than moral worth or good- 
 ness; but this is no reason why a more precise name 
 should not be given to this particular aspect of goodness. 
 For, in fact, all the good qualities to which we give names, 
 as justice, temperance, courage, etc., are not so much parts 
 of goodness as aspects of it, and no man can have any one 
 of them without having in a degree all the others. What 
 then shall we call goodness when it shows itself conquering 
 convention, and unselfishly ranging itself on the right side 
 in those crises when good and evil are most visibly opposed 
 to each other? 
 
 The first Christians had manifestly occasion for such a 
 word, and one came into use which may be said to have 
 become a permanent addition to the moral vocabulary of 
 the world. This word was faith. It was not altogether 
 new; it might be found in the writings of the prophets; 
 but it had never before seemed so important or so 
 expressive of the essential worth of a man. When he 
 rejected the test of correct conduct which society uses, 
 Christ substituted the test of faith. It is to be under- 
 stood that this is not strictly a Christian virtue; itis the 
 
: virtue required of one who wishes to become a Christian. 
 _ So much a man must bring with him; without it he is 
 _ not worthy of the kingdom of God. To those who lack 
 faith Christ will not be Legislator or King. He does not, 
 indeed, dismiss them, but he suffers them to abandon a 
 _ society which soon ceases to have any attraction for them. 
 _ Such, then, is the new test, and it will be found the only 
 one which could answer Christ’s purpose of excluding 
 all hollow disciples and including all, however rude and 
 vicious, who were capable of better things. Every other 
 good quality which we may wish to make the test of a 
 man implies either too little or too much for this pur- 
 ose. 
 4 Justice is often but a form of pedantry, mercy mere 
 easiness of temper, courage a mere firmness of physical 
 constitution; but if these virtues are genuine, then they 
 ‘Indicate not goodness merely but goodness considerably 
 developed. A man may be potentially just or merciful, 
 yet from defect of training he may be actually neither. 
 We want a test which shall admit all who have it in them 
 to be good whether their good qualities be trained or no. 
 Such a test is found in faith. He who, when goodness 
 is impressively put before him, exhibits an instinctive 
 loyalty to it, starts forward to take its side, trusts himself 
 to it, such a man has faith, and the root of the matter is 
 insuchaman. He may have habits of vice, but the loyal 
 and faithful instinct in him will place him above many 
 that practise virtue. He may be rude in thought and 
 character, but he will unconsciously gravitate towards 
 what is right. Other virtues can scarcely thrive without 
 a fine natural organisation and a happy training. But 
 the most neglected and ungifted of men may make a 
 beginning with faith. Other virtues want civilisation, a 
 certain amount of knowledge, a few books; but in half- 
 brutal countenances faith will light up a glimmer of 
 nobleness. The savage, who can do little else, can 
 wonder and worship and enthusiastically obey. He who 
 cannot know what is right can know that some one else 
 knows, he who has no law may still have a master, he who 
 is incapable of justice may be capable of fidelity, he who 
 
 Christ’s Winnowing Fan 53 
 
54 Ecce Homo 
 
 understands little may have his sins forgiven because he 
 loves much. 
 
 ” 
 7 
 ’ 
 
 Let us sum up the points of difference which we have 
 
 discovered between the Old Theocracy and the New. The 
 Old Theocracy was utterly independent of all political 
 organisations. It was therefore able to create a political 
 organisation of its own. The laws of the Theocracy were 
 enforced by temporal punishments, as indeed at a time 
 when the immortality of the soul was not recognised they 
 could be enforced by no other. The NewTheocracy wasset 
 up in the midst of a political organisation highly civilised 
 andexacting. It wastherefore as completely devoid of any 
 system of temporal punishments as the Old had been devoid 
 of any other system. But, on the other hand, its members 
 believed themselves to live under the eye of a Judge whose 
 tribunal was in heaven and into whose hands they were 
 to fall at death. Again, the Old Theocracy selected a 
 single family out of the mass of mankind, while the New 
 gathered out of mankind, by a summons which though 
 absolutely comprehensive was yet not likely to be obeyed 
 but by a certain class, all such as possessed any natural 
 loyalty to goodness, enthusiasm enough to join a great 
 cause, and devotion enough to sacrifice something to it. 
 

 
 CHAPTER VII 
 CONDITIONS OF MEMBERSHIP IN CHRIST'S KINGDOM 
 
 _ THE question now arises, What was involved in obeying 
 Christ’s summons? When the crowd of faithful and 
 loyal hearts gathered round him, struck with admiration 
 of the wisdom that was so condescending and the power 
 that was so beneficent, when, without throwing off the 
 yoke of citizenship in earthly states, they accepted the 
 burdens of citizenship in the New Jerusalem, and without 
 ceasing to be amenable to Jewish and Roman judges, 
 became responsible for all their deeds and even for all 
 _ their thoughts to Christ, what was the extent of the new 
 obligation which they incurred? How did a Christian 
 differ from another man? 
 
 Ever since the Church was founded up to the present 
 time this question, What makes a man a Christian? has 
 been an all-important practical question. The answers 
 given to it in the present day differ widely with the 
 tolerance of those who give them, but they are generally 
 the same in kind. They consist in specifying certain 
 doctrines about God and Christ which a Christian must 
 needs believe. One will say, He is no Christian who does 
 not believe that the death of Christ effected a permanent 
 change in the relations between man and God. Another 
 will say, He is no Christian who does not believe in the 
 Divinity of Christ. A third will say, It is necessary to 
 believe in the Resurrection. Whether or no these beliefs, 
 any or all of them, be necessary to the character of a 
 Christian now, we may assert with absolute confidence 
 that they were not required of the first followers of 
 Christ, and further, that most of them had never occurred 
 to their minds. Nothing could suggest to them the Re- 
 surrection of Christ until he began darkly to prophesy of 
 
 55 
 
56 Ecce Homo 
 
 it to his most intimate disciples; and when he did so they — 
 listened, we are told, with bewilderment and incredulity. | { 
 So far from regarding the cross of Christ as the basis of a — 
 reconciliation between God and man, they would navel I 
 listened with horror to the suggestion that their Master — 
 was destined to such a death. The Divinity of his person 
 might indeed occur to some of those who witnessed his 
 miraculous works, but it was certainly not generally 
 received in the society, for we find Christ pronouncing a 
 solemn blessing upon Peter for being the first to arrive at 
 the conclusion that he was the Messiah. It appears, then, 
 that so long as their Master was with them the creed of 
 the first Christians was of the most unformed and ele- 
 mentary character. To the ordinary belief of their age 
 and country they added nothing except certain vague con- 
 ceptions of the greatness of the new Prophet, whom the 
 less advanced regarded as likely before long to establish 
 a new royal dynasty at Jerusalem, while others of greater 
 penetration regarded him as a new Moses and a divinely 
 commissioned reformer of the law. It is clear, then, that 
 those who consider an elaborate creed essential to the 
 Christian character must pronounce Christ’s first disciples 
 utterly unworthy to bear the name of Christians. But 
 to this such persons may answer that the first disciples 
 were indeed only Christians in a very imperfect sense, and 
 that before the Resurrection it could not be otherwise. 
 That event increased the number of dogmas which 
 Christians are required to receive; before it happened 
 their creed was necessarily meagre, but since it has hap- 
 pened a Christian is not worthy of the name if he does not 
 believe much more than any of Christ’s first followers. 
 This view is plausible and agrees at first sight with the 
 conclusions at which we have already arrived. Christ, 
 we have said, announced himself as the Founder and 
 Legislator of a new state, and summoned men before 
 him in that capacity. He did not invite them as friends, 
 nor even as pupils, but summoned them as subjects. It 
 was natural that when they first gathered round him, 
 and even for some time afterwards, they should differ 
 from other men in nothing but the loyalty which had 
 

 
 Membership in Christ’s Kingdom 57 
 led them to obey the call. They understood that they 
 
 _had been summoned in order to receive laws, but those 
 ' laws could not be promulgated all at once. In the mean- 
 
 time, while they were expecting the institutions that had 
 been promised to them, though Christians in will they 
 
 ‘could not be called Christians in the full sense of the 
 -word. Though out of them the Christian Church was to 
 
 spring, yet they might well be as unlike the Christian 
 Church as the acorn is unlike the oak, or as the crew of 
 the Mayflower was unlike the States of New England. 
 
 But after the Church had received its Founder’s laws— 
 laws which, like the Decalogue, contained not merely 
 
 practical rules of life but declarations concerning the 
 
 _ nature of God and man’s relation to Him, then Christianity 
 
 may have begun to mean no mere fidelity or loyalty to 
 
 -Christ’s person, but the practical obedience to his rules of 
 life, and the unquestioning acceptance of his theological 
 
 teaching. 
 In a sense it is true that Christianity does mean this. 
 
 Christ demanded as much and was assuredly not satisfied 
 
 with less. In the same way every state demands of its 
 citizens perfect patriotism and perfect obedience to the 
 laws. Yet perfect patriotism and obedience is scarcely 
 found in any citizen of any state; but the state, though 
 it demands so much, does not exclude the citizen who 
 renders less. It is one thing to be an imperfect citizen, 
 and another to be excluded from citizenship altogether. 
 In like manner it is one thing to be an imperfect Christian, 
 and another to be utterly unworthy of the name. And 
 it will be found on further examination that the Christian 
 Church is content with a much more imperfect obedience 
 to its law than any secular states. It does not, indeed, 
 
 _ promulgate laws without expecting them to be observed; 
 
 it constantly maintains a standard by which every 
 
 Christian is to try himself; nevertheless whereas every 
 secular state enacts and obtains from its members an 
 
 almost perfect obedience to its laws, the laws of the 
 
 Divine State are fully observed by scarcely any one, and 
 the most that can be said even of Christians that rise 
 decidedly above the average is that they do not forget 
 
58 Ecce Homo 
 
 them, and that by slow degrees they arrive at a general! 
 conformity with them. The reason of this will appear 
 when we treat in detail of Christ’s legislation. It will 
 then become clear that Christ’s legislation is of a nature 
 
 infinitely more complex in its exactions upon every in- 
 dividual than any secular code, and that accordingly a 
 
 complete observance of it is infinitely difficult. For this 
 
 reason it is a matter of universal consent among Christians 
 
 that no man is to suffer exclusion from their society for 
 
 any breach of Christ’s laws that is not of a flagrant and 
 
 outrageous kind. Though it is common to hear a man 
 
 pronounced no Christian for not believing in what is 
 
 called the Atonement, yet no such excommunication is 
 
 passed upon men in whom some very unchristian vices, 
 
 such as selfishness or reckless party-spirit, are plainly 
 
 visible. The reason of our tolerance in the latter case is 
 
 that we all acknowledge the immense difficulty of over- 
 
 coming a vice when it has become confirmed, and we 
 
 charitably give the man who has visibly not overcome 
 
 his vices credit at least for struggling against them. 
 
 This is quite right; only we ought to be just as tolerant 
 of an imperfect creed as we are of an imperfect practice. . 
 Everything which can be urged in excuse for the latter 
 may also be pleaded for the former. If the way to 
 Christian action is beset by corrupt habits and mislead- 
 ing passions, the path to Christian truth is overgrown with 
 prejudices and strewn with fallen theories and rotting 
 systems which hide it from our view. It is quite as hard 
 to think rightly as it is to act rightly, or even to feel 
 rightly. And as all allow that an error is a less culpable 
 thing than a crime or a vicious passion, it is monstrous 
 that it should be more severely punished; it is monstrous 
 that Christ who was called the friend of publicans and 
 sinners, should be represented as the pitiless enemy of 
 bewildered seekers of truth. How could men have been 
 guilty of such an inconsistency? By speaking of what 
 they do not understand. Men, in general, do not under- 
 stand or appreciate the difficulty of finding truth. All 
 men must act, and therefore all men learn in some degree 
 how difficult it is to act rightly. The consequence is that 
 
| 
 
 _ Membership in Christ’s Kingdom 59 
 
 all men can make excuse for those who fail to act rightly. 
 But all men are not compelled to make an independent 
 search for truth, and those who voluntarily undertake to 
 do so are always few. They ought, indeed, to find pity 
 and charity when they fail, for their undertaking is full 
 of hazard, and in the course of it they are too apt to 
 leave friends and companions behind them, and when 
 they succeed they bring back glorious spoils for those 
 who remained at home criticising them. But they cannot 
 expect such charity, for the hazards and difficulties of 
 the undertaking are known to themselves alone. To the 
 world at large it seems quite‘easy to find truth and inex- 
 cusable to miss it. And no wonder! For by finding 
 truth they mean only learning by rote the maxims current 
 around them. 
 
 _ Present to an ordinary man the\ maxim, “ Love your 
 enemies ”; you may hear him sigh as he answers that the 
 saying is divine, but he fears he shall never practise it. 
 The reason is that he has an enemy and fully understands 
 what it is to love him, and also what it is to hate him. 
 Present to the same man the saying, “The Word was 
 made flesh,” and what will he answer? If he answered 
 the truth he would say that he did not understand it; 
 but he would not be quite an ordinary man if he could 
 recognise his own ignorance so plainly. He will answer 
 that he believes it, by which he means that as the words 
 make no impression whatever upon his mind, so they 
 excite no opposition in it. Present the same two texts to 
 a thinker. It is not impossible that the first may seem 
 to him no hard saying; he may have no enemies, or his 
 thoughtful habits may have brought his passions under 
 control. But the second will overwhelm him with diffi- 
 culty. For he knows what it asserts; he may have been 
 accustomed to regard the Adyos as the technicality of 
 an extinct philosophy, and may be staggered to find it 
 thus imported into history and made the groundwork of 
 what aspires to be a permanent theology. It is at this 
 point, then, that the thinker will sigh, and you will hear 
 him murmur that it is a great saying, but he fears he 
 shall never believe it. 
 
60 Ecce Homo ] 
 
 Thus Christian belief is fully as hard a thing as Christian 
 practice. It is intrinsically as hard, and those who do 
 not perceive the difficulty of it understand it just so 
 much less than those who do. Christ’s first followers, as 
 we have seen, were far from possessing the full Christian 
 belief. Not till long after his departure did they arrive 
 at those conclusions which are now regarded as consti- 
 tuting Christian theology. In their position, we have 
 admitted, this was almost inevitable. The great events 
 upon which that theology rests, had either not happened, 
 or not been maturely considered. These difficulties have 
 been removed; but have not other difficulties taken theiz 
 place? Two may be mentioned which beset the modern 
 enquirer into Christianity, and often make his theology 
 as imperfect and confused as that of the crowd of disciples 
 who gathered round Christ. 
 
 yt To the first Christians the capital facts of Christ’s life 
 were future and therefore obscure; to the moderns they 
 gather an almost equal obscurity from being long past. 
 The immensity of distance from which we contemplate 
 them raises many obstacles to belief. Before the theology 
 can be inferred from the facts they must be well authen- 
 ticated. Those who witnessed them or talked with those 
 who had witnessed them were relieved from all trouble 
 on this head. But in these days many fail in the pre- 
 liminary undertaking. Complicated questions of evi- 
 dence perplex them: they are assailed with doubts of the 
 possibility of transmitting from age to age a trustworthy 
 account of any long series of incidents, especially a series 
 including miracles. Suppose this difficulty surmounted, 
 still the same remoteness of the life of Christ creates much 
 difficulty in ascertaining the meaning of the words he 
 used, and the exact nature of the doctrines he taught. 
 For those words and those doctrines have been subjected 
 to the ingenuity of many generations of commentators. 
 Spoken originally to men of the ancient world, they have 
 received a succession of medieval and modern glosses, 
 and if we put these aside and study the text for ourselves, 
 our own training, the education and habits of the nine- 
 teenth century, disqualify us in a considerable degree for 
 
 “4 
 
| Membership in Christ’s Kingdom 61 
 
 entering into its meaning. Only a well-trained historical 
 imagination, active and yet calm, is competent so to 
 revive the circumstances of place and time in which 
 the words were delivered as to draw from them, at a 
 distance of eighteen hundred years, a meaning toler- 
 ably like that which they conveyed to those who heard 
 them. 
 
 2. Christ’s first followers had a sympathy with him, 
 and his mode of teaching had an adaptation to them, 
 which arose from the fact of the Master and disciples being 
 contemporaries and fellow-countrymen. It is common to 
 say of political constitutions that they must grow and can- 
 not be made. Now the constitution which Christ gave to 
 mankind has been found capable of being transplanted 
 into almost every soil, but, notwithstanding, it is native 
 to Palestine, and must have been embraced by those to 
 whom it was first given with an ease and readiness which 
 the Western nations cannot emulate. Christ’s constitu- 
 tion was not a new invention, but a crowning development 
 of that which had existed in Palestine since the race of 
 Israel had lived there. For centuries the Jews had been 
 accustomed to receive truth by authoritative proclamation 
 from the mouth of a prophet. How the truth came to the 
 prophet he himself knew not; the only account he could 
 give of the matter was that it was put into his mouth by 
 the Invisible King of the Theocracy, and that he knew it to 
 be truth. And those who listened put the proclamation 
 to no rigid test. They watched the prophet to see if he 
 were honest, and if his proclamation shook their hearts 
 and stirred their blood and seemed to bring them into the 
 presence of the Invisible King, they then felt sure of its 
 truth and safe in following it. Now of these prophets 
 Christ was distinctly one, the greatest of all. He had the 
 same intuitive certainty, for which he gave no reason, yet 
 which no one could attribute to mere self-confidence, the 
 same tone of unbounded authority assumed in the name 
 of God, the same power of subduing the heart and arousing 
 the conscience. Therefore those who heard him found 
 something familiar in his style. It reminded them of all 
 that they were most accustomed to venerate, of Moses, 
 
 ii 
 Ds. 
 
62 Ecce Homo 
 
 Isaiah, Ezra, and they seemed to fall into their natural 
 places when they sat at his feet and treasured up his 
 words as oracles of truth. | 
 
 Now this mode of communicating and receiving truth 
 is not indeed repugnant to the Western nations. From 
 the time of Pythagoras and Heraclitus to the time of 
 Carlyle and Mazzini, men have arisen at intervals in the 
 West who have seemed to themselves to discover truth, 
 not so much by a process of reasoning as by an intense 
 gaze, and who have announced their conclusions in the 
 voice of a herald, using the name of God and giving no 
 reason. And in the Western world these men have 
 always met with a certain acceptance; they have generally 
 succeeded in gathering round them followers of respect- 
 able character and understanding; and so fully is the 
 possibility of such a prophetic discovery of truth recog- 
 nised, that the Jewish prophets themselves have been 
 received throughout the West with profound veneration. 
 Still the respect for authority in knowledge is far less in 
 the West than in the East. This is plain when we con- 
 sider that the Jewish prophets seem to have been accepted 
 by the whole nation, and that when thus accepted it 
 was considered presumption to deny anything that 
 they said. On the other hand, no one in the West ever 
 reaches such an eminence as to have no detractors, 
 and we are all bold enough to doubt what is said even by 
 those whom we reverence most. The reason of this is 
 that in the West a method has been laid down which places 
 the gifted man and the ungifted in some degree on a 
 level. It is still, no doubt, the gifted man in general who 
 discovers truth, but when the discovery is made the 
 ungifted man can test it and judge of it. Whereas it 
 would appear that where the processes of thought have 
 never been analysed and reduced to method, there is no 
 means of discovering the error of a gifted man, except 
 through the emphatic contradiction of one who has won 
 the reputation of being more gifted. 
 
 It follows from this that when Christian theology passed 
 into the Gentile world, when it diffused itself from the Mo- 
 saic East into the Socratic West, it must have encountered 
 
Membership in Christ’s Kingdom 63 
 
 a new difficulty. The Jew who listened to Christ had been 
 educated to rest in authority. He had believed in all 
 that Moses had taught, in all that Isaiah had taught, and 
 as soon as he was convinced that Christ was greater than 
 Moses and Isaiah, he submitted with the same deference 
 to his authority, and accepted all that Christ nae 
 When the life of Christ was put before the Greek, 
 affected him to a certain extent as it had done the ce 
 He was seized with admiration and reverence. He re- 
 zarded him as a divine man, and placed him first by the 
 side of Orpheus and Pythagoras, and in the end above 
 90th. But this veneration did not imply the same abso- 
 ute devotion of the intellect which it had invoked in the 
 sase of the Jew. For the Greek had other methods of 
 uriving at truth besides imbibing it directly from the lips 
 yf wise men. He had a logic in which he had great con- 
 idence, and which had already led him to certain definite 
 onclusions. If these conclusions should be at war with 
 hose authoritatively announced by Christ? Here was a 
 lifficulty at the very beginning, and in the course of time 
 his difficulty has increased. The scientific methods laid 
 jown at first in Greece have been improved, and applied 
 with such success that their credit is greatly risen. Men 
 may still be disposed to believe in Christ’s infallible wis- 
 Jom, but their minds are now accustomed to work with 
 great freedom upon all subjects, to have more respect for 
 easoning than for authority, and almost to deny know- 
 edge to be knowledge when it rests only upon hearsay, 
 ind is not verified to the mind itself by demonstration, 
 yr at least probable evidence. Accustomed to test and 
 veigh everything, and trained in the practice of suspend- 
 ng the judgment, they become not so much unwilling as 
 ositively unable to receive a proposition merely because 
 t is authoritatively delivered. 
 
 Such are some of the difficulties of Christian belief. 
 We conclude that though it is always easy for thoughtless 
 nen to be orthodox, yet to grasp with any strong prac- 
 ical apprehension the theology of Christ is a thing as 
 yard as to practise his moral law. Yet if he meant 
 inything by his constant denunciation of hypocrites, there 
 
64 Ecce Homo 
 
 is nothing which he would have visited with stern 
 censure than that short cut to belief which many perso 
 take when, overwhelmed with the difficulties which bese’ 
 their minds, and afraid of damnation, they suddenl 
 resolve to strive no longer, but, giving their minds 
 holiday, to rest content with saying that they believe an 
 acting as if they did. A melancholy end of Christianity 
 indeed! Can there be such a disfranchised pauper clas 
 among the citizens of the New Jerusalem? , 
 But when it is once acknowledged that to attain a full 
 and firm belief in Christ’s theology is hard, then it follows 
 at once that a man may be a Christian without it. It 
 has been shown that the first of all requirements made 
 from the earliest Christians was faith, a loyal and free 
 confidence in Christ. This was what made the difference 
 between them and the careless crowd or the hostile 
 Pharisee—that to them Christ was a beloved Master and 
 friend. But this faith, if they had it but as a grain of 
 mustard-seed, must have assured them that it was not in 
 his character to exact of them what it was beyond their 
 power to render, and to expect them at once to grasp 
 truths which it might well take them all their lives to 
 learn. And did he as a matter of fact do so? Do we 
 find him frequently examining his followers in their creed, 
 and rejecting one as a sceptic and another as an infidel? 
 Sceptics they were all, so long as he was among them, a 
 society of doubters, attaining to faith only at intervals 
 and then falling back again into uncertainty. And from 
 their Master they received reproofs for this, but reproofs 
 tenderly expressed, not dry threats nor cold dismission. 
 Assuredly those who represent Christ as presenting to man 
 an abstruse theology, and saying to them peremptorily, 
 “ Believe or be damned,” have the coarsest conception of 
 the Saviour of the world. He will reject, he tells us, 
 those who refuse to clothe the naked or tend the sick, 
 those whose lamps have gone out, those who have buried 
 their talents, not those whose minds are poorly furnished 
 with theological knowledge. Incredulity and uncertainty, 
 as long as it seemed honest, he always treated with kind 
 consideration; and so disposed was he to the largest 
 
' Membership in Christ’s Kingdom 65 
 
 tolerance that on one occasion he refused to condemn one 
 who, showing some respect for his character, yet dis- 
 obeyed his first and most peremptory law—namely, that 
 which commanded all persons to follow and attach them- 
 selves to him. And on this occasion he uttered words 
 which breathe that contempt for forms and that respect 
 for what is substantial which is the unfailing mark of a 
 commanding spirit—‘“ he that is not against us is on our 
 part.” 
 
 _ To what conclusion, then, are we led by these reflections 
 upon the question of this chapter—the question, namely, 
 what was involved in accepting Christ’s call. Those 
 who gathered round him did in the first place contract 
 an obligation of personal loyalty to him. On the ground 
 of this loyalty he proceeded to form them into a society, 
 and to promulgate an elaborate legislation, compris- 
 ing and intimately connected with certain declarations, 
 authoritatively delivered, concerning the nature of God, 
 the relation of man to him, and the invisible world. In 
 doing so he assumed the part of a Moses. Now the legis- 
 lation of Moses had been absolutely binding upon the 
 whole community. Disobedience to his laws had been 
 punished by the civil judge, and so had every act which 
 implied a conception of the Divine Nature different from 
 that which he had prescribed. The new Moses, we have 
 seen, had no civil judges to enforce his legislation, but he 
 represented his unfaithful servants as being liable to - 
 srosecution before the tribunals of the invisible world. 
 He described those tribunals as passing capital sentences 
 Ipon some criminals, and dismissing them, as he ex- 
 gressed it, into “ the outer darkness ”—that is, beyond the 
 Jomeerium of that sacred city which is lighted by the- 
 slory of God. These are the traitors to the Theocracy 
 who have broken its essential obligations. Who then are 
 hey? And what are these essential obligations? 
 
 Under the Mosaic law, as under all secular codes, 
 ertain definite acts were regarded as unpardonable. 
 loses punished the dishonouring of parents and idolatry 
 vith death, i.e. absolute exclusion. Now in this respect 
 he new Moses is infinitely more tolerant. There are no 
 
 E 
 
66  Fece Hoa 
 
 specific acts which are unpardonable to the Christian. N: 
 amount of disobedience which can be named, no amoun 
 of disbelief or ignorance of doctrine, is sufficient to de- 
 prive a man of the name of Christian. For it is held in 
 the Christian Church that the man most stained with 
 crime, and even most unsuccessful in breaking himself of 
 criminal habits, and in the same manner the man who 
 speculative notions are most erroneous OF despairing, - 
 may yet possess that rudiment of goodness which Christ 
 called faith. But, on another side, the new Moses is 
 infinitely more exacting than the old. For the most 
 blameless observance of the whole law is not enough to 
 save the Christian from exclusion, unless it has actuall 
 sprung from genuine goodness. It may spring from 
 natural caution or long-sighted selfishness, and in th 
 heart of the strict moralist there may be no spark of 
 faith. For such a moralist Christ has no mercy. And 
 so it became a maxim in the Christian Church that faith 
 justifies a man without the deeds of the law. ’ 
 Faith was described above as no proper Christian 
 virtue, but as that which was required of a man before he 
 became a Christian. This virtue was to be taken by 
 Christ and trained by his legislation and theology into 
 something far riper and higher. But if the trainin 
 should through untoward circumstances almost entirely 
 fail, and faith remain a scarcely developed principle, 
 
 bearing fruit but seldom and fitfully in action—never 1s 
 inconceivable—still in the Christian view it is life to the 
 soul, and the faithful soul, however undeveloped, is at 
 home within the illuminated circle, and not in the outel 
 
 darkness. 
 
: CHAPTER VIII 
 BAPTISM 
 
 WE have before us the new Moses surrounded by those 
 who are waiting to receive from his lips the institutions 
 of a new Theocracy. They have been gathered out of 
 the nation; they form the elect part of it. But no con- 
 ‘straint has been used in enlisting some and rejecting 
 others. Those are here in whose hearts there is some. 
 thing which answers to such a trumpet-call as that which 
 John and Christ had caused to resound through the land. 
 Those whose lives are sunk in routine, and no longer 
 capable of aspiring or willing or believing, are not here. 
 But among the followers of the Legislator there is but 
 one common quality. All, except a very few adven- 
 turers who have joined him under a mistake and will 
 Soon withdraw, have some degree of what he calls faith. 
 All look up to him, trust in him, are prepared to obey 
 him and to sacrifice something for him. He requires no 
 more. This is a valid title to citizenship in the Theo- 
 cracy. But in habits and character they differ as much 
 as the individuals in any other crowd. Some are sunk 
 
 vice, others lead blameless lives; some have cultivated 
 
 inds, others are rude peasants; some offer to Jehovah 
 prayers conceived in the style of Hebrew psalmists and 
 rophets, others worship some monstrous idol of the 
 terrified imagination or passionless abstraction of philo- 
 sophy. It is the object of the society into which this 
 motley crowd are now gathered gradually to elevate each 
 member of it, to cure him of vice, to soften his rudeness, 
 io deliver him from the dominion of superstitious fears or 
 ntellectual conceits. But this is the point towards which 
 he society tends, not that with which it begins. The 
 arogress of each citizen towards this perfection will bear 
 . 67 
 
 
 
68 Ecce Homo 
 
 proportion to his natural organisation, to the force with 
 which the influences of the society are brought to bear 
 
 pelling power, the indispensable condition of progress, is 
 the personal relation of loyal vassalage of the citizen to 
 the Prince of the Theocracy. 
 
 The test of this loyalty lay, as we have seen, in the 
 mere fact that a man was prepared to attach himself to 
 Christ’s person and obey his commands, though by doing 
 so some risk and some sacrifice was incurred. Christ, 
 however, did not retain everyone who accepted the Call 
 about his person; some he dismissed to their homes, 
 laying upon them no burdensome commands. It was 
 necessary therefore that some mark should be devised by 
 which the follower of Christ might be distinguished, and 
 by consenting to bear which he might give proof of his 
 loyalty. Some initiatory rite was necessary, some public 
 formality, in which the new volunteer might take, as it 
 were, the military oath and confess his chief before men. 
 If such a ceremony could be devised, which should at the 
 same time indicate that the new votary had taken upon 
 himself not merely a new service but an entirely new 
 mode of life, it would be so much the better. Now there 
 was already in use among the Jews the rite of baptism. 
 It was undergone by those who became proselytes to 
 Judaism. Such proselytes signified by submitting to it 
 that they passed out of their secular life into the dedicated 
 life of citizens in a Theocracy. The water in which they 
 were bathed washed away from them the whole un- 
 hallowed and unprofitable past; they rose out of it nev 
 men into a new world, and felt as though death wer 
 behind them and they had been born again into a highe 
 state. No ceremony could be better adapted to Christ’ 
 purpose than this. It was already in use, and had ac 
 quired a meaning and associations which were univer 
 sally understood. By calling upon all alike, Jews as wel 
 as Gentiles, to submit to it, Christ would intimate that h 
 did not merely revive the old Theocracy but instituted | 
 
 
 
Baptism 69 
 
 ew one, so that the children of Abraham themselves, 
 ‘members of a theocracy from their birth, had a past to 
 wash away and a new life to begin, not less than the un- 
 ‘sanctified Gentile. And at the same time, being publicly 
 performed, it would serve as well as any other rite to test 
 the loyalty of the new recruit and his readiness to be 
 known by his Master’s name. 
 
 This ceremony, then, Christ adopted, and he made it 
 absolutely binding upon all his followers to submit to it. 
 In the fourth Gospel there is a story which illustrates in 
 
 the most striking manner the importance which Christ 
 attached to baptism. A man of advanced years and 
 influential position, named Nicodemus, visited Christ, we 
 are told, in secret, and entered into conversation with 
 him. He began by an explicit avowal of belief in Christ’s 
 divine mission. What he would have gone on to say we 
 May conjecture from these two facts, namely, that he 
 believed in Christ, and that nevertheless he visited him 
 secretly. It appears that he hoped to comply with Christ’s 
 demand of personal homage and submission, but to be ex- 
 cused from making a public avowal of it. And when we 
 consider the high position of Nicodemus, it is natural to 
 suppose that he hoped to receive such a special exemption 
 in consideration of the services he had it in his power to 
 render. He could push the movement among the influen- 
 tial classes; he could cautiously dispose the Pharisaic 
 sect to a coalition with Christ on the ground of their 
 common national and theocratic feeling; he might be- 
 come a useful friend in the metropolis, and might fight 
 against the prejudice which a provincial and Galilean 
 party could not but excite. These advantages Christ 
 would secure by allowing Nicodemus to become a secret 
 member of his Theocracy, and by excusing him, until a 
 better opportunity should present itself, from publicly 
 undergoing the rite of baptism. On the other hand, by 
 insisting upon this he would at once destroy all the in- 
 fluence of Nicodemus with the authorities of Jerusalem, 
 and with it all his power of becoming a nursing-father 
 to the infant Church. When we consider the great con- 
 tempt which Christ constantly expressed for forms and 
 
70 - Ecce Homo 
 
 ceremonies, and in particular for those “ washings ” which 
 were usual among the Pharisees, we are prepared to find 
 him readily acceding to the request of Nicodemus. In- 
 stead of which he shut the petitioner’s mouth by an abrupt 
 declaration that there was no way into the Theocracy 
 but through baptism. The kingdom of God, he insisted, 
 though it had no locality and no separation from the 
 secular states of mankind, though it had no law-courts, no 
 lictors and no fasces, was yet a true state. Men were not 
 to make a light thing of entering it, to give their names 
 to the Founder at a secret interview, and immediately re- 
 turn to their accustomed places of resort and take up the 
 routine of secular life where it had been left. Those who 
 would enrol themselves among the citizens of it were to 
 understand that they began their life anew, as truly as if 
 they had been born again. And lest the Divine Society, 
 in its contempt for material boundaries and for the dis- 
 tinctness which is given by unity of place, should lose its 
 distinctness altogether and degenerate into a theory or a 
 sentiment or a devout imagination, the initiatory rite of 
 baptism, with its publicity and formality, was pronounced 
 as indispensable to membership as that spiritual inspira- 
 tion which is membership itself. ; 
 
 Baptism being thus indispensable, we maybe surprised 
 to find it so seldom mentioned in the accounts of Christ’s 
 life. We do not read, for example, of the baptism of his 
 principal disciples. But it is to be remembered that the 
 rite of baptism, though used by Christ, was not introduced 
 by him, and that he recognised the Theocracy as having 
 begun to exist in a rudimentary form before his own 
 public appearance. The work of John was merged in that 
 of Christ as a river in the sea, but Christ regards those who 
 had received John’s baptism as being already members of 
 the Theocracy. Since the time of John, he says, the king- 
 dom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it 
 by force. Now Christ’s first followers were likely to be 
 drawn from John’s circle; partly because John himself 
 directed his followers to Christ, partly because those who 
 were affected by the eloquence of the one prophet were 
 naturally formed to fall under the influence of the other. 
 
: Baptism as 
 
 : That the fact actually was so is attested by our biographies, 
 which distinctly speak of Christ as finding his earliest 
 disciples in the neighbourhood and among the followers 
 of the Baptist. This being the case, we may presume that 
 the bulk of the first Christians received baptism from John, 
 and found themselves already enrolled in a Society, the 
 _ objects of which neither they nor perhaps the Baptist him- 
 _ self clearly understood, before they had ever seen the face 
 of Christ. The Acts of the Apostles affords many proofs 
 that the first Christians regarded John’s disciples as 
 members of the Church, but imperfectly instructed. 
 
 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 REFLECTIONS ON THE NATURE OF CHRIST'S SOCIETY 
 
 Or the three parts into which our investigation is divided, 
 Christ’s Call, his Legislation, and his Divine Royalty or 
 relation to Jehovah, the first is now completed. We have 
 considered the nature of the Call, its difference from that 
 which was given to Abraham, the means which were 
 taken to procure a body of men such as might suitably 
 form the foundation of a new and unique Commonwealth, 
 and the nature of the obligations they incurred in accept- 
 ing the Call: év pév 768 75y TGv tTpiov Tarauoparwr. 
 
 But before we proceed to consider Christ’s Legislation, 
 it will be well to linger awhile and reflect on what we 
 have learnt. Having ascertained so far what Christ 
 undertook to do and did, it will be well to compare it 
 with other similar schemes and to form some opinion upon 
 the success it was likely to meet with. e 
 
 Let us ask ourselves what-was the ultimate objeet of 
 Christ’s scheme. * When the Divine Society was estab-. 
 lished and organised, what did he expect it to accom- 
 ,plish? To the question we may suppose he would have 
 
 . lanswered, ‘The object of the Divine Society is that God’s 
 will may be done on earth as it is done in heaven, In the 
 language of our own day, its object was the improvement 
 of morality. Now this is no strange or unusual object. 
 Many schemes have been proposed for curing human 
 nature of its vices and helping it to right thought and 
 right action. We have now before us the outline of 
 Christ’s scheme, and are in a condition to compare it 
 with some others that have had the same object, and by 
 so doing to discover in what its peculiarity consists. 
 Now there is one large class of such schemes with which 
 mankind have occupied themselves diligently for many 
 
 72 : 
 
 taietd* atutr do, 
 
Nature of Christ’s Society 73 
 
 centuries, and which for the purpose of comparison with 
 Christianity may be treated as a single scheme. Ever 
 since the time of Socrates philosophy has occupied itself 
 with the same problem; it has been one of the principal 
 ‘boasts of philosophy that it teaches virtue and weeds 
 vice out of the mind. At the present day those who re- 
 ject Christianity commonly represent that in advanced 
 civilisation it gives place naturally to moral philosophy. 
 Their belief is that the true and only method of making 
 men good is by philosophy; and that the good influence 
 of Christianity in past ages has been due to the truths of 
 moral philosophy which are blended in it with supersti- 
 tions which the world in its progress is leaving behind. 
 
 Of course there have been a multitude of systems of 
 moral philosophy, which have differed from each other 
 in a considerable degree, but they have all resembled 
 each other in being philosophy. For the present purpose 
 their differences are not important; the important thing 
 is that there have been two conspicuous attempts to 
 improve mankind morally—the one by moral philosophy, 
 the other by means of the Christian Church. Now, as 
 nothing assists conception so much as comparison, and it 
 is hardly possible to understand anything properly with- 
 out putting it by the side of something else, we may 
 expect to gain some insight into Christ’s method of curing 
 human nature by comparing it with tat of the philo- 
 sophers. 
 
 At the first glance the two methods may seem to bear 
 a strong resemblance, and we may suspect that the differ- 
 ence between them is superficial, and not more than is 
 Teadily accounted for by the difference between manners 
 and modes of thought in Greece and Palestine. It may 
 seem to us that Socrates and Christ were in fact occupied 
 in the same way; certainly both lived in the midst of 
 admiring disciples, whose minds and characters were 
 formed by their words; both discussed moral questions, 
 the one with methodical reasoning as a Greek addressing 
 Greeks, the other with the authoritative tone and earnest- 
 ness of a Jew. There may seem here at first sight a sub- 
 Stantial resemblance and a superficial difference. But if 
 
 Se 
 ’ 
 
 
 
 
 
74 Ecce Homo 
 
 we make a more careful comparison, we shall find tha 
 
 precisely the contrary is true, and that the difference is 
 really radical, while the resemblance is accidental, It is 
 true that Socrates, like Christ, formed a sort of society, 
 and that the successors of Socrates formed societies, which 
 lasted several centuries, the Academy, the Porch, the 
 Garden. But these philosophical societies merely existed 
 for convenience) No necessary tie bound the members 
 of them together, As the teacher had but one tongue 
 and but one lifetime, it was obviously better that he 
 should take his pupils in large numbers, or, as it were, in 
 classes, rather than teach every individual separately, and 
 therefore before the invention of the printing-press a philo- 
 sopher usually gathered a society round him. Doubt- 
 less, when this had been done, a certain esprit de corps 
 sprang up among such societies, and they did, in special 
 cases, approximate in some degree to churches. But that 
 this was accidental, and not in the original design, appears 
 from the fact that since the great diffusion of books, 
 philosophers have almost ceased to form societies, and 
 content themselves, for the most part, with producing 
 conviction in the minds of isolated students by published 
 writings. If Socrates were to appear at the present day 
 he would hardly bear that resemblance to Christ which 
 he bore at Athens. He would form no society. 
 
 Now it was not from accident or for convenience that 
 Christ formed a society. Nor were his followers merely 
 united by the common desire to hear him speak, and 
 afterwards by the friendly feelings that grew out of in- 
 timacy. We have seen already, and shall see yet more 
 clearly in the sequel, that to organise a society, and to 
 bind the members of it together by the closest ties, were 
 the business of his life. For this reason it was that he 
 called men away from their homes, imposed upon some 
 a wandering life, upon others the sacrifice of their pro- 
 perty, and endeavoured by all means to divorce them 
 from their former connection in order that they might 
 find a new home in the Church. For this reason he in- 
 _ stituted a solemn initiation, and for this reason refused 
 absolutely to give to anyone a dispensation from it. For 
 
: Nature of Christ's Society a5 
 
 ‘this reason too, as we shall see, he established a common 
 feast, which was through all ages to remind Christians 
 of their indissoluble union. Thus although the term 
 disciples or learners is applied in our biographies to the 
 followers of Christ, yet we should not suffer this phrase 
 ‘to remind us of a philosophical school. Learners they 
 might be, but they loved better to speak of themselves as 
 ‘subjects or even “slaves” of Jesus Christ, and to each 
 other he exhorted them to be as brothers. 
 
 _ Thus the resemblance between Christ and the ancient 
 philosophers vanishes on examination. He was the 
 founder of a society to which for a time he found it useful 
 to give instruction; they gave instruction to pupils who 
 found it convenient to form themselves into a society for 
 the sake of receiving it. Hence it was that while they 
 ‘assumed a name derived from the wisdom they possessed 
 and communicated, and were called philosophers, he 
 took his title from the community he founded and ruled, 
 and called himself King. But as the obvious resem- 
 blance between Christ and such a philosopher as Socrates 
 vanishes on examination, so we shall find that the obvious 
 difference between them —namely, that the one used 
 Teasoning and the other authority—appears upon exam-_| 
 ination to be radical and fundamental. It was the 
 perpetual object of Socrates as much as possible to sink 
 his own personality. He wished his arguments to have 
 all the weight they might deserve, and his authority 
 to count for nothing. Those who have considered the 
 meaning of his famous irony know that it was not by any 
 means what such a writer as Cicero supposes, a humorous 
 device to make his conversation more racy and the con- 
 futation of his adversaries more unexpected and decisive. 
 
 He professed to know nothing because he wished to exalt 
 his method at his own expense. He wanted to give men 
 not truths but a power of arriving at truths, and therefore 
 what he found it most necessary to avoid was the tendency 
 of his hearers to adopt his conclusions out of mere ad- 
 miration for his wisdom and love for his person rather 
 than rational conviction. By his determined and con- 
 sistent abstinence from all dogmatic assertion he gradually 
 
76 Ecce Homo 
 trained men to believe in a method which, if only 
 
 fully used, discovered truth or verified it as surely, within 
 certain limitations, in the hands of an ordinary man as in 
 those of a sage. Deservedly he gained the greatest per- 
 sonal admiration, but his highest claim to it was the 
 trouble he took to avoid it, and the tenacity with which 
 he laboured to set the tranquil and methodical operations 
 of the intellect in the search of truth above the blind 
 impulses of feeling and personal admiration. 
 
 Now in all this we find Christ at the very opposite 
 extreme. As with Socrates argument is everything and 
 personal authority nothing, so with Christ personal 
 authority is all in all and argument altogether unemployed. 
 As Socrates is never tired of depreciating himself and 
 dissembling his own superiority to those with whom he 
 ¥. converses, so Christ perpetually and consistently exalts 
 himself. As Socrates firmly denies what all admit, and 
 explains away what the oracle had announced, viz. his 
 own superior wisdom, so Christ steadfastly asserts what 
 many were not prepared to admit, viz. his own absolute 
 superiority to all men and his natural title to universal 
 royalty. The same contrast appears in the requirements 
 they made of their followers. Socrates cared nothing 
 what those whom he conversed with thought of him; he 
 would bear any amount of rudeness from them; but he 
 cared very much about the subject of discussion and 
 about obtaining a triumph for his method. On the other 
 hand, the one thing which Christ required was a certain 
 personal attachment to himself, a fidelity or loyalty; and 
 so long as they manifested this, he was in no haste to 
 deliver their minds from speculative error. 
 
 We may be sure that so marked a contrast does not 
 arise merely from the difference between a Semitic and 
 European mind. The truth is that as the resemblance 
 between the earliest Christian Church and a philosophical 
 , school is delusive, so is the resemblance between Christ 
 ‘himself and any Greek philosopher. Christ had a totally 
 different object and used totally different means from 
 Socrates. The resemblance is, no doubt, at first sight 
 striking. Both were teachers, both were prodigiously 
 
: Nature of Christ’s Society wi) 
 : influential, both suffered martyrdom. But if we examine 
 these points of resemblance we shall see that martyrdom 
 was, as it were, an accident of the life of Socrates, and 
 teaching in a great degree an accident of Christ’s, and 
 that their influence upon men has been of a totally 
 different kind—that of Socrates being an intellectual 
 influence upon thought, that of Christ a.personal influence 
 ‘upon feeling. What real student of Socrates concerns 
 ‘himself-with his martyrdom? It is an impressive page 
 of history, but the importance of Socrates to men has 
 ‘no concern with it. Had he died in his bed he would 
 ‘still have been the creator of science. On the other 
 hand, if we isolate Christ’s teaching from his life we 
 may come to the conclusion that it contains little that 
 ‘could not be found elsewhere, and found accompanied 
 ‘with reasoning and explanation. Those who fix their 
 eyes on the Sermon on the Mount, or rather on the naked 
 propositions which it contains, and disregard Christ’s 
 ‘life, his cross, and his resurrection, commit the same 
 mistake in studying Christianity that the student of 
 Socratic philosophy would commit if he studied only the 
 ‘dramatic story of his death. Both Socrates and Christ 
 ‘uttered remarkable thoughts and lived remarkable lives. 
 But Socrates holds his place in history by his thoughts 
 and not by his life, Christ by his life and not by his 
 thoughts. 
 
 It follows that it is a mistake to regard Christianity 
 ‘as a rudimentary or imperfect moral philosophy. Philo- 
 sophy is one thing, and Christianity quite another. And 
 ‘the difference between them lies here—that philosophy) , 
 ‘hopes to cure the vices of human nature by working) > 
 ‘upon the head, and Christianity by educating the heart.| 
 The philosopher works upon the man in isolation, though 
 he may for convenience assemble his pupils in classes. 
 He also abstains carefully from biassing his feelings by 
 ‘any personal motives and abjures the very principle of 
 authority, making it his object to render his pupil his 
 own master, to put him in possession of a rule by which 
 he may guide his actions, and to relieve him from de- 
 pendence upon any external guardianship. Christianity 
 
78 Ecce Homo ; 
 abhors isolation; it gathers men into a society and binds 
 them in the closest manner, first to each other, and next 
 to Christ himself, whom it represents as claiming their 
 enthusiastic devotion on the ground of gratitude, and 
 las exhibiting to them by a transcendent example, and 
 \also incidentally by teaching, but rather rhetorical than 
 
 cientific teaching, the life they should lead. 
 
 Christianity, then, and moral philosophy are totally 
 different things, and yet profess to have the same object, 
 namely, the moral improvement of mankind. This being 
 the case, as it is probable that they are not precisely 
 equally adapted to attain the object, it would seem to 
 follow that one of the two is unnecessary. But on con- 
 sideration we shall find that each has its function, and 
 that philosophy undertakes quite another sort of moral 
 improvement than Christianity. The difference may be 
 shortly expressed thus:—Both endeavour to lead men to 
 do what is right, but philosophy undertakes to explain 
 what it is right to do, while Christianity undertakes to 
 make men disposed to do it.. Wrong actions spring from 
 two causes—bad moral dispositions, and intellectual mis- 
 apprehensions. Good men do wrong perpetually, because 
 they have not the mental training and skill which may 
 enable them to discern the right course in given circum- 
 stances. They have good impulses, but they misconceive 
 the facts before them, and miscalculate the effect of 
 actions. Their intentions are right, but they take wrong 
 means of carrying them out. There may be a conflict of 
 good impulses, and in such cases one at least must remain 
 
 | unindulged. Duty, in short, as it represents itself to us, is 
 | avery complicated matter. To do it with certainty a man 
 
 _must not be good merely but wise. He must have reflected 
 | deeply on human affairs and on social laws; he must have 
 |reduced the confusion of good feelings which exists at 
 | starting in the well-disposed mind to order and clearness. 
 
 ' This, then, is what philosophy undertakes to help him 
 to do. 
 
 But suppose the good feelings wanting at the outset. 
 What will it avail in such a case that philosophy should 
 point out the right course? When the man whose impulses 
 
: Nature of Christ’s Society 79 
 
 ‘are bad has plainly understood by the aid of philosophy 
 which is the right course and which the wrong, what will 
 
 he do? Clearly he will take the wrong. Some additional , 
 
 ‘machinery is wanted which may evoke the good impulses, 
 
 cherish them, and make them masters of the bad ones. | 
 If this is not done, what avails it to give a man the know-. 
 
 ledge of what is right? It will but help him to avoid it.” 
 
 We have heard of a fruit which gave the knowledge of 
 good, but it was “knowledge of good bought dear by 
 knowing ill.” 
 
 __ Now this machinery is what Christ undertakes to supply. 
 Philosophers had drawn their pupils from the élite of 
 humanity; but Christ finds his material among the worst 
 ‘and meanest, for he does not propose merely to make the 
 good better but the bad good. And what is his machinery ? 
 He says the first step towards good dispositions is for a 
 man to form a strong personal attachment. Let him first 
 be drawn out of himself. Next let the object of that 
 attachment be a person of striking and conspicuous good- 
 ness. To worship such a person will be the best exercise 
 in virtue that he can have. Let him vow obedience in 
 life and death to such a person; let him mix and live with 
 others who have made the same vow. He will have ever 
 before his eyes an ideal of what he may himself become. 
 His heart will be stirred by new feelings, a new world will 
 be gradually revealed to him, and, more than this, a new 
 self within his old self will make its presence felt, and 
 a change will pass over him which he will feel it most 
 appropriate to call a new birth. This is Christ’s scheme 
 Stated in its most naked form; we shall have abundant 
 Opportunities in the sequel of expounding it more fully. 
 But if philosophy undertakes to solve the same problem, 
 what is its method? By what means does it hope to 
 awaken good impulses in hearts that were before enslaved 
 to bad ones? By eloquent exhortation perhaps, or by the 
 examples of life led philosophically. Nay, whatever effect 
 these instruments may have, they are instruments of the 
 same kind as those of Christianity. Example is a personal 
 influence, and impassioned eloquence works upon the feel- 
 ings. If we are to exchange Christianity for these, it must 
 
80 Ecce Homo 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 be because the philosophers can put before us an examp! 
 more elevated than that of Christ, and eloquence more 
 impressive than that of the Sermon on the Mount. F 
 sophy, as such, works by reasoning, by enlightening 
 mind, by exposing miscalculations and revealing things as 
 they are. Now by what process of this kind can the bad 
 man be turned into the good? Where is the demonstre 
 tion that will make the selfish man prefer another’s interest 
 tohisown? Your dialectic may force him to acknowledge 
 the right action, but where is the dialectic that shall 
 force him to do it? Where is the logical dilemma that 
 . can make a knave honest? 
 _X~ The truth is that philosophy has no instruments that it 
 can use for this purpose. There exists no other such in 
 strument but that personal one of which Christ availed 
 himself. And this personal influence it is the natural 
 operation of philosophy in some degree to counteract, 
 So far from creating good impulses, philosophy does some= 
 thing towards paralysing and destroying them. For per 
 petual and absorbing mental activity blunts in some degree 
 those feelings in which the life of virtue resides; at the 
 same time it creates a habit of solitude, and solitude is th 
 death of all but the strongest virtue. But the philosophe 
 may answer to this that the more important part of moral 
 improvement is that which explains to us what it is righ 
 to do, and that good impulses are provided by nature with 
 tolerable impartiality to all. We may think that gooc 
 impulses do not require to be artificially provided, or tha 
 they cannot be provided in any great degree by am 
 machinery. Well! it is a question of fact. His own expert 
 “ence must decide it for each person. Assuredly there a 
 vast moral differences in the people we meet, and we aré 
 able for the mest part to refer those differences to som 
 cause or other. Let the Christian principle be compare¢ 
 in its results with the philosophical one; that is, let th 
 virtue which has arisen from contact and personal ties with 
 the good be compared with that which is the unaided frui 
 of solitary reflection. Who is the philosophic good man 
 He is one who has considered all the objects and conse 
 quences of human action; he has, in the first place, per 
 
Nature of Christ’s Society 81 
 
 ‘ceived that there is in hima principle of sympathy, the due 
 development of which demands that he should habitually 
 consider the advantage of others; he has been led by re- 
 flection to perceive that the advantage of one individual 
 may often involve the injury of several ; he has thence 
 concluded that it is necessary to lay down systematic rules 
 for his actions lest he should be led into such miscalcu- 
 lations, and he has in this reasonable and gradual manner 
 arrived at a system of morality. This is the philosophic 
 good man. Do we find the result satisfactory? Do we 
 not find in him a languid, melancholic, dull and hard tem- 
 perament of virtue? He does right perhaps, but without 
 warmth or promptitude. Andnowonder! The principle 
 of sympathy was feeble in him at the beginning for want 
 of contact with those who might have called it into play, 
 and it has been made feebler still by hard brain-work and 
 solitude. He startles us at times by sudden immoralities 
 into which he is betrayed by ingenuity unchecked by 
 healthy feeling. His virtue has intermissions and fits of 
 lassitude; he becomes guilty of small transgressions for 
 which he hopes to compensate by works of easy super- 
 srogation. Virtue thus exhibited does not excite in the 
 seholder those “ strange yearnings ” of devotion of which 
 Plato spoke. No one loves such a man 3 people feel for 
 lim an esteem mixed with pity. On the other hand, who 
 s the good man that we admire and love? How do men 
 ecome for the most part “ pure, generous, and humane ”’? 
 3y personal, not by logical influences. They have been 
 eared by parents who had these qualities, they have 
 ived in a society which had a high tone, they have been 
 ccustomed to see just acts done, to hear gentle words 
 poken, and the justness and the gentleness have passed 
 to their hearts and slowly moulded their habits, and 
 dade their moral discernment clear 3 they remember 
 ommands and prohibitions which it is a pleasure to 
 bey for the sake of those who gave them; often they 
 hink of those who may be dead and say, ““ How would 
 uis action appear tohim? Would he approve that word, 
 r disapprove it?” To such no baseness appears a small 
 aseness because its consequences may be small, nor does 
 F 
 
82 Ecce Homo 
 
 their necks, nor do they dream of covering a sin by 
 atoning act of virtue. Often in solitude they blush when 
 some impure fancy sails across the clear heaven of their 
 minds, because they are never alone, because the absent 
 Examples, the Authorities they still revere, rule not their 
 actions only but their inmost hearts; because their con- 
 science is indeed awake and alive, representing all the 
 nobleness with which they stand in sympathy, and re 
 porting their most hidden indecorum before a public 
 opinion of the absent and the dead. 
 
 Of these two influences—that of Reason and that of 
 Living Example—which would a wise reformer reinforce? 
 Christ chose the last. He gathered all men into a common 
 relation to himself, and demanded that each should set 
 him on the pedestal of his heart, giving a lower place tc 
 all other objects of worship, to father and mother, to hus 
 band or wife. In him should the loyalty of all heart 
 centre, he should be their pattern, their Authority, anc 
 Judge. Of him and his service should no man be ashamed 
 but to those who acknowledged it morality should be ar 
 easy yoke, and the law of right as spontaneous as the lay 
 of life; sufferings should be easy to bear, and the loss 0 
 worldly friends repaired by a new home in the bosom 0 
 the Christian kingdom; finally, in death itself their slee 
 should be sweet upon whose tombstone it could be writte 
 “ Obdormivit in Christo.” 
 
 the yoke of law seem burdensome although it is ever a 
 
 We have insisted upon the effect of personal inflt 
 ence in creating virtuous impulses. We have describe 
 Christ’s Theocracy as a great attempt to set all the virtt 
 of the world upon this basis, and to give it a visible cent 
 or fountain. But we have used generalities. It is at 
 visable, before quitting the subject, to give a sing 
 example of the magical passing of virtue out of the virtt 
 ous man into the hearts of those with whom he comes 
 contact. A remarkable story which appears in St. John 
 biography, though it is apparently an interpolation 
 that place, may serve this purpose, and will at the san’ 
 
| Nature of Christ’s Society 83 
 
 | time illustrate the difference between scholastic or scien- 
 
 _ tific and living or instinctive virtue. Some of the leading 
 Teligious men of Jerusalem had detected a woman in 
 adultery. It occurred to them that the case afforded a 
 good opportunity of making an experiment upon Christ. 
 They might use it to discover how he regarded the Mosaic 
 law. That he was heterodox on the subject of that law 
 they had reason to believe, for he had openly quoted some 
 Mosaic maxims and declared them at least incomplete, 
 ‘Substituting for them new rules of his own, which at least 
 in some cases appeared to abrogate the old. It might be 
 possible, they thought, by means of this woman to satisfy 
 at once themselves and the people of his heterodoxy. 
 They brought the woman before him, quoted the law of 
 Moses on the subject of adultery, and asked Christ directly 
 whether he agreed with the lawgiver. They asked for his 
 judgment. 
 A judgment he gave them, but quite different, both in 
 matter and manner, from what they had expected. In 
 thinking of the “case” they had forgotten the woman, 
 they had forgotten even the deed. What became of the 
 criminal appeared to them wholly unimportant; towards 
 her crime or her character they had no feeling whatever, 
 not even hatred, still less pity or sympathetic shame. If 
 they had been asked about her, they might probably have 
 answered, with Mephistopheles, “She is not the first ” 5 
 nor would they have thought their answer fiendish, only 
 practical and business-like. Perhaps they might on re- 
 lection have admitted that their frame of mind was not 
 strictly moral, not quite what it should be, that it would 
 aave been better if, besides considering the legal and 
 eligious questions involved, they could have found leisure 
 or some shame at the scandal and some hatred for the 
 inner. But they would have argued that such strict 
 opriety is not possible in this world, that we have too 
 nuch on our hands to think of these niceties, that the 
 han who makes leisure for such refinements will find his 
 vork in arrears at the end of the day, and probably also 
 hat he is doing injustice to his family and those de- 
 endent on him. 
 
 , 
 

 
 
 
 84 Ecce Homo 
 
 This they might fluently and plausibly have ur 
 But the judgment of Christ was upon them, making 
 things seem new, and shining like the lightning from 
 one end of heaven to the other. He was standing, i 
 
 narrated, how the adultery had been detected in the uv 
 act. The shame of the deed itself, and the brazen hard- 
 ness of the prosecutors, the legality that had no justi 
 and did not even pretend to have mercy, the religious 
 malice that could make its advantage out of the fall and 
 ruin and ignominious death of a fellow-creature—all this 
 was eagerly and rudely thrust before his mind at once. 
 The effect upon him was such as might have been produced 
 upon many since, but perhaps upon scarcely any man that 
 ever lived before. He was seized with an intolerable sense 
 of shame. He could not meet the eye of the crowd, or of 
 the accusers, and perhaps at that moment least of all of 
 the woman. Standing as he did in the midst of an eager 
 multitude that did not in the least appreciate his feelings, 
 he could not escape. In his burning embarrassment and 
 confusion he stooped down so as to hide his face, and 
 began writing with his finger on the ground. His tor- 
 mentors continued their clamour, until he raised his head 
 for a moment and said, “ He that is without sin among 
 you let him first cast a stone at her,” and then instantly 
 returned to his former attitude. They had a glimpse 
 perhaps of the glowing blush upon his face, and awoke 
 suddenly with astonishment to a new sense of their con: 
 dition and their conduct. The older men naturally fel 
 it first and slunk away; the younger followed thei 
 example. The crowd dissolved and left Christ alon 
 with the woman. Not till then could he bear to stant 
 upright; and when he had lifted himself up, consistentl 
 with his principle, he dismissed the woman, as havi 
 no commission to interfere with the office of the civ] 
 judge- 
 
 But the mighty power of living purity had done it 
 work. He had refused to judge a woman, but he hai 
 judged a whole crowd. He had awakened the slumbet 
 ing conscience in many hardened hearts, given them 
 
Nature of Christ’s Society 85 
 
 new delicacy, a new ideal, a new view and reading of the 
 Mosaic law, 
 __ And yet this crowd was either indifferent or bitterly 
 hostile to him. Let us imagine the correcting, elevating 
 influence of his presence upon those who, so far from 
 being indifferent, were bound to him by the ties which 
 bind a soldier to his superior officer, a clansman to his 
 chief, a subject to a king ruling by Divine right, aye, and 
 by ties far closer. The ancient philosophers were accus- 
 tomed to enquire about virtue, whether it can be taught. 
 Yes! it can be taught, and in this way. But if this way 
 be abandoned, and moral philosophy be set up to do that 
 which in the nature of things philosophy can never do, 
 the effect will appear in a certain slow deterioration of 
 Manners which it would be hard to describe had it not 
 been described already in well-known words: “ Sophistry 
 and calculation ” will take the place of “ chivalry.” There 
 will be no more “ generous loyalty,” no more “ proud sub- 
 Mission,” no more “ dignified obedience.” A stain will no 
 more be felt like a wound, and our hardened and coarsened 
 manners will lose the “ sensibility of principle and the 
 chastity of honour.” ; 
 
 
 
PART SECOND 
 CHRIST’S LEGISLATION 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 CHRIST’S LEGISLATION COMPARED WITH PHILOSOPHIC 
 SYSTEMS 
 
 WE have thus traced the rise of a monarchy, the-purest 
 and the most ideal that has ever existed among men. 
 The most ideal, for in this monarchy alone the obedience 
 of the subject was in no case reluctant or mercenary, but 
 grounded upon a genuine conviction of the immeasurable 
 superiority in goodness, wisdom, and power of the ruler. 
 Such a superiority is always supposed to exist in a king, 
 and to constitute the ground of his authority; but this is 
 in most cases a fiction which deceives no one, and only 
 sustains itself in bombastic titles and hollow liturgies of 
 court etiquette. Where, however, the king has risen in 
 disturbed times from a private station, and has won his 
 sceptre by merit, the theory is no mere constitutional 
 fiction. Such a king is, to many of his subjects, the true 
 master he claims to be to all; there are many who obey 
 him from a voluntary loyalty, who do in their hearts 
 worship his superiority, and who find their freedom 
 in accepting his yoke. But even in this case there are 
 many whose submission is reluctant and sullen, or else 
 mercenary and hypocritical. There is always at least 
 a minority whose subjection is secured by force. In 
 Christ’s. monarchy no force was used, though all power 
 was at command; the obedience of his servants became 
 in the end, though not till after his departure, absolutely 
 unqualified, even when it involved the sacrifice of life; and 
 
1 
 : Christ’s Legislation 87 
 it was obtained from them by no other means than the 
 natural influence of a natural superiority. 
 
 This monarchy was essentially despotic, and might, in 
 spite of the goodness of the sovereign, have had some 
 
 mischievous consequences, if he had remained too long 
 among his subjects, and if his dictation had descended 
 too much into particulars. But he shunned the details of 
 administration, and assumed only the higher functions of 
 a heroic monarch—those of organisation and legislation. 
 And when these were sufficiently discharged, when his 
 whole mind and will had expressed itself in precept and 
 signed itself for ever in transcendent deeds, he withdrew 
 _to a secret post of observation, from whence he visited his 
 people for the future only in refreshing inspirations and 
 great acts of providential justice. 
 
 The time has now come for examining the legislation 
 which Christ gave to his Society. It has an important 
 point of likeness and at the same time of unlikeness to 
 the legislation which it superseded. The legislation which 
 Jehovah gave to the Jews was always regarded by them 
 ‘not merely as a rule for their own actions, but as a reflec- 
 tion and revelation of the character of their Invisible King. 
 The faithful Jew in obeying Jehovah became like Him. 
 This inspiring reflection gave life and moral vigour to the 
 “Mosaic system. But that system laboured at the same 
 
 time under the disadvantage that Jehovah was known to 
 ‘His subjects only through His law. Only in prohibition 
 and penalty was He revealed, only in thunder could His 
 voice be heard. Now the law of Christ was in like manner 
 a reflection of the mind of the lawgiver; but the new 
 Jehovah made his character known not by his code merely, 
 but by a life led in the sight of men, by “‘ going in and out ” 
 among the people. The effect of this novelty was incal- 
 ‘culable. It was a moral emancipation; it was freedom 
 succeeding slavery. The experience of daily life may ex- 
 plain this to us. It is a slavish toil to learn any art by 
 text-books merely, without the assistance of a tutor; the 
 written rule is of little use, is scarcely intelligible, until 
 we have seen it reduced to practice by one who can 
 practise it easily and make its justice apparent. The ease 
 
88 Ecce Homo 
 
 and readiness of the master are infectious; the pupil, 
 he looks on, conceives a new hope, a new self-reliance 
 he seems already to touch the goal which before appear 
 removed to a hopeless distance. It is a slavery whi 
 soldiers are driven against the enemy by the despotic com- 
 mand of a leader who does not share,the danger, but the 
 service becomes free and glorious when the general rides 
 
 to the front. Such was the revival of spirit which the 
 Jew experienced when he took the oath to Christ, and 
 which he described by saying that he was no longer under 
 
 the law but under grace. He had gained a tutor instead 
 of a text-book, a leader instead of a master, and when he 
 
 learned what to do, he learned at the same time how to 
 do it, and received encouragement in attempting it. And 
 the law which Christ gave was not only illustrated, but 
 
 infinitely enlarged by his deeds. For every deed was 
 itself a precedent to be followed, and therefore to discuss” 
 the legislation of Christ is to discuss his character: for 
 it may be justly said that Christ himself is the Christian 
 law. 
 
 We must therefore be careful not to consider Christ’s 
 maxims apart from the deeds which were intended to 
 illustrate them. There shave been few teachers whose 
 words will less bear to be divorced from their context 
 of occasion and circumstance. But we find in our bio- 
 graphies the report of a long discourse, which, as far as 
 we know, was suggested by no special incidents, and 
 which seems to have been intended as a general exposition 
 of the laws of the new kingdom. This discourse is com- 
 monly called the Sermon on the Mount; it is recognised 
 by all as the fundamental document of Christian morality, 
 and by some it is regarded as constituting Christ’s prin- 
 cipal claim upon the homage of the world. Naturally 
 therefore it first attracts the attention of those who wish 
 to consider him in his character of legislator or moralist. 
 
 The style of the Sermon on the Mount is neither purely 
 philosophical nor purely practical. It refers throughout 
 to first principles, but it does not state them in an 
 abstract form; on the other hand, it enters into special 
 cases and detail, but never so far as to lose sight of 
 
 
 
 
| Christ’s Legislation 89 
 first principles. It is equally unlike the early national 
 codes, which simply formularised without method exist- 
 ‘ing customs, and the early moral treatises such as those of 
 Plato and Aristotle, which are purely scientific. Of Jewish 
 ‘writings it resembles most the book of Deuteronomy, in 
 which the Mosaic law was recapitulated in such a manner 
 as to make the principles on which it was founded ap- 
 parent; of Gentile writings it may be compared with 
 those of Epictetus, Aurelius, and Seneca, in which we see 
 @ scientific morality brought to bear upon the struggles 
 and details of actual life. It uses all the philosophical 
 machinery of generalisation and distinction, but its object 
 is not philosophical but practical—that is, not truth but 
 ood. 
 
 . As then this discourse has a philosophic unity, let us 
 try to discover what that unity is. As it propounds to 
 us a scheme of life founded upon a principle, let us try to 
 state the principle. The work of all legislators, reformers, 
 and philosophers is in one respect alike; it is in all cases 
 a protest against a kind of life which, notwithstanding, 
 might seem to have its attractions, which, at any rate, 
 suggests itself very naturally to men, and is not abandoned 
 without reluctance. All reformers call on men to reduce 
 their lives to a rule different from that of immediate self- 
 interest, to live according to a permanent principle and not, 
 as the poet says, “at random.” Against the dominion 
 of appetite all the teachers of mankind are at one: all 
 agree in repudiating the doctrine of the savage: 
 
 I bow to ne’er a god except myself, 
 
 And to my Belly, first of deities. 
 | To eat and drink your daily food and drink, 
 | This is the creed of sober-minded people, 
 
 And not to fret yourself. But those who make 
 
 Laws, and sophisticate the life of man, 
 _ I bid them pack. 
 
 In the time of Christ, when Socrates had been in his 
 grave four hundred years, it was hardly necessary for a 
 philosopher to inveigh in set terms against such naked 
 self-indulgence. The rudimentary lessons of philosophy 
 had now been widely diffused. But as Christ called the 
 poor into his kingdom, and addressed his invitation to 
 
 : 
 f 
 
go Ecce Homo 
 
 those whom no reformer had hoped before to win, 
 was at the trouble to reason with this grossest egois 
 On one occasion he told a homely tale of a man wh 
 absorbed in the pursuit and enjoyment of wealth, wa 
 struck at the very moment of complete self-satisfaction by 
 sudden death, and compelled to relinquish the treasures he 
 had sacrificed every lasting good to amass. At another 
 time he went further, and described tortures and agonies 
 which might await on the further side of death some 
 whose lot had been most enviable on this. And in the 
 discourse before us he expostulates, though in a gentler 
 tone, with the same class of sensualists. 
 
 There are two principal ways of rebuking lawless sen- 
 suality: it is most important to consider whether Christ’s 
 method coincides with either of them. The first is to ad- 
 mit the sensualist to be right in his end, but charge him 
 with clumsiness in his choice of means. To get the greatest 
 amount of pleasure, it may be said, is the only rational 
 object which a man can propose to himself; but to sup- 
 pose that this object can be attained either by recklessly 
 gratifying every desire as it arises, or by collecting huge 
 heaps of the ordinary material of pleasure, such as money 
 or food or fine clothes, is childish. Pleasure is a delicate 
 plant, and cannot be cultivated without much study and 
 practice. Any excess of it is followed by a reaction of 
 disgust and by a diminution in the power of entertaining 
 it. If you would live in the constant enjoyment of it, 
 you must carefully ascertain how large a dose it will be 
 safe to take at a time, and then you must drill yourself 
 by a constant discipline never to exceed that dose, 
 Again, what is pleasant to one man is not equally so to 
 another; you must study your own disposition; you 
 must learn to know your own mind, and not slavishly 
 enjoy through another man’s senses. Once more, pleasant 
 things, such as food or fine clothes, are indeed among the 
 conditions of pleasure, but they do not by themselves 
 constitute it. He who devotes himself to the acquisition 
 of these, and neglects to prepare his own mind for the full 
 enjoyment of them, will defeat his own object and sacri 
 fice the end to the means. We must therefore tell the 
 
 ' 
 
| Christ’s Legislation gi 
 
 alist not that he loves pleasure too much, but that 
 he ought to love it more, that he ought to seek it more 
 exclusively, and not to suffer himself to be cheated by 
 the mere external semblance and counterfeit of it. 
 _ Of course it is quite unjust to represent this theory as 
 repudiating moral virtue. Among the indispensable con- 
 itions of pleasure virtue may very well be reckoned: it 
 is perfectly open to an Epicurean philosopher to declare all 
 other instruments of pleasure to be inoperative and useless 
 mpared with or independent of virtue. And those who 
 think that we should not make pleasure our chief object, 
 yet commonly maintain that he who lives best will actually 
 ttain the greatest amount and the best kind of pleasure; 
 so that the most successful votary of pleasure would coin- 
 ide with the ideal man of the very schools which most 
 ehemently denounce pleasure-worship. The practical 
 bjection te Epicureanism is not so much that it makes 
 leasure the summum bonum, as that it recommends us 
 keep this summum bonum always in view. For it is far 
 m being universally true that to get a thing you must 
 im atit. There are some things which can only be gained 
 by renouncing them. To use a familiar illustration: it is 
 easy to breathe evenly so long as you do not think about 
 it; butas soon as you try, it becomes impossible. Many of 
 e moral virtues are of this kind. Simplicity of character 
 ot be produced by thinking of it; rather, the more you 
 af sl of it the further you travel into the opposite extreme 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 f self-consciousness. The grace of humility is not to be 
 won by constantly comparing yourself with others and 
 Bo noeuing your deficiencies; this method is more likely to 
 issue in hypocritical self-conceit. Now, a practical survey 
 of life seems to show that pleasure in its largest sense—a 
 ond deep enjoyment of life—is also not to be gained 
 artificially. Much of what Epicureans say is doubtless 
 true and valuable; our pleasures may be considerably 
 od by a little common sense; we often break the 
 
 Pp or upset it in our excessive eagerness to drain it to 
 the bottom. Still, we destroy pleasure by making it our 
 ief object; its essential nature is corrupted when it is 
 ade into a business: the highest perfection of it is not 
 
g2 Ecce Homo 
 
 among the prizes of exertion, the rewards of industry 
 ingenuity, but a bounty of nature, a grace of God. 
 contrivance and skill only an inferior sort can be attain 
 
 to which the keenness, the glee, the racy bitter of 
 sweet, is wanting. And this is the utmost that can b 
 attained ; this is what can be made of pleasure by 
 most skilful artificers of it. What, then, would the poor 
 and simple-minded gain from such a principle? Epicu- 
 reanism popularised inevitably turns to vice; no skill in 
 the preachers of it will avail for a moment to prevent the 
 obscene transformation. It would probably be safe to go 
 farther, and say that Epicureanism means vice in all cases 
 except ‘where a rare refinement and tenderness of nature 
 creates a natural propensity to virtue so strong as to aq 
 arm the most corrupting influence. 
 
 We need not, then, be surprised to find that Christ, 
 whose purpose was entirely practical, and who was legis- 
 lating not for a small minority but for mankind, did not 
 place. his reproof of sensuality on this ground. When he 
 said, ‘“‘ Fret not yourself about your life what ye shall eat, 
 nor about your body what ye shall put on,” he did not 
 on to say, “‘ Remember for what end food and clothing are 
 intended; remember that they are only the appliances of 
 pleasure, and make it your object to gain pleasure not 
 through these means only, but by every means within 
 your reach, including moral virtue.” But he proposes 
 another object altogether—‘ the kingdom of God and his 
 righteousness.” 
 
 There is another way in which it has been common to 
 argue with the sensualist. It has been said that the 
 sensualist makes bodily pleasure his object, and that in so 
 doing he forgets that man possesses a soul as well as a 
 body. This soul, it is said, is the nobler part of the man; 
 the body is but a base appendage more or less useful, but 
 so far inferior that it should be treated as a slave, and sO 
 intractable that it requires to be coerced, punished, kept 
 to hard labour, and stinted of sustenance and pleasure. 
 The interests of the body are not worth considering; the 
 man should occupy himself with those of the soul—that is, 
 the acquisition of knowledge, self-sufficiency, and virtue. 
 
: Christ’s Legislation 93 
 
 But this reasoning, in the first place, convinces very few, 
 and, in the second, has an injurious effect upon those 
 whom it convinces. The soul and body are inextricably 
 united. It is of no practical use to consider them apart; 
 and if we do so, it is clear that the human body is not a 
 base or mean thing, but, on the contrary, one of the most 
 noble and glorious things known. Again, if it is to be 
 made subservient to the soul, experience abundantly 
 shows that the soul does not advance its own interests by 
 altreating its slave. Discipline and coercion may some- 
 times be necessary, but the soul loses its tone and health 
 if the interests of the body are not consulted, and if its 
 desires are not in a moderate degree satisfied. And 
 those who learn from these reasoners to depreciate the 
 body, first become inhumanly cold to natural beauty and 
 out of sympathy with the material universe, and secondly, 
 while they slight their own bodily comforts, disregard 
 the physical well-being of their neighbours, and become 
 unfeeling and cruel. 
 Christ, then, as a practical legislator, did not depreciate 
 the body. On the contrary, he showed, both in this 
 Sermon and in his whole career, a tenderness of the bodily 
 well-being of men, such as no philosophical school except 
 the Epicureans had shown, and such as the Epicureans 
 themselves had not surpassed. He spent the greater 
 part of his short life in healing sick people, and of the 
 comforts which he restored to others he did not disdain 
 himself to partake. He was to be met at weddings; 
 many of the discourses which his biographies preserve 
 were suggested by the incidents of feasts and banquets at 
 which he was present; and so marked was the absence of 
 asceticism both in his own life and in that which he pre- 
 scribed for his disciples, that his enemies called him a 
 glutton and a wine-bibber, and he had to apologise for 
 the indulgent character of his discipline by pointing with 
 sad foresight to the sufferings which his followers would 
 all too soon have to endure. But the words of this Sermon 
 are even more striking. He divides himself at once from 
 the ascetic and the Stoic. They had said, “ Make your- 
 selves independent of bodily comforts” ; he says, “ Ye 
 
 
 
94 Ecce Homo 
 
 have need of these things.” But if the Epicurean o 
 the sensualist take advantage of these words and say 
 “If you have need of these things, make it your study t 
 obtain them,” he parts company not less decidedly witl 
 these, and says, “ True pleasure is not thus to be had 
 It is the healthy bloom of the spirit which must com: 
 naturally or not at all. Those who think about it lose it 
 or, if not, produce with all their labour but a poor imita 
 tion of it. Self-consciousness and sensualism is the enem} 
 of true delight. Solomon on his throne was gaudy; th 
 lilies of the field are better drest. Epicurus in his garder 
 was languid; the birds of the air have more enjoymen 
 of their food.” 
 
 We are therefore to dismiss pleasure from our thought: 
 as a thing which we are indeed made to possess, yet ar 
 unable by our own efforts to obtain. We are to expec 
 that it will come of itself, and in the meanwhile we ar 
 to adopt a mode of life which has no reference to it. Bu 
 if this rule should prescribe a course of conduct whicl 
 so far from producing pleasure should involve us in th 
 most painful difficulties and hardships, shall we ther 
 turn back as though the promise were unfulfilled? Anc 
 if it should issue in death itself, and thus absolutely 
 prevent to all appearance the promise from being fulfilled 
 what shall we think? Christ anticipates our perplexity 
 Such cases he tells us will frequently arise. His rule o 
 life will often, nay generally, involve us in hardships, anc 
 at certain periods in death itself. But the Creator of th 
 world, our Father in Heaven, from whom alone, in al 
 cases, genuine pleasure and satisfaction comes, is mor 
 to be trusted than these adverse appearances. Pleasurt 
 shall assuredly be ours, but in no extremity are we t 
 make it our object. You shall suffer and yet you shal 
 enjoy. Both are certain, and it is not worth while t 
 attempt to reconcile the apparent contradiction. ‘ Som: 
 of you shall they put to death . . . and there shall no’ 
 a hair of your head perish.” 
 
 This paradoxical position—that pleasure is necessary fo! 
 us, and yet that it is not to be sought; that this world i: 
 to be renounced, and yet that it is noble and glorious— 
 
Christ’s Legislation 95 
 
 ight, if it had been taken up by a philosopher, have been 
 tegarded as a subtlety which it would be impossible to 
 act upon. But as the law laid down by a King and 
 Master of mankind, every word of whom was treasured 
 up and acted out with devotion, it has had a surprising 
 influence upon human affairs. In the times of the Roman 
 Emperors there appeared a sect which distinguished itself 
 by the assiduous attention which it bestowed upon the 
 bodily wants of mankind. This sect set the first example 
 of a homely practical philanthropy, occupying itself with 
 the relief of ordinary human sufferings, dispensing food 
 and clothing to the destitute and starving. At the same 
 period there appeared a sect which was remarkable for 
 the contempt in which it held human suffering. Roman 
 magistrates were perplexed to find, when it became neces- 
 sary to coerce this sect by penal inflictions, that bodily 
 pains, tortures, and death itself were not regarded as 
 evils by its members. These two sects appeared to run 
 into contrary extremes. The one seemed to carry their 
 tegard for the body to the borders of effeminacy; the 
 other pushed Stoical apathy almost to madness. Yet 
 these two sects were one and the same—the Christian 
 Church. And though within that body every conceivable 
 corruption has at some time or other sprung up, this tra- 
 dition has never been long lost, and in every age the 
 Christian temper has shivered at the touch of Stoic 
 apathy and shuddered at that of Epicurean indolence. 
 
 But we have not yet, except by negatives, answered the 
 question how Christ argued with the sensualist. We 
 have discovered as yet only that he did not employ two 
 common arguments. For a lawless pursuit of bodily 
 enjoyment he did not exhort him to substitute either a 
 methodical pursuit of the same object or a pursuit of 
 intellectual and moral well-being. What, then, did he 
 substitute? What was that “kingdom of God and his 
 righteousness ”’ which he bade men make the first object 
 of their search? 
 
 
 
CHAPTER XI : 
 THE CHRISTIAN REPUBLIC , 
 
 “ SEEK ye first the kingdom of God and his righteous. 
 ‘ ness.” This exhortation is precisely what we had reason 
 to expect, for we have already remarked that the cry 
 which John raised in the desert, “ The kingdom of heaven 
 is at hand,” was taken up by Christ, and that his life was 
 devoted to proclaiming this new political constitution, te 
 collecting adherents to it, and promulgating its laws. That 
 kingdom of God into which he called men he elevates ix 
 this passage into the swmmum bonum of human life, and 
 represents it as the secret of happiness and of all enduring 
 good to belong to the divine society, and to cndetaal 
 and keep the rules prescribed for its members. 
 
 Before we enquire into the nature of this society and 
 its rules, it is important to consider what is implied in 
 fact that Christ placed the happiness of man in a politi 
 constitution. The philosophical schemes which we ha: 
 described Christ as rejecting consider man as an inde 
 pendent being, and provide for him an isolated ie 
 or welfare. The ideal Epicurean is described as indifferen 
 to public affairs and falling kingdoms, and exempt fro 
 the pain alike of pity for the poor and jealousy of the ric 
 To be self-sufficient was a principal ambition of the riv: 
 school. But a member of a gtate is one who has cease 
 to have a personal object, and who has made his welfa 
 dependent on that of others. He sacrifices himself to 
 body of which he has become a member. In giving u 
 present pleasure he does not differ from the isolated m 
 of the philosophers, but he differs from him in giving it u 
 not prudentially that he may get more of it in the end 
 something better than it, but disinterestedly and for thi 
 sake of other people. It is no doubt true that a man 
 
 96 . 
 wy 
 
| The Christian Republic 97 
 
 personal happiness is much increased by becoming a mem- 
 ber of a community and having an object apart from him- 
 self; for, according to the paradox already stated, no man 
 is so happy as he who does not aim at happiness. But 
 that such personal happiness is not the ultimate object of 
 the social union is plain from this, that men are expected 
 to sacrifice not a part of their happiness, but all of it, for 
 the state, and to die in battle for a cause in which they 
 may have no personal interest, and which they may even 
 hold to be unjust. It was not with any personal object 
 whatever, it was with no hope of reward in a future state, 
 it was not for glory, if their poet may be believed, but in 
 ‘obedience to the laws of Sparta, that-the three hundred 
 laid down their lives in the pass of Thermopyle. Such 
 disinterested surrender is implied in the very notion 
 
 f a political community. It is accordingly inculcated 
 ughout this discourse as the great duty of those who 
 
 ter the kingdom of God. They are to surrender all 
 tsonal claims—not only, as Christ said often on other 
 occasions, goods and property, life and family ties, but 
 rad claims, which it seems not painful merely but de- 
 
 
 
 
 
 ing to waive—the claims of wounded honour, of just 
 resentment of injuries. All these things we are to be 
 repared to surrender, as he said elsewhere, “ hoping for 
 Bihine again.” : 
 _ And yet it may be said the sacrifice which Christ exacts 
 Sno more genuine than that recommended by the Epicu- 
 ca, for he never fails to promise a full recompense in 
 he world to come. Scarcely once in this Sermon does he 
 culcate self-sacrifice without a reference to the other 
 ide of the account—to the treasures God has in store for 
 lose who despise the gold and silver of the earth. And 
 Owever much we may admire the Christian martyrs, yet 
 Ow can we compare their self-devotion with that of the 
 partan three hundred or the Roman Decius? Those 
 Toes surrendered all, and looked forward to nothing 
 t the joyless asphodel meadow or “ drear Cocytus with 
 languid stream.” But the Christian martyr might 
 ell die with exultation, for what he lost was poor com- 
 3 with that which he hoped instantly to gain. The 
 ; G 
 
 | 
 
98 Ecce Homo 
 
 happiness he expected may not have been sensual; it w 
 not “ the sparkle of female eyes, the handkerchief of gre 
 silk, the cap of precious stones,” * that comforted him for 
 the loss of this life, but he expected a personal and real, if 
 not a sensual happiness. 
 
 It is most true that Christ’s society, like all other polit- 
 ical societies, does promise happiness to its members; it 
 is further true that it promises this happiness, not as other 
 societies in general, but to every individual member. The 
 most complete self-sacrifice therefore, the love that gives 
 up all, is impossible in the Christian Church, as it is rarely 
 possible in any society, as one must suppose it impossible 
 in the ideal society. Still the paradox must be repeated: 
 though self-surrender lead in general, though it lead in: 
 fallibly, to happiness, yet happiness is not its object. And 
 if this seem a pedantic refinement outrageous to commor 
 sense, it will not appear so when we consider the natur 
 of the self-surrender which Christ enjoins. For such self 
 surrender with such an object is simply impossible. 4 
 man can no doubt do any specific acts, however painful 
 with a view to his ultimate interest. With a view to hi 
 ultimate interest a man may fast, may impose painfu 
 penances on himself; nay, with a view to his ultimate in 
 terest a man may go two miles with one who has com 
 pelled him to go one, may turn the left cheek to one wh 
 has smitten him on the right, nay, may even pray fo 
 those that use him spitefully, although in doing so he wi 
 be guilty of the most hideous hypocrisy. But can a mar 
 with a view to his ultimate interest, in order that he ma 
 go to heaven, love his enemies ? 
 
 It appears throughout the Sermon on the Mount th 
 there was a class of persons whom Christ regarded wit 
 peculiar aversion—the persons who call themselves or 
 thing and are another, He describes them by a wo! 
 which originally meant an “ actor.” Probably it may } 
 Christ’s time have already become current in the sen 
 which we give to the word “ hypocrite.” But no doul 
 whenever it was used the original sense of the word wi 
 distinctly remembered. And in this Sermon, whenev 
 
 1 The vision of the dying Islamite. See Gibbon, cap. li. 
 
The Christian Republic 99 
 
 Christ denounces any vice, it is with the words, “ Be not 
 you like the actors.” In common with all great re- 
 formers, Christ felt that honesty in word and deed was 
 the fundamental virtue; dishonesty, including affectation, 
 self-consciousness, love of stage-effect, the one incurable 
 vice. Our thoughts, words, and deeds are to be of a 
 piece. For example, if we would pray to God, let us go 
 into some inner room where none but God shall see us ; 
 ‘to pray at the corner of the streets, where the passing 
 ‘crowd may admire our devotion, is to act a prayer. If 
 ‘we would keep down the rebellious flesh by fasting, this 
 Concerns ourselves only; it is acting to parade before the 
 world our self-mortification. And if we would put down 
 sin, let us put it down in ourselves first; it is only the 
 actor who begins by frowning at it in others. But there 
 are subtler forms of hypocrisy, which Christ does not de- 
 mounce, probably because they have sprung since out of 
 the corruption of a subtler creed. The hypocrite of that 
 age wanted simply money or credit with the people. His 
 ends were those of the vulgar, though his means were 
 ifferent. Christ endeavoured to cure both alike of their 
 vulgarity by telling them of other riches and another hap- 
 piness laid up in heaven. Some of course would neither 
 nderstand nor regard his words, others would understand 
 and receive them. But a third class would receive them 
 without understanding them, and, instead of being cured 
 f their avarice and sensuality, would simply transfer 
 them to new objects of desire. Shrewd enough to discern 
 Christ’s greatness, instinctively believing what he said to 
 de true, they would set out with a triumphant eagerness 
 M pursuit of the heavenly riches, and laugh at the short- 
 Gao and weak-minded speculator who contented him- 
 elf with the easy but insignificant profits of a worldly 
 ife. They would practise assiduously the rules by which 
 christ said heaven was to be won. They would patiently 
 urn the left cheek, indefatigably walk the two miles, they 
 vould bless with effusion those who cursed them, and 
 yray fluently for those who used them spitefully. To 
 
 ve their enemies, to love anyone, they would certainly 
 ind impossible, but the outward signs of love might easily 
 
 : 
 
 i 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 + 
 
100 Ecce Homo 
 
 be learnt. And thus there would arise a new class of 
 actors, not like those whom Christ denounced, exhibiting 
 before an earthly audience and receiving their pay from 
 human managers, but hoping to be paid for their per- 
 formance out of the incorruptible treasures, and to im- 
 pose by their dramatic talent upon their Father in heaven, 
 
 Christ’s meaning, however, is not doubtful. The prin: 
 ciple is distinctly laid down. Our thoughts and deeds 
 
 - are to be of a piece. A pious and devout life wil 
 undoubtedly win for a man the reverence of the multi 
 tude, and yet Christ tells us when we pray we are t 
 think of God and not of the credit we may gain. Ant 
 so though by loving our neighbour and our enemy w 
 shall win heaven, we are not to think of the heaven w 
 shall win, we are to think of our neighbour and ou 
 enemy. 
 
 Noble-minded men! have often been scandalised b: 
 the appearance which Christ’s law is made to wear, as 
 it were a system in which all virtue is corrupted by bein 
 made mercenary. The same moralists, however, woul 
 have been among the first to assert that the only tru 
 and lasting happiness is that which is gained by th 
 practice of virtue. Christ adds nothing to this except 
 promise that those exceptional cases in which virtu 
 appears to lose its reward shall prove in the end not t 
 be exceptions. By defining virtue to consist in love, t 
 brings into prominence its unselfish character; and b 
 denouncing at the same time with vehemence all in 
 
 * sincerity and hypocrisy, he sufficiently shows with wh: 
 horror he would have regarded any interested beneficen: 
 or calculating philanthropy which may usurp the nan 
 of love. 
 
 It may, therefore, be affirmed that Christ’s Kingdo 
 
 ( is a true brotherhood founded in devotion and se 
 \\ sacrifice. Nothing less, indeed, would have satisfied tho 
 disciples who had begun to feel the spell of his characte 
 A philosophic school or sect may found itself on t! 
 prudential instincts of man, may attract empty hearts, a1 
 attach them by a loose bond to each other. But a kin 
 
 1 Schiller, for example. 
 
The Christian Republic IOI 
 
 dom stands on self-devotion, and the hearts of Christ’s 
 disciples were not empty. They had not gathered them- 
 selves round him to be told how they might avoid the 
 evils of life, but to know what they might do for him, 
 how they might serve him, how they might prove their 
 loyalty to him. It was the art of self-devotion that they 
 wished to learn, and he taught it as a master teaches, 
 Not sparing words but resting most on deeds; by the . 
 
 tmon on the Mount, but also by the Agony and the 
 cifixion. 
 
 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 UNIVERSALITY OF THE CHRISTIAN REPUBLIC 
 
 WE discover, then, that Christ’s society resembles other 
 political societies in requiring from its members a dis- 
 interested devotion and patriotism. But to understand 
 its essential nature it is necessary to know, not in what 
 respects it resembles other things of the same kind, 
 but in what respects it differs from them. We must 
 therefore continue our investigation until we discover 
 this difference. 
 
 It is one of the most obvious features of the Sermon on 
 the Mount that it treats men as standing in the relation 
 of brothers to one another under a common Father in 
 heaven. Let us consider what is involved in this. 
 
 The earliest condition of mankind of which we have 
 any knowledge was one of perpetual war. Homer de- 
 scribes a state of society in which a man was safe in the 
 possession of his lands and flocks only so long as there 
 was strength enough in his right arm to defend them, 
 As soon as the primitive man began to grow old and to 
 lose his vigour, there was danger that his neighbours 
 would drive his cattle and encroach upon his estate. 
 Ulysses in the early part of his wanderings, before he 
 has lost his fleet and army, lands on the Thracian coast, 
 and finds a city. He instantly sacks it and kills all the 
 inhabitants. This is not because there has been a quarrel, 
 but because there has been no treaty; the normal con- 
 dition of men at that time being mutual enmity. Te 
 this mutual enmity, however, there is an exception 
 established by an imperative law of nature. Persons of 
 the same family live in perpetual alliance. This seems te 
 have been originally the only tie between man and man, 
 the only consideration that could prevent them from 
 
 102 
 
 ) 
 
The Christian Republic 103 
 
 murdering each other. Peleus in his old age will be in 
 the greatest danger if he is deprived of Achilles, and the 
 very children will persecute the child Astyanax after his 
 father’s death. Woe to the orphan, and woe to the old 
 man who has not surrounded himself with children! 
 They are the only arrows with which his quiver can be 
 filled, the only defenders whom he can trust to speak 
 ‘with his enemies in the gate. 
 
 Thus in the earliest condition of things there was only 
 one kind of community. The primitive man had no 
 obligations, no duties, to any except his parents, his 
 brothers, and his parents’ brothers and their families. 
 When he met with a man unrelated to him he would 
 without hesitation take his life and his property. But the 
 life and property of a relation were sacred, and the Greeks 
 held that there were certain supernatural powers called 
 Erinyes, who vindicated the rights of relatives. This 
 ‘sense of relationship being natural and universal and ex- 
 ‘tending even to the brute creation, we cannot imagine a 
 time when the family with its rights and obligations did 
 Mot exist. But the family is a community which con- 
 stantly expands until it loses itself in a more comprehen- 
 sive one. It becomes a clan, the members of which may 
 in many cases be strangers to each other, while they are, 
 notwithstanding, bound together by the sacred tie of 
 Telationship. Again, in primitive times, when men had 
 little power of verifying facts or weighing evidence, 
 ‘relationship was often supposed to exist between persons 
 who were really of different stocks. Any resemblance 
 was supposed to furnish a proof of relationship, and so 
 those who spoke the same language were presumed to be 
 descended from a common ancestor. In this way the 
 family passed ultimately into the nation, and political 
 ‘Constitutions and codes of law came to bind men together, 
 grounded all alike on the supposition, true or false, that 
 they were relations by blood. When states had once 
 been founded and began to flourish, men began to associate 
 with each other more freely; other grounds of obligation 
 besides blood-relationship were gradually admitted, and 
 finally Rome, binding together in the unity of common 
 
 
 
 
 
i 
 
 . 
 
 q 
 104 Ecce\H omo ' 
 
 ‘ 
 subjection a number of tribes strange to each other, gave 
 a basis of fact and law to universal morality. But in 
 states which had been isolated, and had mixed little with 
 foreigners either by conquest or by trade, the original 
 tradition did not die out, and men continued to say and 
 to think that they owed obligations only to those of the 
 same blood. This was especially true of the Jews, the 
 most isolated of all ancient nations. Their common 
 descent from Abraham was always present to their minds, 
 and was the tie which bound them together. A sense of 
 obligation they expressed by the formula, “ He also is a 
 child of Abraham ”; their very religion was a worship paid 
 to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And Christ 
 himself sometimes adopted the same style, as when he 
 reproved the vice of selfishness by representing Dives as 
 repudiated by Abraham, and Lazarus welcomed to his 
 bosom in the invisible world. 
 
 It was, therefore, no novelty when, in the Sermon on 
 the Mount, Christ described those who entered the King- 
 dom of God as standing in the relation of brothers to one 
 another. In doing so he only used the ordinary language 
 of what may be called ethnic morality. The novelty lies 
 here that he does not ground the mutual obligations of 
 men upon a common descent from Abraham, but upon 4 
 common descent from God. 
 
 It is not difficult to see what follows from this change 
 of style. By substituting the Father in Heaven for father 
 Abraham, Christ made morality universal. This phrase, 
 which places not a certain number of men, but all men, 
 in the relation of brotherhood to each other, destroys at 
 once the partition-wall between Jew and Gentile, Greek 
 and barbarian, German and Welsh, white man and Negro, 
 or under whatever names the families of the earth have 
 justified and legalised the savage instinct of antipathy. It 
 is not to be imagined that the thought was new or original ; 
 Christ was no theorist or philosopher, but a legislator. 
 The thought had existed in the mind of Socrates, when 
 he called himself a citizen of the world; it had become a 
 commonplace of the Stoic philosophy; it was taken up 
 by Roman jurists, and worked into the imperial legislation, 
 
The Christian Republic 105 
 
 But to work it into the hearts and consciences of men 
 required a much higher and rarer power, the power of a 
 Tuler, not of a philosopher. It may have been the thought 
 of a Julianus or a Papinianus that all the Roman world 
 had a right to Roman citizenship; but it was the Czsar, 
 Antoninus Caracalla, who gave the right; and, in like 
 manner, what a Socrates and a Zeno and many Hebrew 
 prophets had claimed for men, was given to them by this 
 Edict from the Mount. 
 
 The first law, then, of the Kingdom of God, is that all 
 men, however divided from each other by blood or 
 language, have certain mutual duties arising out of their * 
 common relation to God. It may, however, be urged 
 that this law was superfluous. Without denying the 
 = that at an earlier time nations had regarded éach 
 
 
 
 ther as natural enemies, without maintaining that the 
 hilosophic doctrine of a unity in the human race had had 
 a practical influence, it may still be urged that the 
 oman Empire had already realised that unity which 
 hilosophers had imagined and to which Christ now gives 
 sanction. By the Roman conquests a number of 
 different nations had been brought together and united 
 ander a common government. In the period immediately 
 succeeding their subjugation they had, no doubt, been 
 reated by their conquerors with insolent oppression. It 
 was plain that proconsuls and propretors had little sense 
 af duty in regard to their subjects. The principal object 
 af their government was to preserve to the state its ac- 
 quisition, and the secondary object to reap some personal 
 
 vantage from it. But time had produced a great im- 
 ovement. The sense of duty, which at first was want- 
 ng, had been awakened. A morality not founded on 
 jlood-relation had certainly come into existence. The 
 oman citizenship had been thrown open to nations 
 vhich were not of Roman blood. A hundred years 
 efore the Sermon on the Mount was delivered Cicero 
 iad roused public indignation against an unjust and 
 apacious propretor. Since that time foreigners had 
 en admitted by the Roman state to the highest civic 
 ionours. And in the centuries that followed, the process 
 
106 Ecce Homo | 
 
 by which nations were being fused into one universal 
 society went steadily forward without any help from 
 Christian maxims. So signally, so much more than in 
 later and Christian ages, were national distinctions ob- 
 literated under the Empire, that men of all nations and 
 languages competed freely under the same political 
 system for the highest honours of the state and of litera- 
 ture. The good Aurelius and the great Trajan were 
 Spaniards. So were Seneca and Martial. Severus was 
 an African. The leading jurists were of Oriental ex- 
 traction. 
 
 All this is true. A number of nations which had before 
 waged incessant war with one another had been forced 
 into a sort of unity. What court-poets call a golden age 
 had set in. Round the whole shore of the Mediterranean 
 Sea, and northward to the Danube and beyond the British 
 Channel, national antipathies had been suppressed, and 
 war had ceased, while the lives of men were regulated by 
 an admirable code of laws. Yet, except to court-poets 
 this age did not seem golden to those who lived in it. On 
 the contrary, they said it was something worse than ar 
 iron age; there was no metal from which they could name 
 it. Never did men live under such a crushing sense 0: 
 degradation, never did they look back with more bitte! 
 regret, never were the vices that spring out of despair st 
 rife, never was sensuality cultivated more methodically 
 never did poetry curdle so readily into satire, never wai 
 genius so much soured by cynicism, and never wa 
 calumny so abundant or so gross or so easily believed 
 If morality depended on laws, or happiness could b 
 measured by comfort, this would have been the mos 
 glorious era in the past history of mankind. It was i 
 fact one of the meanest and foulest, because a tone 0 
 spirit is necessary to morality, and self-respect is needfu 
 to happiness. 
 
 Ancient morality, as it has been already remarked, wa 
 essentially national and exclusive. Its creed was that 
 man is born not for himself, but for his parents, hi 
 family, and the state. The state was surrounded b 
 others with which, unless some treaty had been concludec 
 
The Christian Republic 107 
 
 it was at war. To do as much good as possible to one’s 
 own state, and as much harm as possible to all other 
 ‘States, was therefore the whole duty of a man. Those 
 who performed this duty manfully might look for the 
 protection of the gods who lived in temples built for 
 them within the walls of the city, and who were feasted 
 and enriched with the spoils of other nations. Now this 
 whole scheme of morality had been overturned by the 
 Roman conquests. For they had destroyed the very 
 principle of nationality both among conquerors and con- 
 quered. Among the conquered nations, for their gods 
 had left them, and their freedom, which, as they said 
 themselves, was half their virtue, and their isolation, 
 which was the other half, were taken away. Among the 
 Romans themselves, for they had been compelled to raise 
 the conquered to their own level, and they knew not 
 what to make of their new condition when their own 
 country no longer required to be defended or enriched, 
 and there were scarcely any more foreign countries to 
 be invaded. Yet, their poets thought, they might at 
 least have occupied themselves with conquering these. 
 “Shame on you!” says Lucan, “ You turned your arms 
 against each other, when you might have been sacking 
 Babylon.” 
 
 __ The nations were thus forced into a unity for which 
 they were not prepared. Ethnic morality, the light under 
 which their fathers had lived, which had given them 
 self-respect, strength in hardships, and a sense of satis- 
 faction in the hour of death, was now useless, and uni- 
 versal morality was a thing unknown, or at least untried. 
 On this new path they were cheered by no great memories, 
 guided by no acknowledged rules. When they treated a 
 foreigner as a fellow-citizen, the spirits of their fathers 
 seemed to reproach them, and they derived but cold com- 
 fort from the approval of Stoic philosophers. Men did 
 what was right with the feeling that they were doing 
 wrong. The most mortal evil that can befall mankind 
 had befallen them—conscience took the wrong side. 
 
 _ It was not a repetition of the Stoic maxim in more 
 emphatic terms that purified the human conscience. It 
 
€ 
 
 ] 
 108 Ecce Homo ; 
 
 was the personality of Christ exciting a veneration and 
 worship which effaced in the minds of his followers their 
 hereditary and habitual worships. No theory, says a 
 Greek poet, will throw down ancestral traditions. This 
 is true; but they can be overthrown by a passionate 
 personal devotion. Father Abraham, seceding from his 
 Chaldean community in obedience to a divine Call, and 
 thus dividing Jew from Gentile as strongly as he united 
 Jew with Jew, would have resisted many generations of 
 Rabbinical teachers. Father Aineas bearing from the 
 flames of Troy the venerated symbols of Roman unity 
 and isolation would have been too strong for the Stoi 
 philosophy. Both alike faded like phantoms, both alike 
 were superannuated, the moment the heart is touched 
 And in order that those who worshipped his persor 
 might not forget his fundamental law, Christ assumed ¢ 
 title expressing the universality of his dominion, a 
 kings have often borne titles taken from the nations the} 
 have added to the empire, and called himself the Son o 
 Man. 
 
 How opportune this Edict of Comprehension was wi 
 may learn by considering for a moment the writings o 
 Juvenal. This poet reflects the deep dissatisfaction, th 
 bitter sense of degeneracy and degradation, which charac 
 terised his age. Now what is the ground of his despon 
 dency? what provokes the savage indignation, whic 
 made him a satirist? If we examine, we shall find tha 
 it is one and the same grievance which inspires almos 
 every fierce tirade, namely, the mixture of races. Lif 
 seems to him not worth having when the Roman canno 
 walk the Via Sacra unelbowed by Greeks and Syrians 
 All distinctions, he complains, are lost; the Roma 
 worships the Egyptian monster-deities whom his ow 
 national gods vanquished at Actium; Orontes emptie 
 itself into Tiber; it is time for a Roman to turn his bac 
 on his own city when it has become a thing of no accour 
 that his infancy breathed the air of Aventine and was fe 
 upon the Sabine berry. Now this very writer is a Stoi 
 familiar of necessity with the speculations which made th 
 wise and good of all nations citizens alike in the city 
 
: . The Christian Republic 109 
 
 God. So little power had any such philosophic theory 
 to supply the place of a morality founded on usage, on 
 filial reverence, on great and dear examples. Yet that 
 theory, if it had presented itself to him, not as an ambi- 
 tious speculation of philosophers, but as a sober account 
 of an actual fact, would have dried up the source of his 
 satire. He would not have regretted the downfall of 
 national distinctions, if they had been abolished by an 
 authority equal in his mind to that which had created 
 them. To minds perplexed like his it was, therefore, the 
 beginning of a new life and hope when a new Romulus 
 gathered into a new republic the chaos of nations, The 
 city of God, of which the Stoics doubtfully and feebly 
 spoke, was now set up before the eyes of men. It was no 
 insubstantial city, such as we fancy in the clouds, no in- 
 visible pattern such as Plato thought might be laid up in 
 heaven, but a visible corporation whose members met 
 together to eat bread and drink wine, and into which they 
 were initiated by bodily immersion in water. Here the 
 Gentile met the Jew whom he had been accustomed to 
 regard as an enemy of the human race; the Roman met 
 the lying Greek sophist, the Syrian slave the gladiator 
 born beside the Danube. In brotherhood they met, the 
 natural birth and kindred of each forgotten, the baptism 
 alone remembered in which they had been born again to 
 God and to each other. 
 
 _ The mention of slaves and gladiators reminds us that 
 ethnic morality had, besides putting discord between 
 states, created certain positive institutions. As under 
 that system obligations subsisted only between blood- 
 relations, and each tribe might without provocation or 
 pretext attack and slaughter any foreign community, 
 so had it the right of reducing foreigners to slavery. 
 Whether death or slavery should be inflicted on the con- 
 quered enemy was, in fact, not a question of morality or 
 mercy, but simply of calculation. In either case the 
 Captive was deprived of life so far as life is a valuable or 
 desirable possession; if he was allowed to exist, it was 
 not for his own sake, but as a property more or less 
 valuable to his master. Not that the lot of the slave was 
 
IIO Ecce Homo 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 always or inevitably miserable; natural kindness, whi 
 was not killed but only partially paralysed by ethni 
 morality, and which was always essentially Christi 
 might indefinitely and in an indefinite number of instan 
 mitigate the bitterness of his lot; but theoretically he 
 no more claim to consideration or care at the hand of 
 master, no more right to happiness, than if he had be 
 slain at the moment of his capture. Everywhere th 
 throughout the Roman world there was a class of outcas 
 whom it was supposed lawful to treat with heartless cruel 
 such as would have been held unlawful if the objects of it 
 had been fellow-citizens. The ground on which this right 
 had originally been founded was that the class in question 
 consisted either of prisoners taken in war, or of the de 
 scendants of such prisoners; and that as they were pro- 
 tected by no treaties, their lives and fortunes were at the 
 disposal of their captors, or of others to whom the rights 
 of the captor had passed by purchase. 
 
 Now although Christ never, so far as we know, had 
 occasion to pronounce judgment on the question of 
 slavery, yet we do not require the testimony of his earliest 
 followers (declaring that in Christ Jesus there is neither 
 bond nor free) to assure us that, considered in this sense, 
 slavery could not be reconciled with his law. The Edict 
 of Comprehension conferred citizenship upon the whole 
 outcast class. Under it, whatever law of mutual help 
 and consideration had obtained between citizen and 
 citizen, began to obtain between the citizen and his slaves. 
 The words “ foreign ”’ and “ barbarous ”’ lost their meaning, 
 all nations and tribes were gathered within the pomeerium 
 of the city of God; and on the baptised earth the Rhine 
 and the Thames became as Jordan, and every suller 
 desert-girdled settlement of German savages as sacred as 
 Jerusalem. 
 
 Therefore it is that St. Paul, writing to Philemon, ex- 
 horts him to receiye back Onesimus “no longer as a servant 
 but as a brother beloved.” It may, however, surprise us 
 that he does not exhort Philemon to emancipate him 
 But this does not seem to occur to the apostle; and if 
 has been made matter of complaint against the Christiar 
 
The Christian Republic II! 
 
 perch, that, though it announced principle fundament- 
 ally irreconcilable with slavery, it never pronounced the 
 institution itself unlawful. Nor can it be denied that, 
 instead of telling the slave that he was wronged, and ex- 
 horting him in the name of human nature, degraded in 
 his person, to take the first opportunity of shaking off 
 the yoke, the first Christian teachers exhorted him to 
 obedience, and declared it particularly meritorious to be 
 submissive to a cruel and unreasonable master, while, on 
 the other hand, they exhorted the masters not to set their 
 slaves free, but simply to treat them well. 
 
 _ The explanation of this is, that under the name of 
 slavery two essentially different institutions were con- 
 founded, only one of which was irreconcilable with Chris- 
 lian principle. Slavery may mean the degradation of a 
 person into a thing, the condition of a man who has no 
 claims upon his fellow-men. This is essentially monstrous, 
 and has always been condemned by Christianity. But 
 t may mean merely a condition of dependence, differing 
 rom that of a free servant only ‘in its being compulsory, 
 and in the rights of the master being transferable by pur- 
 chase. The latter kind of slavery does 
 
 he theory of ethnic morality; it does 
 lave has rights or claims upon his masters. it depends 
 ipon the assumption of a natural inferiority in the slave 
 ncapacitating him for judging of his own rights or for 
 iving in happiness except under guardianship or restraint. 
 Now, as Christianity, in asserting the unity of the human 
 ace, and their equality in the sight of God and Christ, 
 lid not declare war upon the social system which arranges 
 nen according to “ degree, priority, and place,” and binds 
 hem together by ties of loyalty and obedience, as it 
 lid not deny, but strongly confirmed, the authority of 
 he father over the child and the husband over the 
 vife, an authority grounded on a similar assumption 
 f a natural inferiority and incapacity for liberty in the 
 vorman and child, it acted consistently in withholding 
 iberty from the slave while it gave him citizenship. As 
 t often happens that a usage introduced for one reason is 
 ifterwards retained for another, so had slavery, originally 
 
 
 
 
112 Ecce Homo ‘ 
 
 p 
 the most savage abuse of ethnic morality, come to be 
 differently understood and differently defended. The 
 servile condition has a natural tendency to degrade humar 
 nature; of the slaves of antiquity a large proportion be 
 longed originally to the lowest and rudest nations; 
 from these two causes it was a patent and undeniable fact 
 that the slave population was in an incalculable degret 
 inferior to the free. It might reasonably be considerec 
 rebellion against an ordinance of nature to give freedom 
 to those who appeared so little fit for it; and if it seem: 
 to us a false and cruel argument to turn the consequenct 
 of slavery into a justification of it, and to pronounce thi 
 slave naturally incapable of liberty because he had beet 
 artificially incapacitated for it, yet we must remembe 
 that the social speculations of antiquity were seldom 
 dictated by philanthropy, and we must not expect th 
 refined tenderness of adult Christianity from its earlies 
 developments. 
 
 False and cruel to a certain extent the argument was 
 but if the earliest Christian teachers had rejected i 
 absolutely, and inferred from their Master’s Law o 
 Comprehension that all men are not only to be respecte 
 alike, but to be treated in the same manner, put in posses 
 sion of the same privileges, directed to seek happines 
 in the same pursuits, they would have run into the oppe 
 site extreme. Christ declares all men alike to be th 
 sons of God, and the least of mankind he adopts as | 
 brother. By doing so he makes all mankind equal t 
 this extent, that the interests and the happiness of a 
 members of the race are declared to be of equal im 
 portance. But he does not declare them to be equall 
 gifted. Each individual is equally entitled to whateve 
 dignity he is capable of supporting; but the early Church 
 at least, was in possession of no proof that all men ar 
 equally capable of sustaining the dignity of a free cor 
 dition. If this discovery has been made since, there wa 
 at that time nothing that could suggest it. Dependence 
 and subjection were then regarded as the natural conditio 
 of women; the son under the Roman Law was literall 
 his father’s slave, incapable of owning a penny of person: 
 
: The Christian Republic 113 
 
 property, even though he might have held the highest 
 honours of the state. And if such appeared to the 
 Roman jurists to be a natural ordinance, even when there 
 was no visible inferiority between the father and the son 
 who was thus enslaved to him, who could question that 
 the slave population, visibly characterised by all the faults, 
 vices, and deficiencies that make men unfit for freedom, 
 were intended by nature to live under the control of 
 those whom she had made wise and intelligent? 
 In the Universal Republic therefore, while in one sense 
 there were no slaves, in another sense slavery was ad- 
 mitted. The position given to the outcast class was what 
 we may call citizenship without emancipation. Their wel- 
 fare was regarded as not less important than that of the 
 most exalted. They were Christ’s brothers, and he had 
 pronounced the solemn sentence, ‘“‘ Whoso offendeth one 
 of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for 
 im that a mill-stone should be hanged round his neck, 
 and that he should be cast into the depths of the sea.” 
 This sentence contained the abolition of all the horrible 
 pe of ancient slavery, the tortures of the ergastulum, 
 he gladiatorial show. But, notwithstanding, the slave 
 was left under a control which might be harsh and rigorous, 
 if harshness and rigour appear necessary, because it was 
 believed that men were called to different offices in life, 
 and that while it was the glory and dignity of some to feel 
 nothing between themselves and God, to others it was 
 given only to see God reflected in wiser and nobler spirits 
 than themselves. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 THE CHRISTIAN A LAW TO HIMSELF 
 
 Our investigation has led us to three conclusions r 
 specting Christ’s legislation:—/1, that he does not direc 
 us to adopt a private or isolated rule of life, but t 
 occupy ourselves with the affairs of the society; 2, tha’ 
 he expects us to merge our private interests absolutely i 
 those of this society; 3, that this society is not exclusive 
 but catholic or universal—that is, that all mankind havi 
 a right to admission to it.) Or we should rather say re 
 admission, for Christ does not regard the society as new 
 but rather as one which had subsisted from the beginnin; 
 in the Maker’s plan, but had been broken up through th 
 jealousies and narrowness of men. For this reason, thoug! 
 baptism is the essential condition of membership, ye 
 those who refuse baptism are not to be treated as th 
 foreigner would be treated under the system of ethni 
 morality, but to be pitied as fellow-citizens who madly re 
 fuse to take up their birthright, to be abandoned only afte 
 their perverseness has shown itself incorrigible, and eve 
 then not to be punished, but left to the judgment of Got 
 A universal society, then, being founded, and a li 
 strictly social and civic being enjoined upon its member 
 by what rule is this social life to be guided? How ai 
 Christians to behave towards each other? This questic 
 must be carefully separated from others which natural 
 connect themselves with it. We are not now concerne 
 with the constitution of the society, its system of magi 
 trates and public assemblies—questions which in fa 
 Christ left entirely to the decision of the society itsel 
 Nor do we here consider the injunctions which he la 
 upon them, so to speak, as a politician—for examp! 
 concerning the way in which they were to compo 
 114 | 
 
 cd 
 
The Christian a Law to Himself 115 
 
 hemselves towards the governments of the earth, or 
 vhat they were to do in times of persecution. Nor are 
 ve concerned at present with the theology of the society, 
 ior with its relation to God and Christ. When, however, 
 ve have gone through the recorded discourses and sayings 
 if Christ, and eliminated everything in them referring to 
 heology, or the occasional duties of the society, or arising 
 jut of the polemic in which Christ occasionally engaged 
 yith the Jewish doctors, we may be surprised to find how 
 mall is the residue which contains his system of morality. 
 “he truth is that he did not leave a code of morals in the 
 rdinary sense of the word—that is, an enumeration of 
 ctions prescribed and prohibited. Two or three pro- 
 ibitions, two or three commands, he is indeed recorded to 
 lave delivered, but on the greater number of questions 
 m which men require moral guidance he has left no 
 lirection whatever. 
 
 : Are we then, after being brought together into a uni- 
 ersal society, left without a rule by which to guide our 
 atercourse in this society? Not so; we are to consider 
 yhat is the origin of laws in human communities. They 
 rise from a certain instinct in human nature, which it is 
 jot necessary here to analyse, but which supports itself 
 y a constant struggle against other anarchic and lawless 
 astincts, and which is so far the same in all men that all 
 he systems of law which have ever appeared among men 
 re, in certain grand features, alike. This we may call the 
 aw-making power in men. Now anyone set to organise 
 ew community, if he had it in his power either to deliver 
 n elaborate and minute code of rules to the community, 
 r to increase indefinitely the law-making power in each 
 rember of it, would certainly without hesitation choose 
 he latter course. For, not to speak of the trouble that 
 yould be saved both in compiling the code at first and in 
 emodelling it as new circumstances demanded new pro- 
 isions, the morality of the citizens would be of a much 
 igher and more vital kind if they could be made, as it 
 fere, a law to themselves, and could always hear, in the 
 inguage of Hebrew poetry, a voice behind them saying, 
 This is the way, walk ye in it.” 
 
 
 
116 Ecce Homo 
 
 Now this was what Christ undertook todo. Instead 
 giving laws to his Society, he would give to every mem 
 of it a power of making laws for himself. He frequen’ 
 repeated that to make the fruit of a tree good you m 
 put the tree into a healthy state, and, slightly altering 
 illustration, that fruit can only be expected from a 
 tree, not from a thistle or thorn. The meaning of th 
 plainly is that a man’s actions result from the state of hi 
 mind; that if that is healthy they will be right, and 
 not, they will be wrong. Such language was new in th 
 mouth of a legislator, but not at all new in itself. It we 
 an adoption of the style of philosophy. Philosophers ha 
 always made it their study to bring their minds into’ 
 healthy condition, “ frui emendato animo.” When, hoy 
 ever, we enquire what Christ considered a healthy col 
 dition of the mind to be, we do not find him in agreemet 
 with philosophers. The law-making power of whit 
 mention has been made, which, raised to predominance 
 issues in an unerring tact or instinct of right action, wi 
 differently conceived by him and by them. They placed 
 in reason, and regarded passion as the antagonistic powi 
 which must be controlled and coerced by it. Christ al: 
 considers it necessary to control the passions, but he plac 
 them under the dominion not of reason but of a new ar 
 more powerful passion. The healthy mind of the phil 
 sophers is in a composed, tranquil, and impartial state; 1 
 healthy mind of Christ is in an elevated and enthusiast 
 state. Both are exempt from perturbation and unsteac 
 ness, but the one by being immovably fixed, the oth 
 by being always powerfully attracted in one direction. 
 
 This is collected from the following facts. Christ w 
 once asked to pronounce which commandment in the la 
 was the greatest. He answered by quoting a senten 
 from the Book of Deuteronomy, in which devoted love’ 
 God and man is solemnly enjoined upon the Israelite, at 
 by declaring that upon this commandment the whe 
 Mosaic and prophetic legislation depended. In oth 
 words, he declared an ardent, passionate, or devoted sta 
 of mind to be the root of virtue. Again, he directed o 
 who declared that he had kept all the commandmen 
 
The Christian a Law to Himself 117 
 
 : 
 nd asked what remained for him to do, if he would be 
 erfect, to sell all his goods and give them to the poor, 
 nd devote himself to the kingdom of God. What does 
 ris imply but that the morality which is sound must be 
 o mere self-restraint, no mechanical movement within 
 escribed rules, no mere punctiliousness, but ardent and 
 ctive, exceeding duty and outstripping requirement? 
 le taught the same doctrine in a striking form when he 
 " his followers exhibit their virtue conspicuously, so 
 at all might see it and none might mistake it. They 
 ere to be, he said, a city set on a hill, a candle set on 
 candlestick and lighting the whole room, salt with 
 strong taste in it. These exhortations are peculiarly 
 riking, because no teacher has ever insisted more 
 rongly than Christ on the unobtrusive character of true 
 irtue. We are not, he says, to sound a trumpet before 
 5; if we would pray we are to go into a closet and shut 
 e door behind us; we are to do good by stealth; our 
 ft hand is not to know what our right hand does. These 
 wo sets of injunctions appear, as is often the case in the 
 yany-sided wisdom of Christ, to be in direct contradiction 
 » each other. But they are not really so; if taken 
 ygether there results from them the following perfectly 
 ear and consistent doctrine: True goodness does not 
 
 udy to attract attention; nevertheless, wherever it ~ 
 
 ppears, such is the warmth, fire, and energy inherent ' 
 | it, that it does and must attract attention. And so 
 rongly does Christ feel this, that he solemnly declares 
 1e virtue which does not make itself felt and recognised 
 ) be worth nothing. If the very salt have lost its taste, 
 hat remains? it is good for nothing but to be thrown 
 way and trodden under foot. 
 
 All other faults or deficiencies he could tolerate, but 
 e could have neither part nor lot with men destitute of 
 ithusiasm. He thought it a bad, almost a fatal sign, in 
 ne who proposed to become a disciple that he asked 
 ave first to bid farewell to his relations. Another asked 
 ermission to bury his father, and was advised to let the 
 ead (that is, those whose hearts were not animated by 
 ny strong passion or impulse) bury their dead. And once 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 118 Ecce Homo 
 
 when it seemed that the magic of his presence and wor 
 would draw his entire audience into the number of h 
 followers, alarmed lest he should find himself surround 
 by half-hearted or superficial and merely excitable 2 
 herents, he turned suddenly upon the crowd, and w 
 one of those startling expressions which he seldom, ¢ 
 yet like all great reformers sometimes, employed, declare 
 that he could receive no man who did not hate his fath 
 and mother and his own life. 
 
 These passages will help us to understand the allegory 
 of the strong man armed keeping secure possession of hi 
 palace until he is expelled by a stronger than himself 
 The strong man armed is the anarchic passions of humai 
 nature, against which the law-making power contend: 
 Nothing can control them, says Christ, but a stronge 
 passion still. And he goes on to explain that an empt 
 condition of mind, a quiescence or temporary absence 
 the anarchic passion, is a hollow and dangerous stat 
 The demon may leave his abode for a time, but he fin 
 no sustenance abroad, and so at last back he comes hung 
 and brings congenial guests with him. 
 
 It was fully understood in the early Church that 
 enthusiastic or elevated condition of mind was the dis 
 tinctive and essential mark of a Christian. St. Pau 
 having asked some converts whether they had receive 
 this divine inspiration since their conversion, and recei 
 for answer that they had not heard there was any suc 
 divine inspiration abroad, demanded in amazement wha 
 then they had been baptised into. i 
 
 Before we investigate the nature of the enthusiasm 0 
 divine inspiration which Christ proposed to kindle in th 
 minds of his disciples, let us consider what is involved i 
 the fact that he made morality dependent upon such ¢ 
 enthusiasm, and not upon any activity of the reasonin 
 power. It is the essence of morality to place a restrair 
 upon our natural desires in such a manner that in certak 
 cases we refrain from doing that which we have a natura 
 desire to do, or force ourselves to do that to which we fee 
 a repugnance. Now, he who refrains from gratifying : 
 wish on some ground of reason, at the same time feels thi 
 
The Christian 2a Law to Himself 119 
 
 ish as strongly as if he gratified it. The object seems 
 0 him desirable, he cannot think of it without wishing 
 or it; he can, indeed, force his mind not to dwell upon 
 the object of desire, but so long as the mind dwells upon 
 t so long it desires it. On the other hand, when a 
 tronger passion controls a weaker, the weaker altogether 
 — to be felt. For example, let us suppose two men, 
 ne of whom has learnt and believes that he owes fidelity 
 so his country, but has no ardour of patriotism, and the 
 Dther an enthusiastic patriot. Suppose a bribe offered to 
 these two men to betray their country. Neither will take 
 the bribe. But the former, if we suppose the bribe large 
 enough, will feel his fingers itch as he handles the gold; 
 his mind will run upon the advantages it would bring him, 
 
 e things he might buy, the life he might lead, if he had 
 a money; he will find it prudent to divert his mind 
 from the subject, to plunge desperately into occupations 
 hich may absorb him until the time of temptation has 
 a The other will have no such feelings; the gold 
 will not make his fingers itch with desire, but perhaps 
 ather seem to scorch them; he will not picture to him- 
 self happiness or pleasure as a consequence of taking it, 
 but, on the contrary, insupportable degradation and 
 a ; his mind will need no distraction, it will be per- 
 ectly at ease however long the period of temptation may 
 continue. 
 The difference between the men is briefly this, that the 
 one has his anarchic or lower desires under control, the 
 other feels no such desires; the one, so far as he is vir- 
 tuous, is incapable of crime, the other, so far as he is 
 virtuous, is incapable of temptation. 
 _ Now, as Christ demands virtue of the latter or enthu- 
 siastic kind, we shall be prepared to find that he pro- 
 hibits evil desires as well as wrong acts. Accordingly, 
 it is one of the most remarkable features of his moral 
 teaching that he does not command us to regulate or 
 control our unlawful desires, but pronounces it unlawful 
 to have such desires at all. A considerable part of the 
 Sermon on the Mount is devoted to the exposition of this 
 doctrine. Christ quotes several prohibitions from the 
 
 
 
120 Ecce Homo 
 
 Mosaic law, and proceeds to declare the desire from which 
 each prohibited act springs equally culpable with the 
 itself. This is at first sight perplexing, because the desire 
 out of which an unlawful act springs is often or generally 
 a mere natural appetite which in itself is perfectly inno- 
 cént. The truth is, that Christ requires that such natural 
 appetite, when the gratification of it would be unlawful, 
 be not merely left ungratified, but altogether destroyed, 
 and a feeling of aversion substituted for it by the enthu- 
 siasm of virtue within the soul. 
 
 This higher form of goodness, though of course it had 
 existed among the heathen nations, yet had never among 
 them been sufficiently distinguished from the lower to 
 receive a separate name. The earliest Christians, like the 
 Christians of later times, felt a natural repugnance to 
 describe the ardent enthusiastic goodness at which they 
 aimed by the name of virtue. This name suited exactly 
 the kind of goodness which Christ expressly commanded 
 them to rise above. They therefore adopted another. 
 Regarding the ardour they felt as an express inspiration 
 or spiritual presence of God within them, they borrowed 
 from the language of religious worship a word for which 
 our equivalent is “‘ holy ”; and the inspiring power they 
 consistently called the Spirit of Holiness or the Holy 
 Spirit. Accordingly, while a virtuous man is one who 
 controls and coerces the anarchic passions within him so 
 as to conform his actions to law, a holy man is one in 
 whom a passionate enthusiasm absorbs and annuls the 
 anarchic passions altogether, so that no internal struggle 
 takes place, and the lawful action is that which presents 
 itself first and seems the one most natural and most easy 
 to be done. 
 
 But now, of what nature is the enthusiasm Christ 
 requires? We have seen that a particular passion may 
 raise a man above a particular sin. The enthusiastic 
 patriot is incapable of treason. He who passionately loves 
 one woman may be made by that love incapable of a 
 licentious thought; and an elevated self-love may make 
 it impossible for a man to lie. But these passions are 
 partial in their operation. The patriot, incapable of 
 
The Christian a Law to Himself 121 
 
 ipablic treason, may be capable of private treachery. The 
 chaste man may be a traitor. The honest man may be 
 cruel. What is the passion, if such a passion there be, 
 which can lift a man clean out of all sin whatever? 
 
 As it has been shown that Christ founded a society the 
 
 peculiarity of which is that it was intended to include the 
 whole human race, it may occur to us that the esprit de 
 corps which would naturally spring up in such a society 
 may be the passion we seek. It would be a passion of 
 the same nature as patriotism, but without its exclusive- 
 ness. For the patriot, though incapable of injuring his 
 own country, is not less but perhaps more capable of 
 being unjust or treacherous towards foreign nations, while 
 the Christian patriot, whose country is the world, will, it 
 May be supposed, be equally incapable of wrong-doing 
 towards all alike. 
 _ But it must be remembered that an enthusiastic attach- 
 Ment to a state or a community is very different from an 
 attachment to the members of that community. The 
 patriot, it has just been said, is not by any means above 
 the temptation to private injustice or treachery, nor will 
 he become more so when his country is the world. An 
 example was given in the first French Revolution of the 
 operation of this passion of universal patriotism. It was 
 in the cause not so much of France as of universal man 
 that the revolutionary party agitated and fought, and they 
 displayed a disregard of private rights and individual 
 happiness quite as catholic as their philanthropy. Uni- 
 versal patriotism, taken by itself, is not Christianity but 
 Jacobinism. 
 
 The all-purifying passion must, it is plain, be a passion 
 for individuals. Let us imagine, then, a love for every 
 human being. This answers the conditions of the prob- 
 lem to this extent, that he who loves everybody will of 
 course willingly injure nobody, that is, will not commit 
 sin. And if, leaving conjecture, we turn again to Christ’s 
 discourses, we find him, as it appears, mentioning this 
 very passion as the essence of all legislation, or as what 
 we called above the law-making power in man. The 
 great commandment of the law, he says, is to love God 
 

 
 
 
 
 122 Ecce Homo 
 
 with all your heart and your neighbour as yourself, an 
 the maxim for practice corresponding to this law of feel 
 ‘ing is, ‘‘ Do unto others as you would that they should d 
 to you.” 
 Here then, it appears, is our panacea for all diseases o 
 the soul; here is that passion which once conceived 1 
 the breast is to make laws superfluous, to redeem o 
 nature, to make “ our days bright and serene, love bei 
 an unerring light and joy its own security.” We are to 
 love every human being alike. The discovery, it cannot 
 be concealed, seems rather an empty one. We will not 
 at present enquire where are the agencies which are to 
 excite in us so strange a passion: men do conceive strange 
 attachments; they learn, for example, to love their 
 country, though it seems surprising that such an ab- 
 straction should excite so much interest. But is not the 
 feeling now enjoined upon us one plainly impossible 
 because self-contradictory? There exist men of opposite 
 qualities. Love is a name we give to a feeling aroused 
 in us by certain qualities, and hatred is the feeling aroused 
 by qualities of the opposite kind. How then is it possible 
 to love at the same time persons of opposite qualities? 
 Obvious and forcible as this objection seems, there is 
 something in us which rebels against it as soon as it is 
 stated. Manifest as it may seem that we can only love 
 what is lovely, and that what is hateful must, in the nature 
 of things, be hated, we are yet aware that practically our 
 feelings towards our fellow-creatures are more complex. 
 It is not merely that almost all men have qualities we can 
 love even when the hateful qualities preponderate, nor 
 merely that we are conscious how our self-interest makes 
 many things hateful to us which are not hateful in them- 
 selves and would not be so to us if our self-love were 
 diminished or at rest, but even in the extreme case, when 
 our hatred seems most just and necessary, when monsters 
 appear in the form of man whose crimes strike us with 
 horror, even for such we sometimes detect in ourselves a 
 feeling opposite to hatred. When they fall into calamity 
 and death, a feeling of awe, aye, of pity, mixes with our 
 rejoicing. Even in primitive times, when men’s feelings 
 
 . 
 
: The Christian a Law to Himself 123 
 
 u 
 
 : towards each other were for the most part simple and clear, 
 pen hatred was unmixed and had not begun to lose its 
 
 “raven gloss ” we find these pangs of tenderness. When 
 ‘the housekeeper Euryclea was admitted by Ulysses into 
 the hall where the oppressors of the house lay slaughtered, 
 her first impulse, woman though she was—such was the 
 fierceness of the time—was to utter a shout of triumph. 
 ‘But the hero stopped her and said, “ Rejoice in silence, 
 woman, and restrain thyself, and utter no shout: it is 
 ‘not right to triumph over slaughtered men.’ 
 
 If we consider these singular relentings, the thoughts 
 with which they are accompanied, and the words in which 
 they most naturally express themselves, we shall find that 
 it is the ideal of man in each man which calls them forth. 
 Bq we think of the fallen criminal or tyrant we say, 
 “He too was once an innocent child,” or “ Who knows 
 what he might have been had circumstances been more 
 favourable or temptation less!”’ In thoughts like these 
 we betray that there is a third kind of love which we may 
 bear to our fellow-creatures, and which is neither that 
 love of the whole race which has been called above 
 Jacobinism, nor that independent love of each individual 
 which appears impossible when we consider that different 
 individuals exhibit opposite qualities. This third feeling 
 is the love not of the race nor of the individual, but of the 
 Tace in the individual; it is the love not of all men nor 
 yet of every man, but of the man in every man. 
 
 This ought not to be regarded as a mere Platonic dream. 
 Though it finds expression most easily and naturally in 
 Platonic language, it is in reality one of the most hack- 
 theyed and familiar of truths. There is a fellow-feeling, 
 a yearning of kindness towards a human being as such, 
 which is not dependent upon the character of the par- 
 ticular human being who excites it, but rises before that 
 character displays itself, and does not at once or altogether 
 subside when it exhibits itself as unamiable. We save a 
 man from drowning whether he is amiable or the contrary, 
 and we should consider it right to do so even though we 
 knew him to be a very great criminal, simply because he 
 isaman. By examples like this we may discover that a 
 
 
 
 
 
124 Ecce Homo 
 
 love for humanity as such exists, and that it is a natural 
 passion which would be universal if special causes did no 
 extinguish it in special cases, but like all other h 
 passions, it may be indefinitely increased and purified 
 training and by extraordinary agencies that may be 
 brought to bear upon it. Now this was the passion upon 
 which Christ seized, and treating it as the law-making 
 power or root of morality in human nature, trained and 
 developed it into that Christian spirit which received the 
 new name of aya. 
 
 The objection is then removed which represents Christ’s 
 rule of universal love as impracticable because different 
 men may exhibit opposite qualities, for it is shown that 
 there is a kind of love which may be felt for unamiable 
 persons. And though it must be admitted that there is 
 an extreme degree of unamiability which quenches this 
 love in us, yet it is conceivable that when the passion has 
 been cultivated and strengthened by the means which 
 Christ may employ, it may become a passion in the 
 strictest sense all-embracing. What these means were, 
 and what character the passion assumes in its full develop- 
 ment, it is now necessary to consider. 
 
 
 

 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE ENTHUSIASM OF HUMANITY 
 
 I 
 
 
 
 THE first method of training this passion which Christ 
 employed was the direct one of making it a point of duty 
 to feel it. To love one’s neighbour as oneself was, he said, 
 the first and greatest Jaw. And in the Sermon on the 
 Mount he requires the passion to be felt in such strength 
 _as to include those whom we have most reason to hate— 
 our enemies and those who maliciously injure us—and 
 | delivers an imperative precept, “‘ Love your enemies.” 
 __ It has been shown that to do this is not, as might at 
 first appear, in the nature of things impossible, but the 
 further question suggests itself, Can it be done to order? 
 Has the verb to love really an imperative mood? Cer- 
 tainly, to say that we can love at pleasure, and by a mere 
 effort of will summon up a passion which does not arise 
 of itself, is to take up a paradoxical and novel position. 
 Yet if this position be really untenable, how is it possible 
 to obey Christ’s commands? 
 
 The difficulty seems to admit of only one solution. 
 We are not commanded to create by an effort of will a 
 feeling of love in ourselves which otherwise would have 
 had no existence; the feeling must arise naturally or it 
 cannot arise at all. But a number of causes which are 
 ‘Temovable may interfere to prevent the feeling from 
 arising or to stifle it as it arises, and we are commanded 
 to remove these hindrances. It is natural to man to love 
 his kind, and Christ commands us only to give nature 
 play. He does not expect us to procure for ourselves 
 hearts of some new supernatural texture, but merely the 
 heart of flesh for the heart of stone. 
 
 What, then, are the causes of this paralysis of the heart? 
 ‘The experience of human ‘life furnishes us readily with 
 : 125 
 
 
 
126 Ecce Homo 
 
 the answer. It constantly happens that one whose aff 
 tions were originally not less lively than those of mos 
 men is thrown into the society of persons destitute of 
 sympathy or tenderness. In this society each person is 
 either totally indifferent to his neighbour or secretly en- 
 deavouring to injure or overreach him. The new-comer 
 is at first open-hearted and cordial; he presumes every 
 one he meets to be a friend, and is disposed to serve and 
 expects to be served by all alike. But his advances are 
 met by some with cautious reserve, by others with icy 
 coldness, by others with hypocritical warmth followed by 
 treacherous injury, by others with open hostility. The 
 heart which naturally grew warm at the mere sight of a 
 human being, under the operation of this new experience 
 slowly becomes paralysed. There seats itself gradually in 
 the man’s mind a presumption concerning every new face 
 that it is the face of an enemy, and a habit of gathering 
 himself into an attitude of self-defence whenever he deals 
 with a fellow-creature. If when this new disposition has 
 grown confirmed and habitual, he be introduced into a 
 society of an opposite kind and meet with people as 
 friendly and kind as he himself was originally, he will not 
 at first be able to believe in their sincerity, and the old 
 kindly affections from long disuse will be slow to rouse 
 themselves within him. Now to such a person the im- 
 perative mood of the verb to love may fairly be used. He 
 may properly be told to make an effort, to shake off the 
 distrust that oppresses him, not to suffer unproved sus- 
 picions, causeless jealousies, to stifle by the mere force of 
 prejudice and mistaken opinion the warmth of feeling 
 natural to him. 
 
 But we shall have a closer illustration if we suppose the 
 cold-hearted society itself to be addressed by a preacher 
 who wishes to bring them to a better mind. He too may 
 fairly use the imperative mood of the verb to love. For 
 he may say, “‘ Your mutual coldness does not spring from 
 an original want of the power of sympathy. [If it did, 
 admonitions would indeed be useless. But it springs from 
 a habit of thought which you have formed, a maxim 
 which has been received among you, that all men are 
 
| The Enthusiasm of Humanity 127 
 
 evoted to self-interest, that kindness is but feebleness 
 and invites injury. If you will at once and by a common 
 act throw off this false opinion of human nature, and 
 adopt a new plan of life for yourselves and new expecta- 
 tions of each other, you will find the old affections natural 
 to all of you, weakened indeed and chilled, but existing 
 and capable of being revived by an effort.” 
 
 Such a preacher might go further and say, “If but a 
 small minority are convinced by my words, yet let that 
 minority for itself abandon the selfish theory, let it re- 
 nounce the safety which that theory affords in dealing 
 with selfish men, let it treat the enemy as if he were indeed 
 the friend he ought to be, let it dare to forego retaliation 
 and even self-defence. By this means it will shame many 
 into kindness ; by despising self-interest for itself it will 
 sometimes make it seem despicable to others, by sincerity 
 and persistency it will gradually convert the majority to 
 a higher law of intercourse. 
 
 The world has been always more or less like this cold- 
 hearted society; the natural kindness and fellow-feeling 
 of men have always been more or less repressed by low- 
 minded maxims and cynicism. But in the time of Christ, 
 
 and in the last decrepitude of ethnic morality, the selfish- 
 mess of human intercourse was much greater than the 
 present age can easily understand. That system of 
 morality, even in the times when it was powerful and in 
 many respects beneficial, had made it almost as much a 
 duty to hate foreigners as to love fellow-citizens. Plato. 
 congratulates the Athenians on having shown in their 
 relations to Persia, beyond all the other Greeks, ‘‘ a pure 
 and heartfelt hatred of the foreign nature.” 1 Instead of 
 opposing, it had sanctioned and consecrated the savage 
 instinct which leads us to hate whatever is strange or un- 
 intelligible, to distrust those who live on the further side 
 of a river, to suppose that those whom we hear talking 
 
 1 otrw 64 Tor T6 ye THs TédAEws yevvatoy Kal édeVOepov BEBardy Te 
 kal vyés €ort Kal PUoet wtcoBdpBapor ba 7d eiAikpwas elyar 
 EAnves Kal duryets BapBdpwr. . . . GAN adrol "ENAnves, od 
 puzoBapBapol olkoduev S0ev kaOapdy Topmioos EvTETHKE TH 
 mONEL THS GNNOTpLas PUG ews.—Plato, Menexenus, p. 245. 
 
128 Ecce Homo 
 
 
 
 
 together in a foreign tongue must be plotting some 
 chief against ourselves. The lapse of time and 
 fusion of races doubtless diminished this antipathy co 
 siderably, but at the utmost it could but be transform 
 into an icy indifference, for no cause was in operatio} 
 to convert it into kindness. On the other hand, 
 closeness of the bond which united fellow-citizens was 
 _ considerably relaxed. Common interests and common 
 dangers had drawn it close; these in the wide security of 
 the Roman Empire had no longer a place. It had 
 depended upon an imagined blood-relationship; fellow- 
 citizens could now no longer feel themselves to be united 
 by the tie of blood. Every town was full of resident 
 aliens and emancipated slaves, persons between whom 
 and the citizens nature had established no connection, 
 and whose presence in the city had originally been barely 
 tolerated from motives of expediency. The selfishness of 
 modern times exists in defiance of morality, in ancient 
 times it was approved, sheltered, and even in part en- 
 joined by morality. 
 
 We are therefore to consider the ancient world as 2 
 society of men in whom natural humanity existed but had 
 been, as it were, crusted or frosted over. Inveterate feuds 
 and narrow-minded local jealousies, arising out of an iso- 
 lated position or differences of language and institutions, 
 had created endless divisions between man and man. 
 And as the special virtues of antiquity, patriotism and all 
 that it implies, had been in a manner caused and fostered 
 by these very divisions, they were not regarded as evils 
 but rather cherished as essential to morality. Selfishness 
 therefore, was not a mere abuse or corruption arising out 
 of the infirmity of human nature, but a theory and almost 
 a part of moral philosophy. Humanity was cramped by 
 a mistaken prejudice, by a perverse presumption of the 
 intellect. In a case like this it was necessary and propel 
 to prescribe humanity by direct authoritative precept 
 Such a precept would have been powerless to create tht 
 feeling, nor would it have done much to protect it from 
 being overpowered by the opposite passion; but the oppo 
 site passion of selfishness was at this period justified by 
 
: The Enthusiasm of Humanity 129 
 
 authority and claimed to be on the side of reason and law. 
 Precept is fairly matched against precept, and what the 
 law of love and the golden rule did for mankind was to 
 dlace for the first time the love of man as man distinctly 
 n the list of virtues, to dissipate the exclusive prejudices 
 of ethnic morality, and to give selfishness the character 
 of sin. 
 
 _ When a theory of selfishness is rife in a whole com- 
 munity, it is a bold and hazardous step for a part of the 
 >ommunity to abandon it. For in the society of selfish 
 deople selfishness is simply self-defence; to renounce it is 
 0 evacuate one’s entrenched position, to surrender at 
 jiscretion to the enemy. If society is to disarm, it should 
 Jo so by common consent. Christ, however, though he 
 onfidently expected ultimately to gather all mankind 
 nto his society, did not expect to do so soon. Accord- 
 ngly he commands his followers not to wait for this con- 
 ummation, but, in spite of the hazardous nature of the 
 ee, to disarm at once. They are sent forth “ as sheep in 
 the midst of wolves.” Injuries they are to expect, but 
 hey are neither to shun nor to retaliate them. Harmless 
 ey are to be as doves. The discipline of suffering will 
 wean them more and more from self, and make the 
 of humanity freer within them; and sometimes 
 heir patience may shame the spoiler; he may grow 
 weary of rapacity which meets with no resistance, and be 
 nduced to envy those who can forego without reluctance 
 hat which he devotes every thought to acquire. 
 
 But we shall soon be convinced that Christ could not 
 lesign by a mere edict, however authoritative, to give this 
 yassion of humanity strength enough to make it a living 
 ind infallible principle of morality in every man, when we 
 onsider, first, what an ardent enthusiasm he demanded 
 rom his followers, and secondly, how frail and tender a 
 erm this passion naturally is in human nature. Widely 
 liffused indeed it is, and seldom entirely eradicated, but 
 or the most part, at least in the ancient world, it was 
 rushed under a weight of predominant passions and 
 nterests; it had seldom power enough to dictate any 
 ction, but made itself felt in faint misgivings and re- 
 
 I 
 
130 Ecce Homo 
 
 lentings, which sometimes restrained men from extrem 
 of cruelty. Like Enceladus under Aitna, it lay fettere 
 at the bottom of human nature, now and then maki 
 the mass above it quake by an uneasy change of posture, 
 To make this outraged and enslaved passion predominant, 
 to give it, instead of a veto rarely used, the whole power 
 of government, to train it from a dim misgiving reo | 
 clear and strong passion, required much more than 
 precept. The precept had its use; it could make me 
 feel it right to be humane and desire to be so, but it coul 
 never inspire them withan enthusiasm of humanity. Fro 
 what source was this inspiration to be derived? | 
 Humanity, we have already observed, is neither a love 
 for the whole human race, nor a love for each individual 
 of it, but a love for the race, or for the ideal of man, im 
 each individual. In other and less pedantic words, he 
 who is truly humane considers every human being a: 
 such interesting and important, and without waiting te 
 criticise each individual specimen, pays in advance t¢ 
 all alike the tribute of good wishes and sympathy. Now 
 this favourable presumption with regard to human beings 
 is not a causeless prepossession, it is no idle superstitior 
 of the mind, nor is it a natural instinct. It is a feeling 
 founded on the actual observation and discovery of in 
 teresting and noble qualities in particular human beings 
 and it is strong or weak in proportion as the person wh« 
 has the feeling has known many or few noble and amiabl 
 human beings. There are men who have been so unfor 
 tunate as to live in the perpetual society of the mean ant 
 the base; they have never, except in a few faint glimpses 
 seen anything glorious or good in human nature. Wit 
 these the feeling of humanity has a perpetual struggle fo 
 existence, their minds tend by a fatal gravitation to th 
 belief that the happiness or misery of such a paltry race i 
 wholly unimportant; they may arrive finally at a fixer 
 condition, in which it may be said of them without qualifi 
 cation, that ‘‘ man delights not them, nor woman neither. 
 In this final stage they are men who, beyond the routin 
 of life, should not be trusted, being “ fit for treason: 
 _ stratagems, and spoils.” On the other hand, there ar 
 
 ; 
 
 3 
 
: The Enthusiasm of Humanity 131 
 
 those whose lot it has been from earliest childhood to see 
 the fair side of humanity, who have been surrounded with 
 clear and candid countenances, in the changes of which 
 might be traced the working of passions strong and simple, 
 the impress of a firm and tender nature, wearing when it 
 looked abroad the glow of sympathy, and when i it looked 
 within the bloom of modesty. They have seen, and not 
 pnce or twice, a man forget himself; they have witnessed 
 devotion, unselfish Sorrow, unaffected delicacy, spon- 
 taneous charity, ingenuous self-reproach; and it may be 
 that on seeing a human being surrender for another’s 
 good not something but his uttermost all, they have dimly 
 suspected in human nature a glory connecting it with the 
 divine. In these the passion of humanity is warm and 
 ready to become on occasion a burning flame; their 
 whole minds are elevated, because they are possessed with 
 the dignity of that nature they share, and of the society 
 in the midst of which they move. 
 | But it is not absolutely necessary to humanity that a 
 man shall have seen many men whom he can respect. 
 The most lost cynic will get a new heart by learning 
 thoroughly to believe in the virtue of ome man. Our 
 estimate of human nature is in proportion to the best 
 specimen of it we have witnessed. This then it is which 
 is wanted to raise the feeling of humanity into an en- 
 thusiasm; when the precept of love has been given, an 
 image must be set before the eyes of those who are called 
 upon to obey it, an ideal or type of man which may be 
 noble and amiable enough to raise the whole race and 
 make the meanest member of it sacred with reflected glory. 
 Did not Christ do this? Did the command to love go 
 forth to those who had never seen a human being they 
 could revere? Could his followers turn upon him and 
 say, How can we love a creature so degraded, full of vile 
 wants and contemptible passions, whose little life is most 
 harmlessly spent when it is an empty round of eating and 
 sleeping; a creature destined for the grave and for ob- 
 livion when his allotted term of fretfulness and folly has 
 expired? Of this race Christ himself was a member, and 
 fo this day is it not the best answer to all blasphemers, 
 

 
 
 
 132 Ecce Homo 
 
 of the species, the best consolation when our sense of it 
 degradation is keenest, that a human brain was behind 
 forehead and a human heart beating in his breast, and t. 
 within the whole creation of God nothing more elevat 
 or more attractive has yet been found than he? 
 if it be answered that there was in his nature something 
 exceptional and peculiar, that humanity must not be 
 measured by the stature of Christ, let us remember that 
 it was precisely thus that he wished it to be measured, 
 delighting to call himself the Son of Man, delighting 
 to call the meanest of mankind his brothers. If some 
 human beigs are abject and contemptible, if it be in- 
 credible to us that they can have any high dignity or 
 destiny, do we regard them from so great a height as 
 Christ? Are we likely to be more pained by their faults 
 and deficiencies than he was? Is our standard higher 
 than his? And yet he associated by preference with 
 these meanest of the race; no contempt for them did he 
 ever express, no suspicion that they might be less dear 
 than the best and wisest to the common Father, no 
 doubt that they were naturally capable of rising to a 
 moral elevation like his own. There is nothing of which 
 a man may be prouder than of this; it is the most hopeful 
 and redeeming fact in history; it is precisely what was 
 wanting to raise the love of man as man to enthusiasm. 
 An eternal glory has been shed upon the human race by 
 the love Christ bore to it. And it was because the Edict 
 of Universal Love went forth to men whose hearts were 
 in no cynical mood but possessed with a spirit of devotion 
 to a man, that words which at any other time, however 
 grandly they might sound, would have been but words, 
 penetrated so deeply, and along with the law of love the 
 
 power of love was given. Therefore also the first Chris- 
 _ tians were enabled to dispense with philosophical phrases, 
 and instead of saying that they loved the ideal of man 
 in man could simply say and feel that they loved Christ 
 in every man. 
 
 We have here the very kernel of the Christian moral 
 scheme. We have distinctly before us the end Christ 
 proposed to himself, and the means he considered ade- 
 
 ; 
 
The Enthusiasm of Humanity 133 
 
 Bate to the attainment of it. His object was, instead 
 of drawing up, after the example of previous legislators, 
 a list of actions prescribed, allowed, and prohibited, to 
 give his disciples a universal test by which they might 
 discover what it was right and what it was wrong to do. 
 Now as the difficulty of discovering what is right arises 
 commonly from the prevalence of self-interest in our 
 minds, and as we commonly behave rightly to anyone for 
 ‘whom we feel affection or sympathy, Christ considered 
 that he who could feel sympathy for all would behave 
 rightly to all. But how to give to the meagre and narrow 
 hearts of men such enlargement? How to make them 
 capable of a universal sympathy? Christ believed it pos- 
 sible to bind men to their kind, but on one condition— 
 that they were first bound fast to himself. He stood forth 
 as the representative of men, he identified himself with 
 the cause and with the interests of all human beings, he 
 was destined, as he began before long obscurely to inti- 
 mate, to lay down his life for them. Few of us sym- 
 pathise originally and directly with this devotion; few of 
 us can perceive in human nature itself any merit sufficient 
 to evoke it. But it is not so hard to love and venerate 
 him who felt it. So vast a passion of love, a devotion 
 so comprehensive, elevated, deliberate and profound, has 
 not elsewhere been in any degree approached save by 
 some of his imitators. And as love provokes love, many 
 have found it possible to conceive for Christ an attach- 
 ment the closeness of which no words can describe, a 
 veneration so possessing and absorbing the man within 
 them, that they have said, “I live no more, but Christ 
 lives in me.” Now such a feeling carries with it of 
 mecessity the feeling of love for all human beings. It 
 matters no longer what quality men may exhibit; amiable 
 or unamiable, as the brothers of Christ, as belonging to 
 his sacred and consecrated kind, as the objects of his love 
 in life and death, they must be dear to all to whom he is 
 dear. And those who would for a moment know his heart 
 and understand his life must begin by thinking of the whole 
 race of man, and of each member of the race, with awful 
 Teverence and hope. 
 
 \ 
 
134 Ecce Homo 
 
 Love, wheresoever it appears, is in its measure a la 
 making power. “Love is dutiful in thought and deed. 
 And as the lover of his country is free from the tempta: 
 tion to treason, so is he who loves Christ secure from the 
 temptation to injure any human being, whether it bi 
 himself or another. He is indeed much more than this 
 He is bound and he is eager to benefit and bless to the 
 utmost of his power all that bear his Master’s nature, anc 
 that not merely with the good gifts of the earth, but witl 
 whatever cherishes and trains best the Christ within them 
 But for the present we are concerned merely with thi 
 power of this passion to lift the man out of sin. The in 
 juries he committed lightly when he regarded his fellow 
 creatures simply as animals who added to the fiercenes: 
 of the brute an ingenuity and forethought that made then 
 doubly noxious, become horrible sacrilege when he sees it 
 them no longer the animal but the Christ. And that othe 
 class of crimes which belongs more especially to ages 0 
 civilisation, and arises out of a cynical contemp: for thi 
 species, is rendered equally impossible to the man whi 
 hears with reverence the announcement, “The goot 
 deeds you did to the least of these my brethren you di 
 to me.” 
 
 There are two objections which may suggest themselve 
 at this point, the one to intellectual, the other to practica 
 men. The intellectual man may say, “ To discover wha 
 it is right to do in any given case is not the province o 
 any feeling or passion however sublime, but requires th 
 application of the same intellectual power which solve 
 mathematical problems. The common acts of life ma) 
 no doubt be performed correctly by unintellectual people 
 but this is because these constantly recurring problem 
 have been solved long ago by clever people, and th 
 vulgar are now in possession of the results. Whenever 
 new combination occurs it is a matter for casuists; th 
 best intentions will avail little; there is doubtless a grea 
 difference between a good man and a bad one; the on 
 will do what is right when he knows it, and the other wi. 
 not; but in respect for the power of ascertaining what 1 
 is right to do, supposing their knowledge of casuistry t 
 
The Enthusiasm of Humanity 135 
 
 be equal, they are on a par. Goodness or the passion of 
 humanity, or Christian love, may be a motive inducing 
 _men to keep the law, but it has no right to be called the 
 law-making power. And what has Christianity added to 
 our theoretic knowledge of morality? It may have made 
 men practically more moral, but has it added anything 
 to Aristotle’s Ethics? ” 
 
 _ Certainly Christianity has no ambition to invade the 
 | 
 
 
 
 “provinces of the moralist or the casuist. But the difh- 
 culties which beset the discovery of the right moral course 
 are of two kinds. There are the difficulties which arise 
 from the blinding and confusing effect of selfish passions, 
 and which obscure from the view the end which should be 
 aimed at in action; when these have been overcome there 
 “arises a new set of difficulties concerning the means by 
 | which the end should be attained. In dealing with your 
 “neighbour the first thing to be understood is that his in- 
 terest is to be considered as well as your own; but when 
 this has been settled, it remains to be considered what his 
 interest is. The latter class of difficulties requires to be 
 dealt witn by the intellectual or calculating faculty. The 
 former class can only be dealt with by the moral force of 
 “sympathy. Now it is true that the right action will not be 
 performed without the operation of both these agencies. 
 But the moral agency is the dominant one throughout; 
 it is that without which the very conception of law is 
 impossible; it overcomes those difficulties which in the 
 vast majority of practical cases are the most serious. The 
 calculating casuistical faculty is, as it were, in its employ, 
 and it is no more improper to call it the law-making power, 
 although it does not ultimately decide what action is to be 
 _ performed, than to say that a house was built by one who 
 did not with his own hands lay the bricks and spread the 
 mortar. 
 _ The objection which practical men take is a very im- 
 portant one, as the criticisms of such men always are, 
 being founded commonly upon large observation and not 
 "perverted by theory. They say that the love of Christ 
 does not in practice produce the nobleness and largeness 
 of character which has been represented as its proper and 
 
 
 
136 Ecce Homo 
 
 natural result; that instead of inspiring those who feel i 
 with reverence and hope for their kind, it makes them 
 exceedingly narrow in their sympathies, disposed to deny 
 and explain away even the most manifest virtues displaye 
 by men, and to despair of the future destiny of the great 
 majority of their fellow-creatures; that instead of binding 
 them to their kind, it divides them from it by a gulf which 
 they themselves proclaim to be impassable and eternal, and 
 unites them only in a gloomy conspiracy of misanthropy 
 with each other; that it is indeed a law-making power, 
 but that the laws it makes are little-minded and vexatious 
 prohibitions of things innocent, demoralising restraints 
 upon the freedom of joy and the healthy instincts of 
 nature; that it favours hypocrisy, moroseness, and some- 
 times lunacy; that the only vice it has power to check is 
 thoughtlessness, and its only beneficial effect is that of 
 forcing into activity, though not always into healthy 
 activity, the faculty of serious reflection. 
 
 This may be a just picture of a large class of religious 
 men, but it is impossible in the nature of things that such 
 effects should be produced by a pure personal devotion 
 to Christ. We are to remember that nothing has been 
 subjected to such multiform and grotesque perversion as 
 Christianity. Certainly the direct love of Christ, as it was 
 felt by his first followers, is a rare thing among modern 
 Christians. His character has been so much obscured by 
 scholasticism, as to have lost in a great measure its at- 
 tractive power. The prevalent feeling towards him now 
 among religious men is an awful fear of his supernatural 
 greatness, and a disposition to obey his commands arising 
 partly from dread of future punishment and hope of 
 reward, and partly from a nobler feeling of loyalty, which, 
 however, is inspired rather by his office than his person. 
 Beyond this we may discern in them an uneasy conviction 
 that he requires a more personal devotion, which leads to 
 spasmodic efforts to kindle the feeling by means of violent 
 raptures of panegyric and by repeating over and getting 
 by rote the ardent expressions of those who really had it. 
 That is wanting for the most part which Christ held to be 
 all in all, spontaneous warmth, free and generous devotion. 
 
The Enthusiasm of Humanity 137 
 
 hat the fruits of a Christianity so hollow should be poor 
 ind sickly is not surprising. 
 _ But that Christ’s method, when rightly applied, is really 
 if mighty force may be shown by an argument which the 
 everest censor of Christians will hardly refuse to admit. 
 Jompare the ancient with the modern world; “ Look on 
 is picture and on that.” One broad distinction in the 
 haracters of men forces itself into prominence. Among 
 Il the men of the ancient heathen world there were 
 carcely one or two to whom we might venture to apply 
 ne epithet “holy.” In other words, there were not more 
 dan one or two, if any, who besides being virtuous in 
 deir actions were possessed with an unaffected enthusiasm 
 f goodness, and besides abstaining from vice regarded 
 ven a vicious thought with horror. Probably no one will 
 eny that in Christian countries this higher-toned good- 
 ess, which we call holiness, has existed. Few will main- 
 Lin that it has been exceedingly rare. Perhaps the truth 
 , that there has scarcely been a town in any Christian 
 yuntry since the time of Christ where a century has 
 assed without exhibiting a character of such elevation 
 iat his mere presence has shamed the bad and made the 
 0d better, and has been felt at times like the presence of 
 od Himself. And if this be so, has Christ failed? or can 
 aristianity die? 
 
 
 
 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE LORD’S SUPPER 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Tuat Christ had but a slight esteem for rites and cer 
 monies may be argued negatively from his establishing 
 few, and positively from the contempt he poured on t 
 traditional formalities prized so highly by the Scribes a 
 Pharisees.’ But he well understood their use, and 
 have already observed with what rigorous firmness he 
 sisted on his followers submitting to the initiatory rite 
 baptism. The kingdom he was founding was to be ever 
 where imperium in imperio ; its members were to be at t 
 same time members of secular states and national bodit 
 It was therefore a matter of extreme importance to p 
 serve the distinctness of the Christian society and to p 
 vent its members from being drawn apart from each othi 
 by the distractions of worldly claims and engagement 
 For this purpose certain sacramenta or solemn obser 
 ances renewing and reminding them of their union v 
 most desirable, and Christ ordained two, the one € 
 pressing the distinctness of the Church from the worl 
 and the other the unity of the Church within itself. Oft 
 former, Baptism, mention was made when we consider 
 Christ’s Call, concerning the latter, the Common Supp 
 or cvocirwv of Christians, it is convenient to say som 
 thing now. 
 A common meal is the most natural and universal w 
 of expressing, maintaining, and as it were ratifying re 
 tions of friendship. The spirit of antiquity regarded t 
 meals of human beings as having the nature of sacred rit 
 (sacra mensz). If therefore it sounds degrading to 
 pare the Christian Communion to a club-dinner, t i 
 not owing to any essential difference between the 
 things, but to the fact that the moderns connect less di 
 fied associations with meals than the ancients did, 
 138 
 
The Lord’s Supper I 39 
 
 hat most clubs have a far less serious object than the 
 Christian Society. The Christian Communion 7s a club- 
 Jinner: but the club is the New Jerusalem; God and 
 Christ are members of it; death makes no vacancy in its 
 ists, but at its banquet-table the perfected spirits of just 
 men, with an innumerable company of angels, sit down 
 deside those who have not yet surrendered their bodies 
 to the grave. 
 _ Goethe thought that Protestant Christians have too few 
 sacraments, and this opinion is not refuted by the fact 
 shat Christ himself only instituted two. We are to sup- 
 dose, however, that these two are the most essential, and 
 ndeed without them we can scarcely imagine the Church 
 maintaining its distinct existence. Without a solemn 
 oe of entrance, and without occasional solemn meetings, 
 hristians would forget that they were Christians. But in 
 shese meetings it was obviously desirable, if it were possible, 
 hat not only the fact of the union of Christians, but also 
 he nature and manner of théir union, should be sym- 
 dolically expressed. We have now considered at some 
 length the nature and conditions of the Christian Society, 
 without referring to or producing in evidence the Lord’s 
 Supper. If therefore the form of the Lord’s Supper ex- 
 presses symbolically such a union as we have described, 
 we shall derive from this fact a confirmation of the results 
 at which we had independently arrived. 
 Of those results some do not require confirmation, being 
 in themselves obvious and disputed by none. It has 
 ever been questioned that the doctrine of the brother- 
 ood of mankind and of the duty of universal benevolence 
 and charity is a main feature of Christianity. This 
 octrine, then, is very plainly symbolised in the Lord’s 
 upper. Asa meeting or communion it is clearly designed 
 to express a certain fellowship between those who share it; 
 by admitting all Christians without distinction on equal 
 terms, it expresses the universal character of the society. 
 The extreme simplicity of the ceremony makes its sym- 
 bolical character more impressive, and averts, as far as 
 that is possible, the danger which all venerated symbols 
 incur of being valued for their own sake and confounded 
 
 
 
140 Ecce Homo 
 
 with the thing symbolised. The meal consisted of br 
 and wine, the simplest and in those countries most u 
 versal elements of food; and when men of different nation 
 or degrees sat or knelt together and received, as from th 
 hand of God, this simple repast, they were reminded in the 
 most forcible manner of their common human wants, 
 their common character of pensioners on the bounty 
 the Universal Father. . 
 
 But Christ added something to the ceremony. He bad 
 his followers consider the bread they ate as his body, ant 
 the wine they drank as his blood. And in a discours 
 recorded by St. John, which we may quote without dis 
 trust, as it is so manifestly confirmed by the account 
 given by the other Evangelists of the institution of thi 
 Supper, he says, ‘“‘ Except ye eat the flesh and drink thi 
 blood of the Son of Man, ye have no life in you.” Wha 
 Christ meant by life is not now difficult to discover. I 
 is that healthy condition of the mind which issues 0 
 necessity in right action. This health of the soul we knoy 
 Christ regarded as consisting in a certain enthusiasm 0 
 love for human beings as such. This enthusiasm then 
 we are now informed, will not spring up in us spon 
 taneously nor by any efforts we may make to kindle it i 
 ourselves, nor is the message of Christianity fully deliveree 
 when love to the human race is declared to be a duty 
 human beings will not unite merely because they are toll 
 to do so, nor will the anarchic passions submit to a mer 
 reproof. Men cannot learn to love each other, says Christ 
 but “ by eating his flesh and drinking his blood.” 
 
 The Lord’s Supper, then, confirms by its symbolism th 
 view of Christian morality which was taken in the las 
 chapter. It was there asserted that Christ did not regart 
 it as possible to unite men to each other but by first unit 
 ing them to himself. And in the Lord’s Supper, in whiel 
 the union of Christians is symbolised, it is represented a 
 depending not merely on the natural passion of humanity 
 implanted in their breasts, nor merely on the command 0 
 Christ calling that passion into activity, but upon a certait 
 intimate personal contact between Christ and his followers 
 The union of mankind, but a union begun and subsisti 
 
| The Lord’s Supper 141 
 
 y in Christ, is what the Lord’s Supper sacramentally 
 resses. 
 | As to the metaphor itself, if it seems at first violent and 
 tural, we are to observe that on the subject of the 
 yersonal devotion required by Christ from his followers 
 is language was often of this vehement kind, and that 
 is first followers in describing their relation to him in 
 ike manner overleap the bounds of ordinary figurative 
 guage. Christ, in a passage to which allusion has 
 eady been made, demanded of his followers that they 
 hould hate their father and mother for his sake, and St. 
 aul in many passages declares that Christ is his life and 
 is very self. It is precisely this intense personal devotion, 
 his habitual feeding on the character of Christ, so that 
 he essential nature of the Master seems to pass into and 
 me the essential nature of the servant — loyalty 
 arried to the point of self-annihilation—that is expressed 
 yy the words “eating the flesh and drinking the blood 
 f Christ.” 
 | Much remains to be said about the details of Christian 
 orality, but the reader should already be in a condition 
 o understand and judge of its scope. And let us pause 
 nce more to consider that which remains throughout a 
 ubject of ever-recurring astonishment, the unbounded 
 yersonal pretensions which Christ advances. It is 
 (ommon in human history to meet with those who claim 
 me superiority over their fellows. Men assert a pre- 
 Bene. over their fellow-citizens or fellow-countrymen 
 ind become rulers of those who at first were their equals, 
 ut they dream of nothing greater than some partial 
 ntrol over the actions of others for the short space of 
 lifetime. Few indeed are those to whom it is given to 
 uence future ages. Yet some men have appeared who 
 ve been “as levers to uplift the earth and roll it n 
 other course.” Homer by creating literature, Socrates 
 creating science, Cesar by carrying civilisation inland 
 m the shores of the Mediterranean, Newton by starting 
 lence upon a career of steady progress, may be said to 
 ve attained this eminence. But these men gave a 
 ingle impact like that which is conceived to have first 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 142 Ecce Homo 
 
 set the planets in motion, Christ claims to be a perpetu 
 attractive power like the sun which determines the 
 orbit. They contributed to men some discovery 4 
 passed away; Christ’s discovery is himself. To humanii 
 struggling with its passions and its destiny he says, Clir 
 to me, cling ever closer to me. If we believe St. John, f 
 represented himself as the Light of the World, as 
 Shepherd of the Souls of men, as the Way to immortality 
 as the Vine or Life-Tree of Humanity. “And if we refus 
 to believe that he used those words, we cannot den 
 without rejecting all the evidence before us, that he use 
 words which have substantially the same meaning. We 
 cannot deny that he commanded men to leave eve 
 thing and attach themselves to him; that he declare 
 himself king, master, and judge of men; that he promi 
 to give rest to all the weary and heavy-laden; that h 
 instructed his followers to hope for life from feeding or 
 his body and blood. 
 But it is doubly surprising to observe that these e¢ 
 mous pretensions were advanced” by one whose specia 
 peculiarity, not only among his contemporaries but amon 
 the remarkable men that have appeared before and sina 
 was an almost feminine tenderness and humanity. 
 characteristic was remarked, as we have seen, by 
 Baptist, and Christ himself was fully conscious of it. 
 so clear to him was his own dignity and infinite importa 
 to the human race. as an objective fact with which hi 
 own opinion of himself had nothing to do, that in the sam 
 breath in which he ass it in the most unmeasu 
 language he alludes, sppreatly with entire unconscious 
 ness, to his humility. “Take my yoke upon you af 
 learn of me, for I am meek and lowly of heart.” And again 
 when speaking to his followers of. the arrogance of th 
 Pharisees, he says, “‘ they love to be called Rabbi; but b 
 not you called Rabbi, for one 1s your master, even Christ. 
 Who is the humble man? It is he who resists wi 
 special watchfulness and success the temptations whic 
 the conditions of his life may offer to exaggerate his ov 
 importance. He, for example, is humble who, born into 
 high station, remembers that those who are placed lov 
 in society are also men and may have more intrinsic met 
 
The Lord’s Supper 143 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ind dignity than himself. Christ could not show his 
 umility in this way, for he was poor and obscure. But 
 here are peculiar temptations which assail the thinker. 
 de is in danger of being intoxicated by the influence 
 hich he gains over others, he feels himself elevated by 
 he greatness of the thoughts with which his mind habit- 
 tally deals and which from time to time it originates. If 
 esides intellectual gifts the thinker possess acute sensi- 
 ility, strong moral intuitions, heroic powers of indigna- 
 ion and pity, his temptation is to suppose that he is made 
 f finer clay than other men, and that he has a natural 
 tle to pre-eminence and sovereignty over them. Such is 
 he temptation of moral reformers such as Christ, and if 
 shrist was humble he resisted this temptation with ex- 
 ptional success. If he judged himself correctly, and if 
 e Baptist described him well when he compared him 
 a lamb, and, we may add, if his biographers have de- 
 neated his character faithfully, Christ was one naturally 
 mtented with obscurity, wanting the restless desire for 
 istinction and eminence which is common in great men, 
 ating to put forward personal claims, disliking competi- 
 on and “ disputes who should be greatest,” finding some- 
 ing bombastic in the titles of royalty, fond of what is 
 
 ple and homely, of children, of poor people, occupying 
 imself so much with the concerns of others, with the relief 
 f sickness and want, that the temptation to exaggerate 
 he importance of his own thoughts and plans was not 
 Kely to master him; lastly, entertaining for the human 
 ace a feeling so singularly fraternal that he was likely to 
 ject as a sort of treason the impulse to set himself in 
 hy manner above them. Christ, it appears, was this 
 umble man. When we have fully pondered the fact, 
 fe may be in a condition to estimate the force of the 
 vidence, which, submitted to his mind, could induce him, 
 1 direct opposition to all his tastes and instincts, to lay 
 a persistently, with the calmness of entire conviction, 
 Opposition to the whole religious world, in spite of the 
 ence which his own followers conceived, to a dominion 
 ore transcendent, more universal, more complete, than 
 1€ most delirious votary of glory ever aspired to in his 
 
 eams. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 POSITIVE MORALITY 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Our investigation into the character of the law unde 
 which the members of the Christian Commonwealth ai 
 called to live has led us to the discovery that in the stri¢ 
 sense of the word no such law exists, it being characteristi 
 of this commonwealth that every member of it is a law 
 giver to himself. Every Christian, we learn, has a divi 
 inspiration which dictates to him in all circumstances 
 
 right course of action, which inspiration is the passion 
 humanity raised to a high energy by contemplation 4 
 Christ’s character, and by the society of those in whom th 
 same enthusiasm exists. We cease, therefore, hencefort 
 to speak of a Christian law, and endeavour instead 
 describe in its large outlines the Christian character; tha 
 is to say, the new views, feelings, and habits produced 
 the Christian by his guiding enthusiasm. 
 
 The tendency and operation of this enthusiasm will b 
 most clearly apprehended if we consider the way in which 
 it led those who felt it to regard the current morality o 
 their time and country, in other words, the Jewish law 
 In this law they had been bred; it was their rule of life 
 to the time when they awoke to a new life. How, ther 
 did they regard this system after their regeneration? 
 
 In the first place they regarded it critically, as somé 
 thing of which they were independent and with whidl 
 they could dispense. They had in their own breasts af 
 inexhaustible spring of morality; of written and formu 
 lated morality they had henceforth no need. Feeling : 
 sure foundation under their feet, they gathered courage fo 
 the first time to examine and criticise what before the} 
 had felt it their wisdom to receive without criticism. A 
 Jews their piety had consisted in a certain timid cautiol 
 
 144 Z 
 
: Positive Morality 145 
 
 ra wary walking in the old paths, and when they became 
 ‘Christians, it is remarkable that they gave to those who 
 continued to be what they had originally been the title 
 of “the cautious men.” 
 
 In periods which are wanting in inspiration piety always 
 assumes this character of caution. It degenerates from a 
 free and joyful devotion to a melancholy and anxious 
 slavery. The first work of the Divine Spirit was a work 
 of encouragement, and the humblest man was found the 
 most courageous of all. He scrutinised fearlessly the 
 mass of traditions which then went by the name of the 
 Law, and unhesitatingly pronounced a great part of them 
 eating in authority. Some of these time - honoured 
 usages he stigmatised as immoral and mischievous, others, 
 which were in themselves indifferent, he treated with con- 
 temptuous neglect. We may imagine that by this conduct 
 he gave grievous offence to some honest, “ cautious,” con- 
 
 ative spirits. Doubtless—thus they may have expos- 
 lated—the washing of cups and pots is in itself unim- 
 rtant, but wise men, our ancestors, have prescribed the 
 e; by such symbolism we may learn the lesson and 
 orm the habit of purity. These men Christ perhaps re- 
 ded as Milton regarded the versifier who did not know 
 whether his lines were of the right length till he had 
 counted the syllables. As the poet consulted on such 
 questions only the soul of rhythm within him, so were all 
 mysteries of purity made clear to Christ by the Spirit 
 f purity which he had received from above. It was not, 
 indeed, in his nature to despise anything which might be 
 eful to the ignorant and the weak, however unnecessary 
 or himself. As he stooped to receive baptism from John, 
 so he would, no doubt, have sanctified these usages by 
 = own observance if he had seen any good in them at all. 
 ut he seems to have considered that the time for these 
 methods was gone by; and as all such contrivances begin 
 to be mischievous the moment they cease to be beneficial, 
 he condemned them as fettering the freedom of that in- 
 spiration which was for the future to take the place of law. 
 __Of the Scriptures of the Old Testament he always spoke 
 with the utmost reverence, and he seems never to have 
 a * K 
 
 a 
 td 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 146 Ecce Homo 
 
 called in question the Jewish view of them as infalli 
 oracles of God. Some parts of them, particularly the b 
 of Deuteronomy, seem to have been often present to h 
 thoughts. Yet even the Old Testament he regarded in 
 sense critically, and he introduced canons of interpretati 
 which must have astonished by their boldness the religiot 
 men of the day. For he regarded the laws of Mos 
 though divine, as capable of becoming obsolete and als 
 as incomplete. On the question of divorce he declar 
 the Mosaic arrangement to have been well suited for 
 “ hard-heartedness ” of a semi-barbarous age, but to be 
 longer justifiable in the advanced condition of mor: 
 So too in the matter of oaths, the permission of priva 
 revenge, and other points in which the Mosaic legislati 
 had necessarily something of a barbaric character, he 
 hesitatingly repealed the acts of the lawgiver and in 
 duced new provisions. ; 
 It is easy to imagine the alarm which such freedom 
 interpretation must have excited in the “cautious. 
 They would declare it destructive of the authority of 
 Scriptures. Were not the Scriptures given, they wo 
 say, to save man from his own reason? Does not th 
 priceless value consist in this, that for all conceivable ci 
 cumstances they furnish a rule which simple men may fol 
 low with simple obedience? But if these divine rules cai 
 in any case become obsolete, if human affairs can chan, 
 so far that the Scriptures can cease to be a guide to our fee 
 if the words of the Eternal can be subject to the acciden 
 of time and mutability, what further use can there be in the 
 Scriptures, and how henceforth shall our steps be guidedi 
 It was the inspiration, the law-making power, that ga 
 Christ and his disciples courage to shake themselves fre 
 from the fetters even of a divine law. Their position wa: 
 a new and delicate one, and nothing but such an inspiratior 
 could have enabled them to maintain it. To pronounet 
 the old law entirely true or entirely false would have beer 
 easy, but to consider it as true and divine yet no longel 
 true for them, no longer their authoritative guide, mus 
 have seemed, and must seem even to us, at first sigh 
 unnatural and paradoxical. It may be illustrated, ho 
 
 
 
 
Positive Morality 147 
 
 ever, by what everyone has observed to happen in the 
 process of learning any art. For the beginner rigid 
 Tules are prescribed, which it will be well for him for a 
 time to follow punctiliously and blindly. He may be- 
 lieve that under these rules a principle is concealed, that 
 4 reason could be given why they should be followed, 
 but it is well for a time that the principle should remain 
 concealed and that the rules should be followed simply 
 because they are prescribed. At any rate, so long as he 
 actually has not discovered the principle, he must abide 
 strictly by the rules, and it would be foolish to abandon 
 them in order to go in search of it. But there comes a 
 time when the discovery is made, a golden moment of 
 silent expansion and enlargement. Then the reason of all 
 the discipline to which he has submitted becomes clear to 
 him, the principle reveals itself and makes the confused 
 and ill-apprehended multitude of details in 2 moment 
 harmonious and luminous. But the principle at the same 
 ‘Moment that it explains the rules supersedes them. They 
 may be not less true than before, they may be seen to be 
 true far more clearly than before. But they are obsolete c 
 ‘their use is gone; they can for the future tell only that 
 which is already well known, which can never again be 
 forgotten or misunderstood. If the student refers to them 
 ae a later time it is with a feeling of wonder that they 
 should ever have delayed his attention for a moment, and 
 probably in the rude and peremptory particularity of their 
 form he may discover that which, though well enough 
 adapted for the beginner under certain circumstances, is 
 yet in itself not true and is calculated under other circum- 
 ‘stances to mislead. 
 _ It was in this manner that Christ found the Mosaic law 
 at once divine and in part obsolete. But not only did he 
 find it in part obsolete, he found it throughout utterly 
 Meagre and imperfect. And this was inevitable. Between 
 the rude clans that had listened to Moses in the Arabian 
 desert and the Jews who in the reign of Tiberius visited 
 the temple courts there was a great gulf. The “hard- 
 heartedness ” of the primitive nation had given way under 
 
 the gradual influence of law and peace and trade and 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 148 Ecce Homo 
 
 literature. Laws which in the earlier time the best me 
 had probably found it hard to keep could now serve onh 
 as a curb upon the worst. The disciples of Moses wer 
 subject to lawless passions which they could not contre 
 and the fiercest ebullitions of which seemed to them venia’ 
 misfortunes rather than crimes. Self-restraint of any kin¢ 
 was to them a new and hard lesson. They listened wi 
 awe to the inspired teacher who taught them not to cove 
 their neighbour’s wife or property; and when they were 
 commanded not to commit murder, they wondered doub: 
 less by what art, by what contrivance, it might be possible 
 to put a bridle on the thing called anger—“ anger which 
 far sweeter than trickling drops of honey rises in the boson 
 of a man like smoke.” But how much was all thi 
 changed! If one like Paul had gone to a Christian teache 
 after the new enthusiasm of humanity had been excited i 
 him, and asked for instruction in morality, would it have 
 satisfied him to be told that he must abstain from commit 
 ting murder and robbery? These laws, to be sure, were 
 not obsolete, but the better class of men had been raised te 
 an elevation of goodness at which they were absolutely 
 unassailable by temptations to commit them. Their 
 moral sense required a different training, far more ad- 
 vanced instruction. It is true that in the later books oi 
 the Old Testament there might be found a morality con 
 siderably more advanced, but through the life and example 
 of Christ the humblest of his followers was advanced a 
 long stage beyond even this. No one who had felt, how- 
 ever feebly, the Christian enthusiasm could fail to find ever 
 in Deuteronomy and Isaiah something narrow, antiquated, 
 and insufficient for his needs. 
 
 Now in what consisted precisely the addition made by 
 Christ to morality ? 
 
 It has been already shown that Christ raised the feeling 
 of humanity from being a feeble restraining power to be 
 an inspiring passion. The Christian moral reformation 
 may indeed be summed up fin this—humanity changed 
 from a restraint toa motive. We shall be prepared there- 
 | fore to find that while earlier moralities had dealt chiefly 
 in prohibitions, Christianity deals in positive commands. 
 And precisely this is the case, preckely this difference 
 
Positive Morality 149 
 
 made the Old Testament seem antiquated to the first 
 ‘Christians. They had passed from a region of passive 
 into a region of active morality. The old legal formula 
 began “ thou shalt not,” the new begins with “ thou shalt.” 
 The young man who had kept the whole law—that is, who 
 had refrained from a number of actions—is commanded 
 ‘to do something, to sell his goods and feed the poor. 
 Condemnation passed under the Mosaic law upon him 
 who had sinned, who had done something forbidden— 
 the soul that sinneth shall die ;—Christ’s condemnation is 
 pronounced upon those who had not done good. “I was 
 an hungered and ye gave me no meat.”” The sinner whom 
 Christ habitually denounces is he who has done nothing. 
 This character comes repeatedly forward in his parables. 
 It is the priest and Levite who passed by on the other 
 side. It is Dives, of whom no ill is recorded except that 
 a beggar lay at his gate full of sores and yet no man gave 
 unto him. It is the servant who hid in a napkin the 
 talent committed to him. It is the unprofitable servant, 
 who has only done what it was his duty to do. 
 
 tting together these parables delivered at different 
 times and to different audiences, yet all teaching the same 
 doctrine, and adding to them the positive exhortations 
 to almsgiving, to free and lavish charity, we see that 
 Christ’s conception of practical goodness answers to his 
 ideal of a right state of mind. We observed that he 
 considered the healthy condition of character to be an 
 enthusiastic or inspired condition; we now find that he 
 prescribes just such conduct as would be prompted by 
 such enthusiastic feelings. And this consistency or unity 
 of his teaching will appear still more plainly when we 
 consider what the tenor of his own life was. It may 
 sometimes strike us that the time which he devoted to 
 acts of beneficence and the relief of ordinary physical evils 
 night have been given to works more permanently bene- 
 icial to the race. Of his two great gifts, the power over 
 lature and the high moral wisdom and ascendency over 
 nen, the former might be the more astonishing, but it is 
 he latter which gives him his everlasting dominion. He 
 night have left to all subsequent ages more instruction if 
 1¢ had bestowed less time upon diminishing slightly the 
 
150 Ecce Homo . 
 
 mass of evil around him, and lengthening by a span t 
 short lives of the generation in the midst of which 
 lived. The whole amount of good done by such works 
 charity could not be great, compared with Christ’s pow 
 
 of doing good; and if they were intended, as is often su 
 posed, merely as attestations of his divine mission, a fe 
 acts of the kind would have served this purpose as well as 
 many. Yet we may see that they were in fact the great 
 work of his life; his biography may be summed up in the 
 words, “ he went about doing good ”; his wise words were 
 secondary to his beneficial deeds; the latter were not 
 introductory to the former, but the former grew occasion- 
 ally, and, as it were, accidentally out of the latter. The 
 explanation of this is that Christ merely reduced to prac- 
 tice his own principle. His morality required that the 
 welfare and happiness of others should not merely be re- 
 membered as a restraint upon action, but should be mad 
 the principal motive of action, and what he preached in 
 words he preached still more impressively and zealously 
 in deeds. He set the first and greatest example of a life 
 wholly governed and guided by the passion of humanity, 
 The very scheme and plan of his life differed from that 
 of other men. He had no personal prospects, no fortune 
 to push, no ambitions. A good man before had been 
 understood to be one who in the pursuit of his own per- 
 sonal happiness is careful to consider also the happiness of 
 those around him, declines all prosperity gained at their 
 expense, employs his leisure in relieving some of their 
 wants, and who, lastly, in some extreme need or danger 
 of those connected with him, his relations or his country, 
 consents to sacrifice his own life or welfare to theirs. In 
 this scheme of life humanity in its rudimentary forms ol 
 family feeling or patriotism enters as a restraining or regu: 
 lating principle; only in the extreme case does it become 
 the mainspring of action. What with other good mer 
 was the extreme case, with Christ was the rule. In many 
 countries and at many different times the lives of heroes 
 had been offered up on the altar of filial or parental o1 
 patriotic love. A great impulse had overmastered the 
 personal interests, the love of life and of the pleasure 
 of life, had yielded to a higher motive; the names 
 
| Positive Morality 153 
 those who had made the great oblation had been held in 
 honour by succeeding ages, the place where it was made 
 pointed out, the circumstances of it proudly recounted. 
 ‘Such a sacrifice, the crowning act of human goodness 
 when it rises above itself, was made by Christ, not in some 
 ‘moment of elevation, not in some extreme emergency, but 
 habitually ; this is meant when it is said, he went about 
 doing good; nor was the sacrifice made for relative or 
 friend or country, but for all everywhere who bear the 
 name of man. 
 
 _ Those who stood by watching his career felt that his 
 teaching, but probably still more his deeds, were creating 
 a revolution in morality and were setting to all previous 
 legislations, Mosaic or Gentile, that seal which is at once 
 Tatification and abolition. While they watched, they felt 
 the rules and maxims by which they had hitherto lived 
 die into a higher and larger life. They felt the freedom 
 which is gained by destroying selfishness instead of re- 
 straining it, by crucifying the flesh instead of circumcising 
 it. In this new rule they perceived all old rules to be 
 included, but so included as to seem insignificant, axioms 
 of moral science, beggarly elements. It no longer seemed 
 to them necessary to prohibit in detail and with laborious 
 enumeration the different acts by which a man may injure 
 his neighbour. Now that they had at heart as the first 
 of interests the happiness of all with whom they might be 
 brought in contact, they no longer required a law, for 
 they had acquired a quick and sensitive instinct, which 
 Testrained them from doing harm. But while the new 
 morality incorporated into itself the old, how much ampler 
 was its compass! A new continent in the moral globe 
 was discovered. Positive morality took its place by the 
 side of Negative. To the duty of not doing harm, which 
 may be called justice, was added the duty of doing good, 
 which may properly receive the distinctively Christian 
 name of Charity. 
 
 _ And this is the meaning of that prediction which cer- 
 tain shepherds reported to have come to them in a mystic 
 song heard under the open sky of night (“ carmine perfidize 
 quod post nulla arguet etas ”’) proclaiming the commence- 
 ment of an era of “ good will to men.” 
 
 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE LAW OF PHILANTHROPY 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Tuus there rises before us the image of a common- 
 wealth in which a universal enthusiasm not only takes the 
 place of law, but by converting into a motive what wa: 
 before but a passive restraint, enlarges the compass of 
 morality and calls into existence a number of positiv 
 obligations which under the dominion of law had na 
 been acknowledged. It is a commonwealth sustained ani 
 governed by the desire existing in the mind of each of it 
 members to do as much good as possible to every othe 
 member. 
 Doubtless, a commonwealth fully answering this de 
 scription has never existed on the earth, nor can exist 
 It isan ideal. True that Christ always spoke of the king 
 dom of God as an actual and present commonwealth inte 
 which men were actually introduced by baptism. Never 
 theless he fully acknowledged its ideal character, and 
 therefore spoke of it as at the same time future and stil 
 waiting to be realised. Those who were already member: 
 of God’s kingdom were notwithstanding instructed to pra) 
 that that kingdom might come. And if we look at the 
 facts around us we shall discover that the kingdom ¢ 
 God has always been in this manner at once present ani 
 future, at once realised and waiting to be realised. It 
 other words, it has always fallen far short of its ideal, ani 
 yet it has never ceased in some degree to resemble thai 
 ideal. It has never ceased to abide by the positive ot 
 active scheme of morality, and to occupy itself more o 
 less zealously with works of beneficence and charity. Wi. 
 may go further, and say that the Christian view of moralit 
 has become universal, so that now no man is called or con 
 sidered good, whether he bear the Christian name or no 
 152 
 
: The Law of Philanthropy 153 
 
 vho does not in some form or other exhibit an active love 
 or his kind and go out of his way to do good. 
 _ The enthusiasm of humanity in Christians is not only 
 heir supreme but their only law. It has been remarked 
 hat Christ’s plan was to kindle in the hearts of his 
 ollowers a feeling which should dictate to them the right 
 sourse of action in all circumstances. It follows that 
 vhen we have considered the nature of this feeling we have 
 ‘xhausted the subject of Christian morality. If Christ 
 lelivered any other more special commands besides the 
 ‘ommand to love, they must be either deducible from it, 
 f it be the law-making power which he pronounced it to 
 9e, or if they do not agree with its dictates—if those who 
 yave the genuine enthusiasm in them find that the literal 
 ybedience to Christ’s special commands is in any instance 
 econcilable with obedience to his universal command— 
 hey must bear in mind the boldness with which he him- 
 elf treated the Mosaic law while acknowledging it to be 
 ivine. They must remember that principles last for ever, 
 gut special rules pass away with the things and conditions 
 0 which they refer. As Christ relaxed the sabbatical 
 ybligation by referring to the object of the ordinance—the 
 Sabbath was made for man—so should his disciples boldly 
 ind reverently interpret his precepts by the light of the 
 Bop which governed them, the principle of humanity, 
 ‘obey as freemen not as slaves. 
 “But to us considering what are likely to be the charac- 
 eristics, the modes of life and action, of a person in whom 
 he Enthusiasm of Humanity has been kindled, these 
 pecial commands of Christ are likely to afford the very 
 mformation we seek. A principle is best seen in its prac- 
 ical applications, a rule in its examples. It may be said, 
 hen, that besides the great and one law of love Christ 
 jelivered three special injunctions. 
 
 First he enjoined his followers to apply themselves to 
 elieving the physical needs and distresses of their fellow- 
 reatures. Next he commanded them to add new mem- 
 yers to the Christian Church, and especially to seek the 
 amendment of the neglected, outcast, and depraved part 
 af society. Thirdly he enjoined them to forgive all per- 
 
 
 
154 Ecce Homo 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 sonal injuries. These three injunctions we will pro 
 to consider in order. 
 
 The command to relieve physical distress is many ti 
 repeated. Christians are to give alms; in some cases t 
 were commanded to give all their wealth to the poor; 
 all cases they were assured that their final acceptance b 
 fore the Judge would depend upon the zeal they had show 
 in feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, and visiti 
 the sick. The first definite duty which Christ impose 
 upon his followers when they began to form an organise 
 society was that of travelling over the whole country i 
 order to cure diseases. Lastly, as has been already re 
 marked, he was himself constantly and principally “7 
 pied in ‘the same way. 
 
 No rule of life is more plainly deducible from the gene 
 law of love than this. Higher benefits may be confe 
 upon men than the alleviation of their physical sufferi 
 but there can be no more natural expression and no be 
 test of humanity. Nothing is more certain than that 
 who can witness suffering without an attempt to reliey 
 it, when such attempt is not hopeless, is not humane. 
 proposition is one of the most obvious that can be ex: 
 pressed in words; all nations not utterly savage have ir 
 a sense admitted it. Christ’s command had nothing in 
 which to a heathen could have seemed novel, and yet, 
 the other hand, it was not at all superfluous. For thou 
 there was humanity among the ancients, there was 
 philanthropy. In other words, humanity was known 
 them as an occasional impulse, ‘but not as a standing 
 of life. A case of distress made painfully manifest and 
 prominent would often excite compassion; the feeli 
 might lead to a single act of beneficence; but it had ni 
 strength enough to give birth to reflection or to develog 
 itself into a speculative compassion for other persons 
 equally distressed whose distresses were not equally mani- 
 fest. Exceptional sufferings had therefore a chance of 
 relief, but the ordinary sufferings which affected whole 
 classes of men excited no pity, and were treated as pa 
 of the natural order of things, providential dispensation 
 which it might even be impious to endeavour to coun 
 
 
 
 
The Law of Philanthropy 155 
 
 ct. Let us consider the example of slavery. There 
 yere in antiquity kind masters who refrained from treat- 
 ag their slaves with cruelty; when a slave was to be 
 junished, it was not hard to find good-humoured “ preca- 
 ores ” who would intercede for him; there was humanity 
 nough to cause sometimes a general feeling of displeasure 
 yhen a slave was treated with outrageous cruelty. But 
 10 general protest was ever made against the cruelty 
 £ slave-owners. No man, still less any body of men, 
 hought it worth while to give time and trouble either to 
 leviating the miseries of the slave or to mitigating the 
 iarshness of the institution itself. If it became clear to 
 ny, as to a few philosophers it did, that the institution 
 yas unjust, and if unjust then of necessity a monstrous 
 njustice, they quietly noted the fact, but never stirred 
 and or foot to remedy it, and the majority of mankind 
 vere not sufficiently interested in each other’s happiness 
 o discover the existence of any such social injustice at all. 
 When this lethargy passed away and humanity became 
 | passion in the first Christians, it issued by the lips of 
 Shrist an imperative ordinance making the sorrows of 
 ach a burden upon all. Henceforth it became the duty 
 f every man gravely to consider the condition of the 
 vorld around him. It became his duty to extend his 
 egards beyond the circle of his personal interests, and 
 jometimes to open the gate of his privacy and relieve the 
 yeggar who might be lying outside full of sores. Nor was 
 1e to wait till the misery of some fellow-creature forced 
 tself rudely upon his notice and affected his sensibility. 
 Jn the contrary he was to bear habitually in his heart the 
 oad of the world’s distress. Pity was to be henceforth 
 10 stranger greeted occasionally, but a familiar companion 
 ind bosom-friend. Nor was he to make philanthropy] 
 he amusement of his leisure, but one of the occupations’ 
 yf his life. He was to give alms; that is, he was to relieve 
 lis fellow-creature at the cost of some personal loss to 
 uimself, and Christ held that a despicable Christianity 
 which flung to the poor some unregarded superfluity; he 
 valued more the mite which the widow spared out of her 
 overty. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 156 Ecce Homo 
 
 The obligation of philanthropy is for all ages, but if : 
 consider the particular modes of philanthropy which Chr 
 prescribed to his followers we shall find that they w 
 suggested by the special conditions of that age. The se 
 spirit of love which dictated them, working in this ¢ 
 upon the same problems, would find them utterly insu 
 cient. No man who loves his kind can in these days 2 
 content with waiting as a servant upon human miser 
 when it is in so many cases possible to anticipate a 
 avert it. Prevention is better than cure, and it is ne 
 clear to all that a large part of human suffering is pre 
 ventible by improved social arrangements. Charity wi 
 now, if it be genuine, fix upon this enterprise as grea 
 more widely and permanently beneficial, and therefo 
 more Christian than the other. It will not, indeed, ne 
 lect the lower task of relieving and consoling those wh 
 whether through the errors and unskilful arrangemen 
 of society or through causes not yet preventible, he 
 actually fallen into calamity. Its compassion will be 
 the deeper, its relief more prompt and zealous, because 
 does not generally, as former generations did, recogni 
 such calamities to be part of man’s inevitable destiny. 
 will hurry with the more painful eagerness to remedy evi 
 which it feels ought never to have befallen. But when’ 
 has done all which the New Testament enjoins, it will fee 
 that its task is not half fulfilled. When the sick man hi 
 been visited and everything done which skill and assiduit 
 can do to cure him, modern charity will go on to consid 
 the causes of his malady, what noxious influence bese 
 ting his life, what contempt of the laws of health in hi 
 diet or habits, may have caused it, and then to enquin 
 whether others incur the same dangers and may be warne 
 in time. When the starving man has been relievet 
 modern charity enquires whether any fault in the socia 
 system deprived him of his share of nature’s bounty, an 
 unjust advantage taken by the strong over the weak, ar 
 rudeness or want of culture in himself wrecking his virtu 
 and his habits of thrift. The truth is, that though th 
 morality of Christ is theoretically perfect and not subject 
 as the Mosaic morality was, to a further development 
 
The Law of Philanthropy =_1§7 
 
 practical morality of the first Christians has been in a 
 eat degree rendered obsolete by the later experience of 
 iankind, which has taught us to hope more and under- 
 ike more for the happiness of our fellow-creatures. The 
 mmand to care for the sick and suffering remains as 
 ivine as ever and as necessary as ever to be obeyed, but 
 es become, like the Decalogue, an elementary part of 
 orality, early learnt, and not sufficient to satisfy the 
 hristian enthusiasm. As the early Christians learnt that 
 was not enough to do no harm and that they were bound 
 ) give meat to the hungry and clothing to the naked, we 
 ave learnt that a still further obligation lies upon us to 
 revent, if possible, the pains of hunger and nakedness 
 ‘om being ever felt. 
 This last duty was as far beyond the conception of the 
 liest Christians as the second was beyond the concep- 
 on of those for whom Moses legislated. Many things 
 oncealed it from the eye of the conscience. First the 
 bscure social position of the first Christians. They be- 
 ynged for the most part to the subject races of the Roman 
 pire. The government of affairs, the ordering of the 
 cial system, was in other hands. Their masters were 
 ealous and reserved. Little concerted action of any kind 
 yas allowed to them. Any protest they might have made 
 ainst social inequalities and injustices would have died 
 way utterly unheeded. There was no channel through 
 yhich those who discerned an evil could communicate 
 ith those who had the power of removing it. At sucha 
 ime reforms were out of the question. It would have 
 yeen simply useless and perilous to lay a hand upon the 
 Be gerous wheels of the social system which crushed the 
 ives and limbs of men at every revolution. All that 
 tld be done was to be at hand to tend the victims, to 
 escue as many wounded as possible, and shed a tear over 
 he dead. 
 But the principal reason why the philanthropy pre- 
 cribed by the Gospel is so rudimentary was probably a 
 lifferent one. The first Christians were probably not so 
 nuch hopeless of accomplishing great social reforms as 
 mnripe for the conception of them. The instinct of com- 
 
 | 
 | 
 | 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 158 Ecce Homo 
 
 passion, which joined to a sanguine spirit of hope p 
 duces the modern systematic Reformer, was newborn ¢ 
 infantine in them. It had as yet everything to learn, bt 
 as to the evils which were to be cured and as to the po 
 bility and means of curing them. On both points 
 ancients laboured under a blindness which we can o 
 understand by an effort of reflection. They did 
 easily recognise evil to be evil, and they did not belie 
 or rather they had never dreamed, that it could be cu 
 Habit dulls the senses ‘and puts the critical faculty 
 sleep. The fierceness and hardness of ancient mann 
 is apparent to us, but the ancients themselves were r 
 shocked by sights which were familiar to them. To 
 it is sickening to think of the gladiatorial show, of # 
 massacres common in Roman warfare, of the infantici 
 practised by grave and respectable citizens, who d 
 not merely condemn their children to death, but often 
 practice, as they well knew, to what was still worse 
 life of prostitution and beggary. The Roman regarded 
 gladiatorial show as we regard a hunt; the news of t 
 slaughter of two hundred thousand Helvetians by Cz 
 or half-a-million Jews by Titus excited in his mind a 
 of triumph; infanticide committed by a friend appea 
 to him a prudent measure of household economy. 
 shake off this paralysis of the moral sense produced t 
 habit, to see misery to be misery and cruelty to be cruelt 
 requires not merely a strong but a trained and ma 
 compassion. It was probably as much as the 
 Christians could learn at once to relieve the sick, 
 starving, and the desolate. Only after centuries of th 
 simple philanthropy could they learn to criticise # 
 fundamental usages of society itself, and acquire cours 
 to pronounce that, however deeply-rooted and time 
 honoured, they were in many cases shocking to humanity 
 Closely connected with this insensibility to the 
 character of common usages is a positive unwillingness 
 reform them. The argument of prejudice is twofole 
 It is not only that what has lasted a long time must b 
 right, but also that what has lasted a long time, rig 
 or wrong, must be intended to continue. That reveren 
 
: The Law of Philanthropy 159 
 
 or existing usages, which is always strong in human 
 ature, was far stronger in antiquity than it isnow. The 
 yelief in the wisdom of ancestors, which seems to be 
 vaused by the curious delusion that ancestors must needs 
 ye old and therefore deeply-experienced men, was stronger 
 mong the ancients than among the moderns, because 
 heir impression of their ancestors was derived not from 
 uistory but from poetry. They traced their institutions 
 © semi-divine or inspired legislators, and held it almost 
 mpious to change what came to them marked with such 
 uthority, while we, however proud we may be of our 
 meestors, do not disguise from ourselves that they were 
 arbarians, and can hardly fancy their handiwork in- 
 apable of improvement. 
 _ Thus the Enthusiasm of Humanity, if it move us in this 
 ge to consider the physical needs of our fellow-creatures, 
 jill not be contented with the rules and methods which 
 atisfied those who first felt its power. Breathed from 
 he lips of Christ or descending from heaven at the Pente- 
 ostal feast, it entered into men who had grown to man- — 
 ood in a cruel and hard-hearted world and who were 
 customed to selfishness. When Love was waked in his 
 ungeon and his fetters struck off, he must at first have 
 und his joints too stiff for easy motion. It entered into 
 e subjects of a world-wide tyranny, who never raised 
 aeir thoughts to large or public interests, over which they ~ 
 ould not hope to have influence. It entered into men of » 
 ow cultivation, who had no conception of progress or ~ 
 f the purpose that runs through the ages, no high ideal © 
 = happiness that the race may attain through the 
 bours of the good of every generation in its cause, no 
 ispicion that the whole framework of society compared 
 ) what it might be was as the hut of a savage to a Grecian 
 ample. It entered into men who in their simplicity 
 svered the barbaric past and placed behind them that 
 olden age for which they should have looked forwards. 
 nd therefore it could but rouse them to a philanthropy 
 hich, though glorious in the spirit that animated it, 
 as faint and feeble in its enterprises, the half-despairing 
 ‘tempt of a generation which had more love than hope. 
 
 : 
 | 
 | 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 160 Ecce Homo 
 
 We are advanced by eighteen hundred years beyo 
 the apostolic generation. All the narrowing influence 
 which have been enumerated have ceased to operal 
 Our minds are set free, so that we may boldly critic 
 the usages around us, knowing them to be but imperfi 
 essays towards order and happiness, and no divinely 
 supernaturally ordained constitution which it would 
 impious to change. We have witnessed improvemer 
 in physical well-being which incline us to expect furth 
 progress and make us keen-sighted to detect the evils ar 
 miseries that remain. The channels of communicati 
 between nations and their governments are free, so 
 the thought of the private philanthropist may mould 
 whole community. And, finally, we have at our dispe 
 a vast treasure of science, from which we may discov 
 what physical well-being is and on what conditions 
 depends. In these circumstances the Gospel precepts 
 philanthropy become utterly insufficient. It is not x 
 enough to visit the sick and give alms to the poor. ¥V 
 may still use the words as a kind of motto, but we mu 
 understand under them a multitude of things which 
 do not express. If we would make them express t 
 whole duty of philanthropy in this age, we must tre 
 them as preachers sometimes treat the Decalogue, wh 
 they represent it as containing by implication a whe 
 system of morality. Christ commanded his first follow: 
 to heal the sick and give alms, but he commands t 
 Christians of this age, if we may use the expression, to i 
 vestigate the causes of all physical evil, to master tl 
 science of health, to consider the question of educati 
 with a view to health, the question of labour with a vie 
 to health, the question of trade with a view to healt 
 and while all these investigations are made, with ff 
 expense of energy and time and means, to work out 
 rearrangement of human life in accordance with 
 results they give. 
 
 Thus ought the Enthusiasm of Humanity to work 
 these days, and thus, plainly enough, it does work. . 
 investigations are constantly being made, these refort 
 commenced. But perhaps it is rather among those w 
 
The Law of Philanthropy 161 
 
 influenced by general philanthropy and generosity, 
 that is, by indirect or secondary Christianity, than among 
 os who profess to draw the Enthusiasm directly from 
 ts fount, that this spirit reigns. Perhaps those who 
 uppear the most devoted Christians are somewhat jealous 
 of what they may consider this worldly machinery. They 
 think they must needs be most Christian when they stick 
 nost closely to the New Testament, and that what is 
 atterly absent from the New Testament cannot possibly 
 ye an important part of Christianity. A great mistake, 
 irising from a wide-spread paralysis of true Christian 
 eeling in the modern Church! The New Testament is 
 j0t the Christian law; the precepts of Apostles, the special 
 sommands of Christ, are not the Christian law. To make 
 them such is to throw the Church back into that legal 
 vystem from which Christ would have set it free. The 
 christian law is the spirit of Christ, that Enthusiasm of 
 
 Semanity which he declared to be the source from which 
 
 ] right action flows. What it dictates, and that alone, 
 s law for the Christian. And if the progress of science 
 ind civilisation has put into our hands the means of bene- 
 iting our kind more and more comprehensively than the 
 irst Christians could hope to do—if instead of undoing a 
 ittle harm and comforting a few unfortunates we have 
 he means of averting countless misfortunes and raising, 
 by the right employ ment of our knowledge and power of 
 ontrivance, the general standard of happiness—we are 
 10t to enquire whether the New Testament commands us 
 0 use these means, but whether the spirit of humanity 
 
 mands it. 
 
 But, say the cautious, is it safe to follow a mere en- 
 husiasm? If Christ is to be believed, it is not safe to 
 ollow anything else. According to him this Spirit was 
 xpressly given to guide men into all truth. But, they 
 will rejom—and here the truth comes out—we like to feel 
 he stay of a written precept; we are not conscious of any 
 uch ardent impulse directing us infallibly what to do. 
 m reply to which what can we do but repeat the question 
 yf St. Paul, “ Into what then were ye baptised? ” 
 
 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 THE LAW OF EDIFICATION 
 
 PHILANTHROPY is the first and easiest lesson in positive 
 morality. It is a duty in which all Christian sects agree 
 and which with more or less zeal they perform. The 
 means used may differ; the means used in this age differ 
 widely from those used in the first ages; but the obliga 
 tion which the first Christians acknowledged is substan 
 tially the same as that acknowledged now. When the} 
 visited the sick and made provision for widows ane 
 orphans and gave alms to the poor, they were doing to tht 
 best of their light and knowledge what philanthropists o 
 the present day do when they study the science of physica 
 well-being, search into the causes of disease and suffering 
 and endeavour systematically to raise the standard o 
 happiness to the highest possible point. 
 
 Did the Enthusiasm of Humanity rest content witl 
 this? It might have done so. Perhaps there are som 
 who believe that this is in fact the substance of Christianity 
 and that all the rest has been overlaid upon the origina 
 system. This is not true, and it will hardly seem plausibl 
 to a reader who has given even a general assent thus fa 
 to the results of the present investigation. But we shal 
 find it easier to understand what the substance of Chris 
 tianity really is, if we consider attentively what Chris 
 tianity would have been and how it would have worked i 
 this theory of it were true. How the persons who holt 
 this theory regard Christianity we may make clear to our 
 selves by a comparison. The present century has wit 
 nessed a remarkable softening of manners. A number 0 
 cruel practices and severities, that excited no disgust : 
 hundred years ago, have now been either swept away a 
 intolerable or are reluctantly tolerated from a feeling o 
 
 162 
 
The Law of Edification 163 
 
 Eessity. Among these are the torture of the wheel, the 
 pillory, the punishment of death. And in private life 
 during the same period men have greatly advanced in 
 tenderness, sympathy, and unwillingness to inflict pain. 
 This improvement was doubtless caused by the decay of 
 feudal, chivalrous, and semi-barbaric institutions which 
 had cherished hard and warlike habits of life. Society in 
 the last century entered upon a new period. For this 
 new period there arose new legislators, and it may prob- 
 ably be said that the fashion of gentleness in feelings and 
 manners was introduced mainly through the influence of 
 Jean Jacques Rousseau. 
 
 Now the first century, like the eighteenth, was a period 
 of transition. It was a period when for the first time the 
 civilised nations of the world lived together in almost un- 
 broken peace. War had ceased to be the main business 
 ‘of life, the support of virtue and almost the only means 
 by which eminent virtue could show itself. In these cir- 
 cumstances the world was prepared for, was calling for, a 
 theory of virtue which should be adapted to its new con- 
 dition. It wanted a new pursuit in place of war, a pur- 
 suit in which, as before in war, the moral feelings might 
 find satisfaction and in which heroism might be displayed. 
 Christ, it may be maintained, was the social legislator who 
 appeared in answer to this call. He induced a large 
 number of people by his eloquence and enthusiasm to 
 devote themselves to philanthropy. He opened their eyes 
 to the suffering and horrors of which the world was full, 
 and pointed out to them a noble and satisfying occupa- 
 tion for their energies and a path to the truest glory in 
 the enterprise of alleviating this misery. 
 
 _ There is no doubt that a philanthropic movement such 
 as is here supposed was possible and would have been 
 highly beneficial in the first century. As five centuries 
 before, a ferment in the Greek mind, arising out of a 
 general advance in civilisation and the influence of several 
 remarkable men, led to the appearance in the world of an 
 entirely new character which has never since disappeared 
 —the sophist or philosopher, so it was natural enough that 
 in the first century of the Christian era philanthropists 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 164 Ecce Homo 
 
 should be heard of for the first time, and that they shoul 
 take their rise out of a moral ferment excited by a grez 
 preacher. A sect of philanthropists might have sprea 
 everywhere, and gradually influenced rulers, and by thi 
 means manners might have been considerably softened 
 The Christians were no doubt such a sect, but were they 
 merely this? Suppose the philanthropical scheme to b 
 far more successful than it was likely to be, suppose it te 
 succeed perfectly in producing physical comfort every- 
 where, and banishing from human life all forms of pair 
 and suffering, such a result would certainly not havi 
 been satisfactory to Christ. He described in one of his 
 parables a man such as philanthropy might produce if it 
 were perfectly successful, a man enjoying every physical 
 comfort and determining - to give himself up to enjoymen 
 but he describes him rather with horror than with satis- 
 faction. And though so much of his life was passed in 
 relieving distress, we never find him representing physica 
 happiness as a desirable condition; on the contrary, most 
 of his beatitudes are pronounced upon those who suffer. 
 The ideal of the economist, the ideal of the Old Testament 
 writers, does not appear to be Christ’s. He feeds the 
 poor, but it is not his great object to bring about a state 
 of things in which the poorest shall be sure of a meal; he 
 recalls dead men to life, but his wisdom does not, like 
 Solomon’s, carry length of days in her right hand, and ir 
 
 her left hand riches and honour. Rather does it carry 
 with it suffering, persecution, and the martyr’s death. 
 He corrects him who said, Blessed are they who shall eat 
 bread in the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God does 
 not exist for the sake of eating and drinking. He preaches 
 peace, and yet he says, I am not come to send peace but 
 a sword. 
 
 The paradox is not very difficult to explain. A good 
 parent will be careful of the physical condition of hi 
 child, will tend him assiduously in sickness, relieve 
 wants, and endeavour in every way to make ‘him happy. 
 But a good parent will not rest content with seeing hi 
 child comfortable and secure from pain. He will con 
 sider that other and greater things than physical comfo 
 
The Law of Edification 165 
 
 re to be procured for him, and for the sake of these greater 
 ings he will even sacrifice some of his comforts and see 
 ith satisfaction that the child suffers a certain amount of 
 pain and wants some pleasures. The affection which pets 
 and pampers its object is not excessive, as it is sometimes 
 described, but a feeble affection, or at least the affection 
 of a feeble nature. Now the love of Christ for human 
 ture was no such feeble affection. It was not an 
 ceedingly keen sensibility which made him feel more 
 infully than other men the sufferings of which the 
 orld is full. It was a powerful, calm, and contemplative 
 we. It was a love of men for what they may be, a love 
 the ideal man in each man, or, as Christ himself might 
 we said, a love of the image of God in each man. Ac- 
 rdingly the Enthusiasm of Humanity in him did not 
 pose to itself principally to procure gratifications and 
 ae for the senses of men, but to make the divine 
 age more glorious in them and to purge it as far as 
 possible of impurities. 
 That ideal which Christ contemplated directly in’ God 
 is followers found in him. And thus arises the second 
 t obligation of Positive Morality, the obligation, 
 namely, to use every means to raise men to the moral 
 levation of Christ. This obligation was brought home to 
 the Christian by the natural working of the Enthusiasm of 
 Humanity i inhim. Excited as it was by the contemplation 
 of Christ, it could not be contented with diffusing physical 
 well-being. He who had himself become humane desired 
 ieeed that others should be happy, but still more that 
 they too should become humane. This dictate of the 
 Christian spirit Christ threw into the form of a special 
 ae when he bade his disciples go everywhere, not 
 erely healing diseases, but also proclaiming g the kingdom 
 of God and baptising. It was natural that the command 
 x take this particular form, because, as we have 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Christ regarded it as essential to the diffusion of 
 
 e humanity “that men should form themselves into a 
 
 ciety of which humanity should be the law, and that 
 
 hey should signalise their entrance into it by undergoing 
 a special rite of purification. 
 
 
 
166 Ecce Homo 
 
 But here again we remark that the command is limit 
 by the peculiar condition of the nascent Church, and 
 if it were performed to the utmost the Enthusiasm 
 Humanity would still remain entirely unsatisfied. The: 
 comes a time when the work of baptism has been alread} 
 accomplished. We, for example, live in the midst of 
 baptised community; the command has become for 
 unnecessary or rather impossible to be fulfilled. But 
 meet the new circumstances, though Christ is silent, 
 spirit of Christ issues a new command. The Enthusiasm 
 of Humanity tells us that though all are baptised all 
 not yet truly humane. It may be true that almost 
 are conscious of impulses and compunctions which are ng 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 directly or indirectly to Christianity, but the glowi 
 
 humanity which alone Christ valued is surely not ev: 
 
 common, much less universal, among the baptised. To 
 rekindle this in those who have lost it, or in those who 
 though nominally Christians have never really conceiv 
 
 it, or in those who have adopted one of the countless per- 
 versions of Christianity, and have never understood thai 
 this enthusiasm is the true Christian law, here is work 
 for the Christian concerning which Christ left no com- 
 mand because it could not arise in the infant Church, 
 As early, however, as the Apostolic age itself, it had begun 
 to be the principal occupation of Christians. St. Paul’s 
 Epistles throughout regard the Christian Enthusiasm as 
 liable to remission, depression, and languor. Continually 
 therefore he exhorts the Christians to whom he writes to 
 remember their ideal. His admonitions to activity in 
 philanthropical works are brief and few though always 
 earnest; but when he endeavours to keep alive their 
 humanity, when he admonishes them to excite and cherish 
 it in each other, then he is copious and vehement. This 
 is the subject nearest his heart. His anxiety is not so 
 much to hear that the widows and orphans are duly sup- 
 plied, and that within the circle of the Christian com- 
 munity want is disappearing and the ills of life are sensibly 
 diminished, as to be informed that his converts are con- 
 forming gradually more and more to their ideal. This 
 conformity he expresses by various figures of speech, 
 
The Law of Edification 167 
 
 It is to “ put on Christ,” “to put on the new man, the 
 new Adam ”; it is “ to have Christ dwelling in the heart,” 
 i Christ formed within”; it is “ to fill up the measure of 
 the stature of the fulness of Christ.” 
 
 So important a duty necessarily received a name. As 
 the moral science .of that time furnished no term which 
 could describe it, the Christians denoted it by a meta- 
 phorical expression which has passed into modern 
 Janguages. It has been remarked that the Christian 
 ‘summum bonum was a social one; it was the welfare of 
 the Christian society. The whole duty of the Christian 
 was to fill satisfactorily his place in that society. Now it 
 is a universal usage of language that the building in which 
 ‘any society meets may be put for the society itself, and 
 ‘vice versa that the building may be called after the society. 
 The word house means sometimes the building in which a 
 family lives, sometimes the family that lives in such a 
 building; a college is sometimes a building in which learn- 
 ‘ing is cultivated, sometimes the society that cultivate 
 
 learning in such a building. The same remark applies to 
 ‘all similar words, such as club, bank, hospital, city. 
 Among others it applies to the word church, which in 
 like manner may be used either to describe a building or 
 a society. This inveterate habit of language indicates 
 the intimate association which forms itself in every mind 
 between the two notions of a corporation and an edifice. 
 No one can speak long in impassioned or rhetorical style 
 about any society whatever without introducing meta- 
 phors drawn from architecture. The Christian writers 
 fell immediately into the practice, and in doing so followed 
 the example of Christ who said, “ Upon this rock will I 
 build my church.” In this style of language, then, as 
 the Church is a building, so each member of it is a stone, 
 and the prosperity of the Church is expressed by the 
 orderly arrangement and secure cementing of the stones. 
 It follows that the labour of making men Christians and 
 inspiring them with the Enthusiasm of Humanity is 
 nothing else but the arrangement and cementing of the 
 stones. In other words, it is building. This then was 
 the name which the Christians adopted. “Let every- 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 168 Ecce Homo 
 
 thing be done,” says St. Paul, “ with a view to building. 
 The phrase has been adopted into modern languages, ye 
 in such a way as to destroy all its force. Instead of bei 
 translated, it has been directly transferred from 
 ecclesiastical Latin of the first centuries in the form 
 edification. The Christian law, then, which we are no 
 discussing, may be called the Law of Edification. 
 This second Christian obligation—the obligation, as 
 same Apostle expresses it, to “‘ provoke others to love ” 
 is as much greater than the obligation of philanthropy asi 
 is a better thing for a man to be good than to be prosperous 
 And in all cases of conflict between the two obligatio: 
 the greater of course suspends the less. Christiani 
 therefore is not identical with philanthropy, nor does it 
 always dictate the course of action which may directl 
 issue in happiness and prosperity for others. It reg 
 temporal prosperity as no indispensable or unmixed bless- 
 ing; its summum bonum is that healthy condition of the 
 soul in which, influenced by the instinct of humanity, it 
 becomes incapable of sin. This healthy condition is calle 
 in the dialect of Christianity “life ” or “ salvation,” an 
 Christ was in the habit of declaring it to be a blessing in 
 comparison of which temporal happiness is utterly insigni- 
 ficant. There is nothing, he says, which a man can give in 
 exchange for his soul; if he gain the whole world and lose 
 that, what is he the better? All manner of physical suffer~ 
 ing, therefore, is to be cheerfully endured rather than that 
 the life of the soul should be sacrificed or enfeebled. If. 
 danger assail the soul through the right hand or the right 
 eye, and it can be averted in no other way, we are to cut off 
 the hand or pluck out the eye. He gives us at the same 
 time to understand that not only have we sometimes to 
 choose between temporal happiness and spiritual health, 
 but that suffering and sorrow have often a direct tendency 
 to produce spiritual health. They may serve the purpose 
 of a wholesome discipline. Accordingly he pronounces a 
 blessing on those that mourn, and speaks ominously and 
 forebodingly of the temptations attending riches and a 
 state of temporal prosperity. 4 
 If we are not to regard prosperity as the first of bless- | 
 
 ? 
 
: The Law of Edification 169 
 
 4 for ourselves, if we are not to seek it in preference to 
 everything else for ourselves, if we are to acquiesce some- 
 times for ourselves in a state of suffering, it follows that 
 ought to do so for our neighbours. A humane man 
 will certainly be pleased to see his fellow-creatures en- 
 joying comfort, but if he be deeply humane he will never 
 be satisfied with this; if their prosperity last long and be 
 ana!loyed he will even become dissatisfied, he will jealously 
 watch for the appearance of those vices which prosperity 
 breeds — insolence, selfishness, superficiality in thought, 
 mfirmity in purpose, and a luxurious baseness which is 
 the death of the soul. If he discern these vices, if they 
 show themselves visibly, the humane man may at last 
 some to call out for sorrow; or, if this be too boldly said, 
 yet at least if to men thus demoralised calamities happen 
 at last, and wholesome labours be imposed, and they be 
 made to support some stern agony of endurance, he will 
 witness the visitation with a solemn satisfaction, and far 
 more than he rejoiced before to see their pleasure will he 
 exult to see the gates of that delusive Paradise closed 
 again, and the fiery cherubim return to guard from man 
 the fruit he cannot see without temptation nor taste with- 
 out ruin. 
 Christ, therefore, is not merely the originator of philan- 
 thropy; and indeed the Church has sustained another part 
 on earth besides that of the Sister of Charity. She has not 
 merely sat by sick-beds, and played the Lady Bountiful to 
 poor people, and rushed between meeting armies on the 
 field of battle to reconcile the combatants by reminding 
 them of their brotherhood. Christianity is not quite the 
 mild and gentle system it is sometimes represented to be. 
 Christ was meek and lowly, but he was something beside. 
 What was he when he faced the leading men among his 
 countrymen and denounced them as a brood of vipers on 
 their way to the infernal fires? That speech which has 
 been quoted above, “ I am not come to send peace but a 
 sword,” will appear, when considered, to be the most tre- 
 mendous speech ever uttered. Burke’s wish that the war 
 with France which he foresaw might prove a long war 
 has been stigmatised as horrible. It was certainly an 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 170 Ecce Homo 
 
 awful wish; it may well cause those who look only 
 physical and immediate happiness to shudder; but f 
 Burke’s premises it was justifiable. Christ’s solemn r 
 lution to persevere in what he felt to be his mission, 
 spite of the clearest foreknowledge of the suffering 
 endless bloodshed which his perseverance would ca 
 to that race of which he was the martyr, was ground 
 on a similar confidence that the evil was preparatory to 
 greater good, and that if some happiness was to be sacr 
 ficed, it would be the price of a great moral advan 
 But the resolution was notwithstanding a most awful o 
 and should impressively teach us not to confound Chri 
 tianity with mere philanthropy, not to suppose that w 
 is shocking is of necessity unchristian, not to confo 
 warmheartedness, bonhommie, or feminine sensibilitie 
 with the Enthusiasm of Humanity. 
 
 It has been remarked above that the machinery 
 philanthropy among the early Christians had all the rud 
 ness which it might be expected to have at a time of lit 
 freedom, either of action or organisation. Instead 
 studying comprehensively the science of human well-bein 
 and devising systematic methods of producing and in: 
 creasing it, they contented themselves with tending th 
 sick, pensioning widows and orphans, and distributi 
 alms. ‘The means they adopted for performing the seco: 
 great obligation, that of converting mankind to Christiat 
 humanity or holiness, were equally simple and below thi 
 requirements and powers of the present age. They uset 
 the one instrument of direct moral suasion. To thi 
 heathen they preached, to those already baptised th 
 prophesied. They related to their converts the orincipl 
 facts of Christ’s life, they told the story of his death anc 
 resurrection, they instructed them in the morality anc 
 theology he had given to his Church. More effectively 
 than this, but without organisation or contrivance, there 
 worked within the Church and outwards round its whol 
 circumference the living, diffusive, assimilative power 0} 
 the Christian Humanity. As there are still many Chris 
 tians who cling to the old modes of philanthropy becaust 
 
 they are the only modes prescribed by the New Testament 
 4 
 
 4; 
 
The Law of Edification ra 
 
 : may the modern Church be fairly charged with confining 
 itself too exclusively to preaching and catechising in the 
 work of conversion and edification. Preaching and cate- 
 chising may still be useful and important, but many other 
 instruments are now at our command, and these instru- 
 ments it is none the less the duty of Christians to use 
 because the New Testament says nothing about them. 
 The enthusiasm can indeed hardly be kindled except 
 by a personal influence acting through example or im- 
 passioned exhortation. When Christ would kindle it in 
 his disciples he breathed on them and said, “ Receive the 
 Holy Spirit ”; intimating by this great symbolical act that 
 life passes into the soul of a man, as it were by contagion 
 from another living soul. It may indeed come to a man 
 through the mere bounty of God, but of means that men 
 can use to kindle it there is none beside their personal 
 influence passing either directly from man to man or 
 diffused by means of books. Contrivance, however, and 
 organisation may do much in marshalling this personal 
 influence, in bringing it to bear upon the greatest number 
 and in the most effective way; it may also do much in 
 preventing men’s natural susceptibility to the enthusiasm 
 from being dulled by adverse circumstances, and in giving 
 fuel to the enthusiasm when it already burns. As it is the 
 duty of Christians to study human well-being systematic- 
 ally with a view to philanthropy, so is it their duty with a 
 view to edification to consider at large the conditions most 
 favourable to goodness, and by what social arrangements 
 ‘temptations to vice may be reduced to the lowest point 
 ‘and goodness have the most and the most powerful 
 ‘motives. Here is a whole field of investigation upon 
 ‘which Christians are bound to enter; much doubtless has 
 been already done in it, but not perhaps with much sys- 
 tem, nor has it been sufficiently felt that it is a principal 
 part of the work belonging properly to the Church. 
 
 The conditions most favourable to goodness! It will 
 ‘be well to consider in some detail what these are, remem- 
 bering always that by goodness is meant the Christian 
 Enthusiasm of Humanity. How may men be made most 
 susceptible of this Enthusiasm? 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 172 Ecce Homo 
 
 It has been shown that the attractive power whic 
 throughout has acted upon men, which has preserved the 
 from that isolation which is the opposite of Christianit 
 and which has united them in those communities of cla 
 or city or state which were the germs and embryos of 
 Universal Christian Republic, is the tie of kindred. n 
 state, we have seen, was founded on a fiction of bloog 
 relationship, and Christianity uses the dialect of bloo¢ 
 relationship when it pronounces all mankind to be brothe ; 
 What is true of mankind in general will be found to b 
 true in this case of the individual man. He in whom 
 family affections have been awakened will have a hear 
 most open to the passion of humanity. It is-useless t 
 tell a man to love all mankind if he has never loved z 
 individual of mankind and only knows by report what lov 
 is. It should be recognised that family affection in som 
 form is the almost indispensable root of Christianity. 
 family affection is rightly called natural, that is to say, 
 will come of itself if it be not artificially hindered. If 
 becomes therefore a principal duty of Christians to remo ve 
 all hindrances out of the way of family affection. 
 
 Now what are these hindrances? They are innumer 
 able, arising out of the endless incompatibilities of tempera- 
 ment and taste, incompatibilities of natural difference 
 and those finer incompatibilities, which are more € : 
 quisitely painful and more malignant, arising out of smal 
 differences in general resemblance. For the removal of 
 such hindrances no general rules can be laid down. In 
 resisting and removing them the higher degrees of Chris- 
 tian tact win their triumphs. Meanwhile there are other 
 hindrances of a simpler kind which are, to an indefini d 
 degree, removable and of which some may here be men= 
 tioned. We may here mention marriages of interest o 
 convenience, the children of which, often originally of d 
 and poor organisation, grow up in an atmosphere of cyni 
 coldness which speedily kills whatever blossoms of kind- 
 liness their nature may put forth. In another class of 
 society there rages another terrible destroyer of natu 
 affection, hunger. Christ spoke of suffering as a whol 
 some discipline, but there is an extreme degree of sufferi 
 
The Law of Edification 173 
 
 which seems more ruinous to the soul than the most 
 mervating prosperity. When existence itself cannot be 
 supported without an unceasing and absorbing struggle, 
 then there is no room in the heart for any desire but 
 the wretched animal instinct of self-preservation, which 
 merges in an intense, pitiable, but scarcely blamable 
 selfishness. What tenderness, what gratitude, what 
 quman virtue can be expected of the man who is holding 
 1 wolf by the ears? 
 
 To persons who, from either of these causes or from 
 others that might be mentioned, have become destitute of 
 qatural affection, preaching and catechising are almost 
 aseless. Your declamations will rouse in them no En- 
 thusiasm of Humanity, but, it may be, an ecstasy of fright 
 or fanaticism. Instruction in morality or theology will 
 aot make them moral or religious, but only a little more 
 knowing and self-satisfied. A great example of humanity 
 put visibly before them may indeed rouse in them the 
 sense they want, but it will never have the healthy keen- 
 ness and calmness it might have had, if it had been roused 
 in the manner appointed by nature. Therefore all Chris- 
 tians who take an adequate view of Christian obligations 
 will consider that the removal of all such social abuses as 
 destroy natural affection, and by doing so kill Christian 
 umanity in its germ, is among the first of those obliga- 
 tions. 
 
 - But again, where natural affection exists, a peculiar 
 perversion of it requires to be guarded against, which 
 ften makes it hostile to that very Humanity of which it is 
 properly the rudimentary form. It is apt to take a clan- 
 nish, exclusive shape, and to inspire not merely no love 
 but positive hatred towards those who are without the 
 circle of blood-relationship. It has been shown above 
 how the very same attraction which created states, iso- 
 lated them, created national distinctions, and, arising out 
 of national distinctions, a permanent condition of inter- 
 national hostility. This state of things is still far indeed 
 from being obsolete, and the same abuse exists within the 
 bosom of states in another form. Divisions arise, em- 
 bittered by superciliousness on the one side and envy on 
 

 
 
 174 Ecce Homo 
 
 the other, between the high-born and the low-born, 
 other advantages such as wealth and acquired station 
 eagerly seized by family affection as an excuse for turnir 
 itself into an exclusive partiality. The distinctions the 
 selves of birth and wealth are substantial realities whi 
 cannot be treated as if they did not exist. There 
 superior and inferior breeds of men as of other animals 
 and the rich man will be led by his wealth into a mode 
 life which must remove him to a certain distance from th 
 poor man. The danger is lest the distinction and the 
 distance should turn to a moral division, to a separatior 
 of interests and sympathies in which Christian union 
 perishes. Therefore against all unjust privilege, agai 
 all social arrangements which make the prosperity of ont 
 man incompatible with the prosperity of another, the 
 Christian is bound by his humanity to watch and protest. 
 But if this danger also is escaped, and natural affectio: 
 be present without exclusiveness, to develop it into a 
 full Christian Enthusiasm, there remain many other means 
 besides preaching and purely religious instruction. 
 these the most important is education, which is certainly 
 a far more powerful agent than preaching, inasmuch as 
 in the first place it acts upon the human being at an age 
 when he is more susceptible of all influences, and par- 
 ticularly of moral ones, than he afterwards becomes, and 
 in the second place it acts upon him incessantly, intensely, 
 and by countless different methods for a series of years, 
 whereas preaching acts upon him intermittently, for the 
 most part faintly, and by one uniform method. Preaching 
 is moral suasion delivered formally at stated intervals, 
 In good education there is an equal amount of moral 
 suasion, delivered far more impressively because delivered 
 to individuals and at the moment when the need arises, 
 while besides moral suasion other instruments are em- 
 ployed. Of these the principal is Authority, a most 
 potent and indispensable agent. We have traced above 
 the process by which mankind were ripened for the re- 
 ception of Christianity. For many ages peremptory laws 
 were imposed upon different nations and enforced by a 
 machinery of punishment. During these ages, out of the 
 
 4 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 The Law of Edification 175 
 
 hole number of persons who obeyed these laws very few 
 ither knew or enquired why they had been imposed. But 
 ll the time these nations were forming habits of action 
 yhich gradually became so familiar to them thatjthe nations 
 who wanted similar habits became to them objects of con- 
 ‘empt and disgust as savages. At last the time came when 
 the hidden principle of all law was revealed and Christian 
 qumanity became the self - legislating life of mankind. 
 Thus did the Law bring men to Christ. Now what the 
 Law did for the race the schoolmaster does for the indi- 
 vidual. He imposes rules, assigning a penalty for dis- 
 ybedience. Under this rule the pupil grows up, until 
 wrder, punctuality, industry, justice and mercy to his 
 school-fellows become the habits of his life. Then when 
 the time comes, the strict rule relaxes, the pupil is taken 
 mto the master’s confidence, his obedience becomes 
 reasonable, a living morality. If the teacher be one whose 
 = morality attains the standard of the Christian En- 
 thusiasm, the pupil is more likely to be initiated into the 
 same supreme mystery than if he stood in any other re- 
 
 lation to him. There is no moral influence in the world, 
 
 excepting that occasionally exerted by great_men, com- 
 parable to that of a good teacher; there is no position in 
 
 which a man’s merits, considered as moral levers, have 
 so much purchase. Therefore the whole question of edu- 
 cation—what the method of it should be, what men should 
 be employed in it—is pre-eminently a question in which 
 Christians are bound by their Humanity to interest them- 
 selves. 
 
 Let us advance a step further, and in considering the 
 conditions favourable to goodness it will be convenient to 
 isolate a particular case. We have before us, then, the 
 child of parents to whose mutual love he owes a healthy 
 organisation and a fresh flow of natural feeling, to the 
 moderate prosperity of whose condition he owes an exemp- 
 tion from brutalising anxieties, and who have instilled 
 into him no prejudices of caste. He has had a teacher 
 who trained him as Providence trained mankind, assuming 
 at the proper season the part of Moses, then that of Isaiah, 
 then that of the Baptist, ushering him into the very pre- 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 176 Ecce Homo 
 
 sence of Christ. Into that presence he has entered, ar 
 we see a young man in whose mind there has ripened 
 natural development out of the sense of duty to kindr 
 and country a commanding sense of duty to that 
 versal Commonwealth of men whose majesty he worshi 
 gathered up in the person of its Eternal Sovereign, Ch 
 Jesus. Does manhood bring new dangers to such a pel 
 son? What are they? And what safeguards can be p 
 vided against them? 
 
 The most formidable temptation of manhood is 
 which Christ described in a phrase hardly translatable 
 pepypvat Biwrexat, To boys and youths work is assigne 
 by their parents or tutors. The judicious parent tak 
 care not to assign so much work as to make his son. 
 slave. We cherish as much as possible the freedom, 
 discursiveness of thought and feeling natural to youth 
 We cherish it as that which life is likely sooner or later 
 diminish, and if we curb it, we do so that it may not e 
 haust itself by its own vivacity. But in manhood work 
 not assigned to us by others who are interested in our 
 welfare, but by a ruthless and tyrannous necessity whic 
 takes small account of our powers or our happiness. And 
 the source of the happiness of manhood, a family, doubles 
 its anxieties. Hence middle life tends continually to 
 routine, to the mechanic tracing of a contracted circle 
 A man finds or fancies that the care of his own family is 
 as much as he can undertake, and excuses himself from 
 most of his duties to humanity. In many cases, owing to 
 the natural difficulty of obtaining a livelihood in a par 
 cular country or to remediable social abuses, such a man 
 conduct is justified by necessity, but in many more 
 arises from the blindness of natural affection, making i 
 difficult for him to think that he has done enough for hi 
 family while it is possible for him to do more. Chris 
 bids us look to it that we be not weighed down by these 
 worldly cares, which indeed if not resisted must evidently 
 undo all that Christianity has done and throw men back 
 into the clannish condition out of which it redeemed them, 
 How many a man who at twenty was full of zeal, high- 
 minded designs and plans of a life devoted to humanity 
 
The Law of Edification 177 
 
 ter the cares of middle life have come upon him and one 
 or two schemes contrived with the inexperience of youth 
 ave failed, retains nothing of the Enthusiasm with which 
 e set out but a willingness to relieve distress whenever 
 it crosses his path, and perhaps a habit of devoting an 
 nual sum of money to charitable purposes! 
 
 To protect the lives of men from sinking into a routine 
 of narrow-minded drudgery, the Christian Church has 
 ntroduced the invaluable institution of the Sunday. Fol- 
 owing the example of the old Jewish Church, it pro- 
 slaims a truce once in seven days to all personal anxieties 
 
 d degrading thoughts about the means of subsistence 
 
 and success in life, and bids us meet together to indulge 
 n larger thoughts, to give ourselves time to taste Heaven’s 
 sounty, and to drink together out of “ the chalice of the 
 srapes of God.” In countries where life is a hard struggle, 
 what more precious, more priceless public benefit can be 
 magined than this breathing-time, this recurring armistice 
 between man and the hostile powers that beset his life, 
 this solemn sabbatic festival? Connected with the Sun- 
 day is the institution of preaching or, as it is called in the 
 New Testament, prophesying. The power of impassioned 
 rhetoric over those whose occupations do not leave them 
 much time for reading is very great, and when the preacher 
 speaks out of the overflowing of a genuine Christian en 
 thusiasm, his words will echo in the memories of many 
 antil the Sunday comes round again. In periods when 
 the pulpits of a country are occupied by the foremost 
 en of their time for genius and wisdom this institution 
 ay sway and form the whole mind of a nation. 
 
 Besides the Sunday and the institution of preaching 
 
 there exist certain societies formed to war against social, 
 political, or moral evils and in various ways to benefit 
 mankind, by interesting himself in which the grown man 
 nay support the Christian humanity within him. 
 The pepypval Biwrixaé are an overwhelming host. It 
 seems desirable to supply as many and as potent instru 
 ments as possible to him who would combat them. Valu- 
 able as the three instruments just mentioned are, it may 
 be urged in deduction from the advantage of the "Sunday 
 M 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 178 Ecce Homo 
 
 and of preaching that they leave him passive; that 
 they free him for a time from his persecutors and reviy 
 in him the aspiration after a higher life, they do not supply 
 him with the activities and the interests of that higher 
 life. Societies do this, but for the most part at pr 
 in a very insufficient way. They do require from 
 members an effort of will, a deed, and one involving 
 denial; they require a subscription of money. The money 
 goes to furnish that comparatively small proportion of the 
 members of the society who are personally grappling wit 
 the evil to remove which the society was formed. Bu 
 from the majority nothing further is required; all per 
 sonal service in the cause of humanity is commuted fe 
 a money-payment. So customary has this become the 
 the word charity has acquired a new meaning; a man’ 
 charity, that is, his love for his fellow - creatures, t 
 commonly estimated in pounds, shillings, and pene 
 But it is a question whether this commutation, howeveé 
 customary, is altogether legal in the Christian Republic 
 It would appear that St. Paul recognised a broad dis 
 tinction between charity and money - donations. 
 seems to have thought that a man might give away 2 
 his property and yet have no charity. Perhaps we are 
 rather to compare the Christian Republic with thos 
 famous states of antiquity which in their best days ré 
 quired the personal service of every citizen in the field 
 and only accepted a money-equivalent from those whe 
 were incapacitated from such service. It is charac 
 teristic of the Christian State that it depends for its v 
 existence on the public spirit of its citizens. The sta 
 of the world are distinguished from each other visibly by 
 geographical boundaries and language. But the Chris 
 tian Republic scarcely exists apart from the Enthusi 
 which animates it; if that dies it vanishes like a fairy 
 city, and leaves no trace of its existence but empty 
 churches and luxurious sinecurists. And assuredly he 
 who remembers his citizenship in it only by the taxes 
 pays is but one step removed from forgetting it altogether. 
 If then the Christian Humanity is to be maintained 
 the point of enthusiasm in a man upon whom the cares 
 
The Law of Edification 179 
 
 a life have come, he must not content himself with 
 paying others to do Christian work. He must contribute 
 of his gifts, not merely of his money. He must be a 
 soldier in the campaign against evil, and not merely pay 
 the war-tax. But then it is too much to expect that 
 he should find work for himself. Spenser allegorises ill 
 when he represents his Red Cross Knight as pricking 
 forth alone in quest of adventures. At least this sort of 
 soldiering i is long out of date. In civilised war men are 
 marshalled in companies and put under the orders of a 
 superior officer. To drop the figure, a flourishing Church 
 Tequires a vast and complicated organisation, which 
 should afford a place for everyone who is ready to work 
 in the service of humanity. The enthusiasm should not 
 be suffered to die out in anyone for want of the occu- 
 pation best calculated to keep it alive. Those who meet 
 within the church walls on Sunday should not meet as 
 strangers who find themselves together in the same 
 lecture-hall, but as co-operators in a public work the 
 object of which all understand and to his own department 
 of which each man habitually applies his mind and con- 
 triving power. Thus meeting, with the esprit de corps 
 strong among them, and with a clear perception of the 
 purpose of their union and their meeting, they would not 
 desire that the exhortation of the preacher should be, 
 what in the nature of things it seldom can be, eloquent. 
 Tt might cease then to be either a despairing and over- 
 wrought appeal to feelings which grow more callous the 
 oftener they are thus excited to no definite purpose, or 
 a childish discussion of some deep point in morality or 
 divinity better left to philosophers. It might then become 
 weighty with business, and impressive as an officer’s ad- 
 dress to his troops before a battle. For it would be ad- 
 dressed by a soldier to soldiers in the presence of an enemy 
 whose character they understood and in the war with 
 whom they had given and received telling blows. It 
 would be addressed to an ardent and hopeful association 
 who had united for the purpose of contending within a 
 given district against disease and distress, of diminishing 
 by every contrivance of kindly sympathy the rudeness, 
 
 
 
180 Ecce Homo 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 coarseness, ignorance, and imprudence of the poor ant 
 the heartlessness and hardness of the rich, for the purpo: 
 of securing to all that moderate happiness which give 
 leisure for virtue, and that moderate occupation whic 
 removes the temptations of vice, for the purpose of pro 
 viding a large and wise education for the young; lasth 
 for the purpose of handing on the tradition of Christ’ 
 life, death, and resurrection, maintaining the Enthusiasm 
 of Humanity in all the baptised, and preserving, in oppo 
 sition to all temptations to superstition or fanaticism, 
 filial freedom of their worship of God. 
 
 Thus far have we carried our analysis of the cond 
 tions most favourable to the Christian spirit or Spi 
 of Humanity. It must remain incomplete. To finish i 
 would lead us too far and answer no purpose. Our put 
 pose in it is already answered if it has shown how mud 
 is involved in the great Law of Edification, how man} 
 duties that Law includes, and how large-minded and com 
 prehensive in his studies and observations, how free fror 
 the fetters of tradition or Scripture, must be the mai 
 who would thoroughly fulfil it. 
 
: CHAPTER XIX 
 
 : THE LAW OF MERCY 
 ‘But there is another aspect of the Law of Edification. 
 Hitherto we have considered it as imposing upon Christians 
 the obligation of developing the domestic and patriotic 
 virtue which is natural to men into that Christian 
 ‘Humanity which is its proper completion, and of cherish- 
 ing, as much as possible, that natural virtue with a view 
 to the development of the Christian Humanity, and of 
 cherishing the Christian Humanity itself when developed. 
 But it continually happens that all methods fail of accom- 
 plishing these results. There is a class of men in every 
 community in whom both natural and Christian humanity 
 jis at the lowest ebb. These will not only do nothing for 
 their kind, but they are capable of committing crimes 
 against society and against those nearest to them. Under 
 temptation from self-interest they actually commit such 
 crimes, and the precedent being once established, they 
 for the most part fall gradually into the condition of 
 avowed enemies of their kind, and constitute a criminal or 
 outcast class, which is not merely destitute of virtue but 
 is, as it were, an Evil Church sustaining its evil by its 
 union and propagating its anarchic law on every side. 
 In exceptional cases men equally devoid of virtue are 
 testrained by prudence or timidity or fortunate circum- 
 stances from committing grave crimes, and remain in the 
 midst of the good undetected or tolerated but not morally 
 better than the outcast on whom all turn their backs. 
 How does Christianity command us to treat bad men? 
 Let us first consider whether Christ taught anything on 
 this special point by precept or example, and, secondly, 
 let us consider what the Spirit of Humanity itself teaches. 
 He made a great difierence between the avowed and 
 181 
 
 ree 
 4 Li 
 
182 Ecce Homo 
 
 recognised criminal and the criminal whose vices w 
 concealed under a veil of sanctimonious profession. 
 latter case, however, is a complicated one, which it will 
 convenient to consider apart. How then did he treat the 
 recognised criminal? In Palestine the distinction betw 
 the virtuous and the vicious class seems to have been mu 
 more marked than in other countries of the ancient worl 
 and as much as in Christian countries at the present day, 
 We read of “the publicans,” the tools of the rapacious 
 farmers-general, and of “ the sinners,” among whom are 
 included the prostitutes: these two classes of people were 
 under the ban of public opinion, and those who laid clai 
 to a reputation for sanctity avoided their contact as 
 pollution. This social excommunication may of course it 
 certain special cases have been unjust, but that it was 
 the whole deserved by those who suffered it Christ did nm 
 call in question. Now before we enquire how he trea 
 these outcasts, let us consider how, from the knowledgt 
 of his doctrine and character which we have now acquir 
 “we should expect him to treat them. 
 In the course of our investigation we have seen Christ 
 tightening in an incredible degree all obligations of 
 morality. He rejects as utterly insufficient what had been 
 considered by the Jews as the highest moral attainment. 
 It is in vain, he says, to refrain from injuring your neigh- 
 bour, if, notwithstanding, you have the wish and impulse 
 injure him; a movement of hatred is, according to him, 
 morally equivalent to a murder. And even if you have 
 no such immoral impulses, yet if your disposition towards 
 your fellow-creatures be purely negative, if you are not 
 actuated by an ardent, by an enthusiastic love and bene- 
 volence towards all mankind, you are morally good for 
 nothing, tasteless salt not good even for the dunghill. 
 He thus raises the standard of morality to the highest 
 possible point. But further, he insists far more vehe- 
 mently than previous moralists had done upon the absolute 
 necessity of attaining the standard. He does not say, 
 This is morality, but, as it is difficult to be moral, God will 
 forgive your shortcomings. On the contrary he says, To 
 be moral in this high sense is life and peace, not to be so is 
 
, The Law of Mercy 183 
 
 death and eternal damnation. In his eyes a man’s moral 
 character was everything. He went through life looking 
 upon men with the eyes of a King ‘or Judge, confounding 
 false estimates of human merit, separating the sheep from 
 the goats, disregarding all other distinctions that can exist 
 between men as unimportant in comparison with the 
 radical distinction between the good and the bad. How 
 then would such a moralist act when he found among his 
 countrymen this distinction already drawn and firmly 
 ‘marked in practice? If it was incorrectly drawn, he 
 might rectify it; he might also point out that it must 
 needs be inadequate as not distinguishing immoral persons 
 simply from moral, but only those whose immorality had 
 tipened into criminal actions, and whose crimes had been 
 detected, from those who could not be proved immoral. 
 ‘These important reservations he would undoubtedly make, 
 but having done so, would he not be likely to stamp the 
 distinction with his approval and make it ten times more 
 stringent? 
 
 Another train of reflection leads to the same conclusion. 
 “One who loves his kind is likely to regard injuries done 
 ‘to human beings with greater indignation than one who 
 ‘does not. If the Jews, under the dominion of formularies 
 ‘and a somewhat outworn legislation, had arrived at so 
 ‘much energy of moral resentment as to reject from their 
 
 society and personal contact those who had perpetrated 
 
 ‘such injuries, was it not to be expected that Christ and 
 his followers, in whom humanity was an enthusiasm, 
 would regard with tenfold indignation the plunderers of 
 ‘the poor, and the tempters who waylaid the chastity of 
 “men? 
 
 The fact, however, is, that Christ, instead of sanctioning 
 the excommunication of the publican and sinner, openly 
 associated with them. He chose a publican to be among 
 the number of his Apostles, and earned for himself from 
 his ill wishers the invidious epithet of the “ Friend of 
 publicans and sinners.” Not, indeed, that his intercourse 
 with them could possibly be mistaken for a connivance 
 at their immoral courses. We may be very sure that 
 he carried his own commanding personality into these 
 
184 Ecce Homo 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 degraded societies, and that the conversations he held it 
 them were upon the topics he chose, not the topics ma 
 usual or most welcome there. He himself asserts this it 
 justifying his novel course—‘ I am not come to call tt 
 righteous, but sinners to repentance”; “They that ar 
 whole need not a physician, but they that are sick ”;— 
 words implying that he appeared among the outcasts as 4 
 missionary or physician of the soul. If it had been other 
 wise his conduct would indeed have been inexplicable 
 but even so it needs explanation. The paradox lies it 
 his allowing himself to feel compassion for criminals, ar 
 in his supposing it possible that their crimes could be 
 forgiven. Criminality certainly appeared to Christ mor 
 odious and detestable than it appeared to his contem 
 poraries. How strange then to find him treating it mor 
 leniently! Those, it appears, whose moral sense was 
 moderately strong, who hated vice moderately, ye 
 punished it so severely that they utterly excluded those 
 who were deeply infected with it from their society an¢ 
 their sympathy; he who hated it infinitely was, at 
 same time, the first to regard it as venial, to relent toward. 
 it, to parley and make terms with it. He who thought 
 most seriously of the disease held it to be curable, while 
 those who thought less seriously of it pronounced 
 incurable. Those who loved their race a little made we 
 to the knife against its enemies and oppressors; he wh 
 loved it so much as to die for it, made overtures of peace 
 to them. The half-just judge punished the convicted 
 criminal; the thoroughly-just judge offered him forgive- 
 ness. Perfect justice here appears to take the ve 
 course which would be taken by injustice. 
 
 It is true that the two extremes do in a manner meet. 
 Christ, representing the highest humanity, treats crime ir 
 a manner which superficially resembles the treatment of 
 it by those in whom humanity is at the lowest stage. He 
 tolerates it in a certain sense, as it was tolerated before 
 the institution of law. But the other toleration was bar- 
 barous, Christ’s toleration is the newly revealed virtue of 
 Mercy. 
 
 In explaining this we must once more recur to 
 
The Law of Mercy 185 
 
 Be emnental principle that Christianity is natural fellow- 
 feeling, or humanity raised to the point of enthusiasm. 
 Now, it will be found that where this fellow-feeling is 
 dormant, vice is regarded with simple indifference, where 
 it is partially developed, with the anger of justice, but 
 where it is developed completely, not with fiercer anger, 
 but with Mercy, i.e. pity and disapprobation mixed. 
 
 Let us imagine a person devoid of sympathy, a person 
 to whom the welfare of his fellow-creatures is a matter 
 of complete indifference. On him a wrong action will 
 make no more impression than a right one, so long as 
 he is himself affected by neither. He will feel neither the 
 indignation of justice, nor the mixed indignation and 
 compassion of mercy. Next let us imagine a person of 
 limited sympathy. The limitations of sympathy may be 
 of two kinds. The person we imagine may sympathise 
 only with certain people, as for example his relations, or 
 he may sympathise with only moderate ardour. Such a 
 person will feel dissatisfaction when wrong is committed 
 (this is the instinct of justice) in the latter case always, 
 in the former case when the person wronged is of those 
 to whom his sympathy extends. But he will not feel 
 pity for the criminal mixed with his indignation (which 
 is mercy) in the latter case, because his moderate sym- 
 pathy will be neutralised by his indignation, in the former 
 case, because he will not perceive the criminality. But 
 suppose a person whose sympathy is unlimited, that is, one 
 who sympathises intensely and with all persons alike: he 
 will feel at the same time indignation at a crime, and pity 
 for the degradation and immoral condition of the criminal; 
 in other words, he will have mercy as well as justice. 
 
 It is to be noted that the word justice is here used in 
 the sense of resentment against a criminal, mercy in the 
 sense of mixed pity and-resentment. Now it may in some 
 cases be a man’s duty to punish, and in other cases to 
 pardon, but it is in all cases a man’s duty to be merciful 
 to a criminal, that is, to mix pity for him with the resent- 
 ment inspired by his deed; and, the words being used in 
 this sense, it may be asserted that mercy is not in any 
 way inconsistent with justice, but only the riper form of 
 
186 Ecce Homo 
 
 it; in other words, the form which justice assumes wher 
 the instinct which is the source of justice is exception- 
 ally powerful. Now, of the ancients, for the most a 
 it may be said that they had not enough justice to ha’ 
 any mercy. Their feelings with respect to wrong-doing 
 were almost always either those of the perfectly un- 
 sympathetic man or of the partially sympathetic man, 
 They regarded the criminal either with indifference oF 
 with unmixed indignation. In Christ’s treatment of 
 publicans and sinners we have that ripest humanity, 
 fully developed justice, which we call by the name 
 mercy, and which combines the utmost sympathy wi 
 the injured party and the utmost sympathy for 
 offender. ; 
 It may be well to pause a moment on the three stages 
 in the history of the treatment of crime: the stage 
 barbarous insensibility, the stage of law or justice, 
 that of mercy or humanity. 
 We have in the Iliad an interesting record of the 
 stage of insensibility. In that poem the distinction 
 tween right and wrong is barely recognised, and 
 division of mankind into the good and the bad is not 
 recognised at all. It has often been remarked at 
 
 
 
 contains no villain. The reason of this is not that 
 poet does not represent his characters as doing wickec 
 deeds, for, in fact, there is not one among them who is 
 not capable of deeds the most atrocious and shame 
 But the poet does not regard these deeds with any strong 
 disapprobation, and the feeling of moral indignation which 
 has been so strong in later poets was in him so feeble 
 that he is quite incapable of hating any of his characte: 
 for their crimes. He can no more conceive the notion 
 of a villain than of an habitually virtuous man. The 
 few deeds that he recognises as wrong, or at least as 
 strange and dangerous,—killing a suppliant,! or killing 
 1 Auwas 8 éxxadéoas Novoat KéXer’, dugl 7 aheipat, 
 
 vooguw aeipacas, ws un IIplauos tot vldv* 
 
 pH 6 wev axvupévy Kpadly xdXov ovK éptcatro, 
 
 maida ldav, ’Axirji 5 dpwGein plrov Frop, 
 
 kal € karaxrelvece, Acds 5 adlrnrac égeruds.—xxiv. 582. 
 
 
 
 
 en ee a ae) 
 
: The Law of Mercy 187 
 
 i father 1— he, notwithstanding, conceives all persons 
 alike as capable of perpetrating under the influence of 
 passion or some heaven-sent bewilderment of the under- 
 standing. 
 But there comes a time, probably coincident with the 
 first consolidation of ancestral custom or usage into 
 written law, when a sense of justice begins to diffuse itself 
 through the community. By the law comes the know- 
 ledge of sin. A standard of action is set up, which serves 
 to each man both as a rule of life for himself and a rule of 
 criticism upon his neighbours. Then comes the division 
 of mankind into those who habitually conform to this 
 rule and those who violate it, into the good and the bad, 
 and feelings soon spring up to sanction the classification, 
 feelings of respect for the one class and hatred for the 
 other. This new hatred of criminals spreads slowly, and 
 is only perhaps keenly felt when the crime is very heinous. 
 But it is unmixed. In this second stage a criminal may 
 be regarded with indifference as in the first, but if he is 
 not so regarded then he is simply hated. It cannot be 
 necessary to produce examples of this pitiless hatred from 
 classical antiquity; in the Hebrew Psalms, which are 
 morally so much in advance of even much later Gentile 
 writings, it is sufficiently apparent. “The man that 
 privily slandereth his neighbour,” says David, “ him will 
 T destroy ;” and he expresses a hope of “ soon destroying 
 all that are ungodly in the land.” That he does not re- 
 gard this work of vengeance as a painful necessity imposed 
 on him by his royal office is plain from other expressions, 
 e.g. “ the righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the ven- 
 geance, he shall wash his footsteps in the blood of the 
 ungodly.” 
 
 We may be sure, however, that there was one tolerably 
 numerous class of exceptions to this unmixed hatred. 
 Natural affection, it has already been remarked, was 
 
 always Christian. We may be sure that in the homes of 
 1 roy pev ey Bovevea KaTaxTdmev Ofét xadko 
 
 GA Tis GBavdrwv Tadcev xOdov, Ss p’ evi upg 
 
 Sjuou Ojce parw Kal dveldea TON’ avOpuirwv 
 
 ds wh warpoddvos wer’ ’AXaroiow kaNeolunv.—ix. 458. 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 188 Ecce Homo 
 
 antiquity there were disobedient sons, to whom the fathe 
 urged by the strong instinct of nature, was sometim 
 merciful as well as just. Hebrew antiquity presents 
 with some pathetic instances of forgiveness betwee 
 brothers, and the prophets are full of the tenderest ex. 
 pressions of the mercy of Jehovah towards his disobediet 
 children. It is true that here, in accordance with 
 conceptions of archaic society, it is to the state rath 
 than the individual members of it that pardon is offere 
 But doubtless the prophets, who presented so noble a 
 image of the Invisible Father, had found in the hearts 
 earthly fathers the mercy they attributed to Him, ar 
 accordingly, it was by family relations that Christ taugh 
 his disciples and they taught themselves to understan 
 the law of mercy. “ How often shall my brother offen 
 against me and I forgive him, until seven times?” “ 
 will arise and go to my Father, and will say unto hin 
 Father, I have sinned.” 
 
 While the Gentile nations in their feelings towards vie 
 oscillated between the stage of insensibility and the stag 
 of hatred, the Jews, who in all such matters were moi 
 mature, were for the most part in the stage of hatre 
 Among them the division between the virtuous and the 
 vicious was most decidedly drawn, and the enmity hb 
 tween the two parties most irreconcilable. Let us noy 
 consider how such a division must work. In the first place 
 it plainly affords a valuable encouragement to virtuous 
 dispositions. It separates the wheat from the chaff, i 
 throws the good into the society of the good and save 
 them from demoralising example and contagion, and, fat 
 more than all, through this division there arises that which 
 is to virtue what air is to life, a tone or fashion of good- 
 ness. But the bad consequences it produces are scarcely 
 of less magnitude than the good ones. These bad conse- 
 quences are manifold, but the most serious is the effect of 
 the system upon the criminal himself. The law which 
 condemns sin binds in a most fatal manner the sin to the 
 sinner. It exulcerates the sore and makes the disease 
 chronic. In the stage of insensibility, men, easily tempted 
 into crime, flung off the effects of it as easily. Agamem- 
 

 
 The Law of Mercy 189 
 
 non, after violating outrageously the rights of property, 
 has but to say dacdynv, “My mind was bewildered,” 
 and the excuse is sufficient to appease his own conscience, 
 and is accepted by the public and even by the injured 
 party himself, who feels himself equally liable to such 
 temporary mental perplexities. When such a view of sin 
 
 revailed no high virtue was possible, but at the same 
 time that moral degradation was equally unknown which 
 follows the loss of self-respect. After the introduction of 
 law crime could never again be thus lightly expiated and 
 forgotten. By solemn trial and public punishment the 
 criminal was made conspicuously visible to his fellow- 
 citizens, he was held up to their criticism, and it became 
 part of their duty and of their education to hate him. 
 For them this was beneficial; but how did it operate on 
 the criminal himself? When the law was satisfied and 
 the punishment inflicted, could he return to his former 
 estimation and rank in the community? Notso; beyond 
 the legal punishment another was inflicted of endless 
 duration and fatal severity. He might be condemned to 
 fine or imprisonment or exile, but in all cases he incurred 
 another sentence, in all cases he was condemned to a 
 place among the bad, to excommunication from the society 
 and league of the virtuous. A fatal prejudice rested upon 
 him for the future, a clinging suspicion oppressed him; 
 crime was expected of him; his virtuous acts required 
 explanation; his endeavour after virtue was distrusted by 
 the good or passed unobserved by them; he lived among 
 the bad, the bad were now the censors of his behaviour, 
 to their standard it was most expedient for him to con- 
 form. And as a man’s opinions are commonly those of 
 the society in which he lives, the criminal accepted in 
 most cases the ignominy as just, believed himself to be 
 incapable of virtue, to be made for crime, and resolved at 
 last to give the reins to his nature. By this process the 
 momentary lapse, the human infirmity, from which the 
 best have no exemption, under the dreadful hands of 
 law was converted into an abiding curse. It was, as it 
 were, bound to the sinner and became a millstone drag- 
 ging him down to perdition. Justly have great authors 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Igo Ecce Homo 
 
 described sin, deriving its strength from law, as a burd 
 laid upon the back, or, still more graphically, as a dea 
 body tied to a living one. 
 
 And when the criminal is the father of children th 
 curse descends even upon those who are wholly innocent 
 Before they are old enough to distinguish right an¢ 
 wrong they are, as it were, received into the Evil Chure 
 by infant baptism, their parents or their parents’ friend: 
 standing sponsors and promising for them that whid 
 when they come to age they take upon themselves but 
 too willingly. Cut off from all contact with virtue, in 
 structed in vice, which is itself an easy art, and strange r 
 to goodness, which is difficult to learn, they enter inte 
 perdition by a natural title, and the same law, whic 
 favours so much, as it ‘were, the formation of larg 
 properties in vice, provides also that they shall pass by 
 inheritance. 
 
 The sole reign of Law, then, is a despotism, beneficent 
 and necessary at a certain stage of social development, but 
 yet terrible, and, if maintained too long, mischievous 
 It is a preparatory discipline destined to fit the pupil for 
 another teacher, a proper condition for the childhooe 
 of society, but not well adapted for its maturity. 
 accompishes a great work in elevating men out of the 
 savage levity of primitive manners, in delivering ther 
 from passions which by indulgence had grown to resemble 
 insanity, from the fierceness of appetite and anger. I 
 brings out the instinct of sympathy, it develops the 
 power man possesses of identifying himself with-his neigh- 
 bour, and teaches a whole community to interest itself ir 
 redressing the wrong done to one of its members. As has 
 been already remarked, it is in its nature tender and not 
 cruel, for it protects the weak who before were helpless 
 and arms itself to avenge the injured. Though Law in- 
 flicts punishment, yet it exists to reduce the whole amount 
 of suffering, and though when we personify it we call it 
 stern and relentless, yet, compared with lawlessness, it is 
 soft-hearted. But there comes a time when mankind 
 have learned all the lessons which Law has to teach 2 
 begin to leave their instructor behind them. For Law is 
 
The Law of Mercy Igi 
 
 me esprit borné, and does not perceive the legitimate con- 
 sequences of his own principle. Sympathy, the instinct 
 by which men identify themselves with their fellow- 
 creatures, should not be partial or limited in its activity. 
 Law teaches us to put ourselves in the place of those who 
 are injured, but does not teach us, nay, he forbids us, to 
 put ourselves in the place of those who commit injuries. 
 And those who have learnt his lesson best, and in whom 
 the power of sympathy is most highly trained, will be 
 most discontented with his rule, and as to the lawless he 
 was a preacher of pity, to these he will justly appear cruel. 
 = persons are ripe for that higher doctrine which 
 
 ist teaches. 
 _ Christ, representing all who are possessed by the En- 
 thusiasm of Humanity, does not regard crime with less 
 anger, is not less anxious for the punishment of it, than 
 the legalists. But when it is punished, when the claims 
 of the injured party are satisfied, he does not dismiss the 
 
 tter from his thoughts. He considers that the criminal 
 also has claims upon him, claims so strong that they are 
 ot forfeited by any atrocity of crime. Nay, they are 
 Bther strengthened by his criminality, as they would be 
 by misery, for the humane man, who finds his own happi- 
 aess in his humanity, does sincerely consider the criminal 
 to be miserable. This doctrine that vice is essentially 
 gitiable was advanced sometimes in antiquity, but plain 
 men flouted it from them with irritation as one of those 
 childish paradoxes with which philosophers amused and 
 abused their leisure, and some of the philosophers them- 
 selves showed that they only half believed it by the self- 
 somplacency and affected preciseness with which they 
 Jemonstrated it. Nevertheless he in whom humanity is 
 an enthusiasm does honestly feel distressed when he thinks 
 yf those who are fallen and lost in character and whom 
 jociety repudiates. Even when wickedness is prosperous 
 ind flourishes like a green bay tree, he understands pretty 
 well and unaffectedly pities the uneasiness of remorse, 
 he loneliness of pride, the moral paralysis that succeeds 
 atiety, the essential poverty of vulgarity. Nor does he 
 milly feel such pity, but he has the courage to indulge it. 
 
 h 
 
« 
 
 192 Ecce Homo 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 The legalist, if he is at any time surprised into a similz 
 feeling for an unfortunate criminal, suppresses it as dé 
 gerous and weak. The anger which he feels, the punis! 
 -ment which he executes or approves, is his guarante 
 against falling back into insensibility. His disapprobatio 
 of wrong-doing, being not very strong, requires to I 
 anxiously cherished lest it should die in him altogether 
 Any relentings of pity would be dangerous to it; he hs 
 not sympathy enough for both the injured party and th 
 criminal; at least any that he might give to the latte 
 must be taken from the former. Therefore i in communitie 
 which are in the legal stage, mercy is always identifi 
 with laxity; the stage before them is mistaken for tl 
 stage behind them ; and any tenderness towards crimina 
 —parum odisse malos cives—is regarded as a portentot 
 omen-of the downfall of discipline and of public ruin. Bu 
 the moment that sympathy ceases to be this invalid thin 
 needing constant artificial stimulants, the moment 
 kindles into the free Enthusiasm of Humanity, it gets 
 confidence to follow its own impulses. It perceives th 
 truth of what has been explained above, that mercy is 1 
 relaxation of justice, but justice itself in a riper stage 
 it is not afraid that if it pities criminals it shall have 1 
 compassion left to bestow on the innocent sufferers fro 
 criminality. On the contrary, it is confident that if it ce 
 pity those with whom it is angry and at the very mome! 
 when it is most angry, and even at the very moment whe 
 it is inflicting the punishment suggested by a just anger 
 it will be able a fortiori to pity and sympathise with thos 
 who are suffering from no fault of their own. 
 Therefore it is that Christ went boldly among the pul 
 licans and sinners. Virtue, he considered, was not nol 
 so feebly supported that its soldiers must needs remat 
 for ever within their entrenched camp. This had bee 
 necessary at an earlier stage of the war. A close am 
 exclusive league of the virtuous had been necessary at a 
 earlier time, that they might not forget their principle 
 or be overwhelmed by numbers. But goodness had no 
 become ten times more powerful in becoming an en hi 
 siasm. It no longer contents itself with barely preservin 
 
: The Law of Mercy 193 
 
 its existence in the presence of prevailing vice. It turns 
 against its enemy; it undertakes to take the hostile army 
 prisoner. The children of Israel turn and pursue the 
 Egyptians through the Red Sea. Under the command 
 of Christ Jerusalem lays siege to Babylon. He announces 
 a great mundane project of regeneration. He will not 
 cent to lose those who have apostatised from virtue. 
 He will not rest content with raising goodness to a higher 
 standard i in those who are good already, nor with making 
 it easier for others to be good in future. He will go in 
 search of those who have already fallen; no matter tae 
 deep their degradation, he will not willingly lose one. 
 Besides the title of King, or Son of Man, he assumes that 
 of Saviour or Redeemer, and in this work he seems to 
 have his heart even more than in the other. The shep- 
 herd, he says, leaves without hesitation the ninety-nine 
 Sheep to seek the hundredth that is lost. A woman that 
 has lost a single piece of money will sweep the whole 
 house and search diligently till she find it. And what 
 pleasure when such a search is successful! In heaven, 
 among God’s angels, there is more joy over one sinner 
 that returns than over ninety and nine that never 
 wandered. 
 
 
 
 SS es 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 THE LAW OF MERCY—continued 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Curist then undertakes the conversion of sinners. OQ 
 his success in this enterprise our biographies, particularl 
 that of St. Luke, contain many examples. Christianity 
 by giving men a greater interest in each other than 
 had before, and by weakening the influence of artificia 
 distinctions, and, at the same time, by its intense serio 
 ness, gave those who were influenced by it a keen eye fe 
 character and an insight into human nature such as is ver 
 rarely found in antiquity. The stories of conversatio 
 recorded in the Gospels have a liveliness and truth whie 
 everyone can in some measure feel, but which are felt te 
 times as strongly by those who know and consider how 
 perfectly new to literature such sketches were when the 
 appeared. It was by them that the depth and complexit 
 and mystery of the human heart were first brought to lighi 
 and their appearance involved a revolution in litera 
 the results of which are to be traced not so much in 
 writers of the long barbaric period which followed thei 
 diffusion as in Dante and Shakspeare. Of these stories w 
 will find room here for two, the one containing the repen 
 ance of a man, the other of a woman. ; 
 
 Zaccheus held a high office under the farmers-genera 
 and had become rich. His wealth, however, had ne 
 availed to relax the social excommunication under whicl 
 with all his fraternity, he lay. Either the Jews of 
 time were less dazzled by wealth than the Gentiles of t 
 present, or they reflected with indignation that the rich 
 he had amassed had been plundered from themselve 
 By some means he had heard of Christ, and conceiy 
 an intense curiosity to see him. That it was no vulg: 
 curiosity, but that overpowering attraction towards grea 
 
 194 
 
The Law of Mercy 195 
 
 iaecs and goodness—that faith, which is the germ of all 
 that is good in human character—may be gathered from 
 the sequel of the story. He may have heard it reported 
 ‘that Christ did not, like other religious men, disdain the 
 company of publicans, and that he had condescended to 
 be entertained at their houses. He was rich; he also was 
 able, if only such an honour could be granted him, to 
 entertain Christ. It is for this that riches are enviable, 
 that while the poor must be content with glimpses of the 
 hero or the saint as he passes in the street, the rich can 
 bring him within their doors and contemplate him at 
 their leisure. But Zacchzus had not the courage to use 
 this privilege of his wealth. His conscience was ill at 
 ease, the stigma of his infamous occupation had entered 
 into his heart. He was afraid to show his wealth to 
 Christ, lest the question should be asked him how it had 
 been gained. He submitted therefore to look on among 
 the poor, and to be satisfied with what he could see as the 
 procession passed. But the crowd was dense, and, it may 
 be, found a pleasure in elbowing aside the social tyrant 
 who had thus put himself on a level with them. He was 
 short, and saw himself in danger of losing even the passing 
 glimpse of Christ’s countenance with which he had re- 
 solved to be content. Determined to secure at least so 
 much, he ran forward and climbed into a tree which 
 overshadowed the road by which the train was to pass. 
 By this means he saw Christ, and not only so but Christ saw 
 him. Zaccheus was not one of the most pitiable of his ex- 
 communicated class. He might be hated, but he was suc- 
 cessful; he was one of those who might say, “‘ Populus me 
 sibilat, at mihi plaudo.”’ In a word, he was a prosperous 
 plunderer, living in abundance among the victims of his 
 Tapacity. But Christ was touched by the enthusiasm he 
 displayed, and may have divined and understood the 
 shame which, as we have conjectured, caused him to 
 shrink from a personal interview. Such enthusiasm and 
 shame seemed to Christ the first stirrings of humanity in 
 the publican’s heart, and by a single stroke he completed 
 the change he perceived to be beginning, and ripened a 
 half-hopeless yearning into a settled purpose of moral 
 
 
 
196 Ecce Homo 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 amendment. Without delay, or reserve, or conditions, ) 
 rebuke, he gave himself up to the publican. Adopting 
 the royal style which was familiar to him, and which com= 
 mends the loyalty of a vassal in the most delicate manne 
 by freely exacting his services, he informed Zaccheus of 
 his intention to visit him, and signified his pleasure tha’ 
 a banquet be instantly prepared. Such generous conf 
 dence put a new soul into Zaccheus; it snapped in 
 moment the spell of wickedness under which all his bette 
 instincts had remained in dull abeyance; and while 
 crowd murmured at the exceptional honour done to 
 public enemy, Zacchzus stood forth, and solemnly de 
 voted half his property to the poor, and vowed fourfole 
 restoration to all whom he had wronged. 
 
 This is the repentance of a man. Zaccheus show 
 no remarkable sensibility; he sheds no tears, he utter: 
 no strising reflections. The movement in his mind i 
 strong, but not in the least peculiar or difficult to follow 
 It is a conflict between common honesty and the instinct 
 of the thief, a conflict in which the former, fighting ai 
 great odds, gains a signal victory. Against all the might 
 of inveterate habit, and bad society, and a crushing pub 
 prejudice, this man makes head, and by one great effor 
 forces his way back into the class of good citizens and 
 honest men. And this great but simple achievement h 
 gained power to perform, not through reflection an 
 reasoning, not through the eloquence of a preacher, no 
 through supernatural terrors, but through the cordial, re 
 storing influence of Mercy. It was Mercy, which is nol 
 Pity—a thing comparatively weak and vulgar—but Pity 
 and Resentment blended at the highest power of each 
 the most powerful restorative agent known in the medicine 
 of the soul; it was Mercy that revealed itself in Christ’ 
 words, the Pity slightly veiled under royal grace, the Re 
 sentment altogether unexpressed and yet not conceale 
 because already too surely divined and anticipated by the 
 roused conscience of the criminal. And. Mercy, more 
 powerful than Justice, redeemed the criminal while 1 
 judged him, increased his shame tenfold, but increased in 
 the same proportion the wish and courage to amend. 
 
: The Law of Mercy 197 
 
 The second story describes the repentance of a woman. 
 It is a fragment. A woman fallen from virtue, we know 
 not who, entered a room in the house of a Pharisee who 
 ‘was entertaining Christ. We know not particularly what 
 ‘Christ had done for her, but we can conclude generally 
 that he had roused her conscience as he did that of Zac- 
 ‘cheus, that he had restored her to virtue by giving her 
 hope and by inspiring her with an enthusiastic devotion 
 to himself. She threw herself down before him and em- 
 braced his feet, weeping so abundantly over them that 
 ‘she was obliged to wipe them, which she did with her hair. 
 This is the picture presented to us, and we know nothing 
 further of the woman, although tradition has identified 
 her with that Mary Magdalene of whose touching fidelity 
 to Christ in the last scenes of his life so much is recorded. 
 But fragmentary as the story is, it is all-important, as 
 the turning-point in the history of women. Such wisdom 
 is there in humanity that he who first looked upon his 
 fellow-creatures with sympathetic eyes found himself, as 
 it were, in another world and made mighty discoveries 
 at every step. The female sex, in which antiquity saw 
 nothing but inferiority, which Plato considered intended 
 to do the same things as the male only not so well, was 
 understood for the first time by Christ. His treatment 
 brought out its characteristics, its superiorities, its pecu- 
 liar power of gratitude and self-devotion. That woman 
 who dried with her hair the feet she had bathed in grateful 
 tears has raised her whole sex to a higher level. But we 
 are concerned with her not merely as a woman, but as a 
 fallen woman. And it is when we consider her as such 
 that the prodigious force and originality of Christ’s mercy 
 makes itself felt. For it is probably in the case of this 
 particular vice that justice ripens the slowest and the 
 seldomest into mercy. Most persons in whom the moral 
 sense is very strong are, as we have said, merciful; mercy 
 is in general a measure of the higher degrees of keenness 
 in the moral sense.. But there is a limit beyond which it 
 seems almost impossible for mercy, properly so called, to 
 subsist. There are certain vices which seem to indicate 
 a criminality so engrained, or at least so inveterate, that 
 
 , 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 198 Ecce Homo 
 
 mercy is, as it were, choked in the deadly atmosphere thz 
 surrounds them, and dies for want of that hope upon which 
 alone it can live. Vices that are incorrigible are no proper 
 objects of mercy, and there are some vices which virtuous 
 people are found particularly ready to pronounce incor- 
 rigible. Few brave men have any pity to spare for a con- 
 firmed coward. And as cowardice seems to him who hz 
 the instinct of manliness a fatal vice in man as implying 
 an absence of the indispensable condition of masculine 
 virtue, so does confirmed unchastity in woman seem @ 
 fatal vice to those who reverence womanhood. And 
 therefore little mercy for it is felt by those who take a 
 serious view of sexual relations. There are multitudes wh 
 think lightly of it, and therefore feel a good deal of com=- 
 passion for those who suffer at the hands of society suc] 
 a terrible punishment for it. There are others who can 
 have mercy on it while they contemplate it, as it were, at 
 a distance and do not realise how mortal to the very soul 
 of womanhood is the habitual desecration of all the 
 sacraments of love. Lastly, there are some who force 
 themselves to have mercy on it out of reverence for the 
 example of Christ. But of those who see it near, and 
 whose moral sense is keen enough to judge of it, the 
 greater number pronounce it incurable. We know the 
 pitiless cruelty with which virtuous women commonly 
 regard it. Why is it that in this one case the female sex 
 is more hard-hearted than the male? Probably because 
 in this one case it feels more strongly, as might be expected, 
 the heinousness of the offence; and those men who criti 
 cise women for their cruelty to their fallen sisters do no 
 really judge from the advanced stage of mercy but from 
 the lower stage of insensibility. It is commonly by lo 
 itself that men learn the sacredness of love. Yet, though 
 Christ never entered the realm of sexual love, this sacred- 
 ness seems to have been felt by him far more deeply than 
 by other men. We have already had an opportunity of 
 observing this in the case of the woman taken in adultery. 
 He exhibited on that occasion a profound delicacy of which 
 there is no other example in the ancient world, and which 
 anticipates and excels all that is noblest in chivalrous and 
 
The Law of Mercy 199 
 
 ‘finest in modern manners. In his treatment of the prosti- 
 tute, then, how might we expect him to act? Not, surely, 
 with the ready tolerance of men, which is but laxity; we 
 ‘might expect from him rather the severity of women, 
 which is purity. Disgust will overpower him here, if any- 
 where. He will say, “ Thy sin’s not accidental, but a 
 trade. ... Tis best that thou diest quickly.” There 
 ‘is no doubt that he was not wanting in severity; the 
 gratitude that washed his feet in tears was not inspired 
 by mere good-nature. But he found mercy too, where 
 “mercy commonly fails even in the tender hearts of women. 
 And mercy triumphed, where it commonly dies of mere 
 despair. 
 _ These two stories may serve as specimens of Christ’s 
 ‘redeeming power. At the same time they exhibit to us, 
 it is plain, the natural working of the Enthusiasm of 
 Humanity, the essential spirit of Christianity. The latter 
 story in particular has gone to the heart of Christendom. 
 It has given origin and even a name to institutions which 
 are found wherever the Christian Church is found, and the 
 object of which is to redeem women that have fallen from 
 ‘yirtue. It has given to Christian art the figure of the 
 “Magdalen, which, when contrasted with the Venus of 
 Greek sculpture, represents in a very palpable manner the 
 change which Christ has wrought in the moral feelings of 
 mankind with respect to women. May we then lay it 
 down as one of the duties of positive morality to attempt 
 ‘the restoration to virtue of the criminal and outcast 
 classes? 
 
 The Christian Church has certainly always reckoned 
 this among its duties; nevertheless there exists at the 
 present day among practical men a strong repugnance to 
 all schemes of the kind, a repugnance founded on observa- - 
 
 tion and experience, and therefore not likely to be wholly 
 unreasonable. It will be well worth while to state the 
 world’s case against the Christian doctrine of repentance. 
 
 In the first place, the world will admit what has been 
 said concerning the imperfection of the legal system. It 
 is impossible to deny that the habit of regarding criminals 
 with unmixed hatred is a pernicious one. Law taken by 
 
 
 
200 Ecce Homo 
 
 itself benefits the good, and so far is most useful; but a 
 the same time it makes the wavering bad and the 
 worse, and vice hereditary, and so far it does frigh 
 mischief. Mercy therefore must be called in to temper 
 justice, and here Christianity is right. In the treatment o 
 the criminal we must consider his interest as well as the 
 interest of the injured party. We must anxiously study 
 the best means of moderating punishment so as to lea 
 the criminal a hope of recovering the public esteem, i 
 best means of inflicting a disgrace which shall not 
 indelible. This is a just principle, and Christ’s prote 
 against the pitiless rigour which the Jews exercised on 
 the publicans and sinners was right and memorable. a 
 we follow the example he set we may save many w 
 under the legal system are lost inevitably. We may 
 arrest some at the beginning of a bad career whom the 
 legal system would hurry forward. But the hope of re- 
 covering all, of melting the most hardened, is an error 
 enthusiasm. Men who look facts in the face, it is said, 
 recognise that vice when it has once fairly laid hold of a 
 man is an incurable disease, and, moreover, that it lays 
 hold of men with a fatal rapidity. There is such a thing 
 as repentance, and this fact should not be forgotten; but, 
 on the other hand, it is a mistake to attach very great 
 importance to it, for a practical and valuable repentance 
 is very rare; the stage in the criminal’s career in which 
 it is possible is a short one, and it is only the less heinous 
 forms of criminality which admit of it at all. : 
 This is probably the view which the most temperate of 
 so-called practical men take of repentance when they do 
 not allow themselves to be overawed by the authority of 
 Christianity. Clearly it is not the view of Christ. He is 
 far more hopeful; he believes that the most inveterate 
 and enormous criminality may be shaken off, and he is so 
 sanguine of the possibility of restoring the lost that he 
 avows himself ready to neglect for this enterprise his other 
 task of strengthening and developing the virtue of the 
 good. Let us endeavour to discover the ground of this 
 difference of opinion. 7 
 The popular view, then, is that there are two kinds of 
 
vice. The one includes whatever we understand by in- 
 firmities, as faults of temper, or passion. Uncontrolled 
 temper or unbridled passions may lead to grave crimes; 
 “still we regard these vices as venial, and are at all times 
 ready to believe in the repentance and reformation of one 
 addicted to them. The other class includes such vices as 
 perfidy, brutality, and cowardice; and of these, for the 
 “most part, “the world will not believe a man repents,” 
 and when it finds the Church undertaking to convert such 
 characters and boasting of its success, it, whether openly 
 or secretly, accuses Christianity of encouraging hypocrisy. 
 Now if we consider this classification of vices, or if we ask 
 ourselves how the vicious characters we are disposed to 
 forgive differ from those to whom we refuse forgiveness, 
 we shall find that the one thing which we consider indis- 
 pensable is good impulses. The man who has these may 
 commit any of the crimes to which turbulent passions 
 May prompt or feebleness of will leave the path open, and 
 yet he will not forfeit our sympathy. We shall continue 
 to hope for him, and, if he should declare himself repentant 
 and reformed, we shall not suspect him of insincerity, for 
 we shall regard him as one who all along had the root of 
 the matter in him. But the cold-blooded, low-minded 
 criminal, whose crimes have cost him no struggle and no 
 Temorse, without ardour in his pulses or blush upon his 
 cheek—when such a man abandons evil courses we but 
 suspect him of some deeper treachery than usual, for we 
 See no soil out of which virtue could spring. This is the 
 Tough philosophy of common life, and in ordinary cases it 
 serves us well enough. “ This wise world of ours is mainly 
 Tight.” But the question arises, How do these indispen- 
 sable good impulses arise in the mind? If those who have 
 them had them from earliest childhood in the same 
 Strength, and those who want them have never possessed 
 them in any degree, then indeed we must reconcile our- 
 selves to the maxim, “ Once a villain, always a villain.” 
 But it will be found that the same rule holds of these good 
 impulses which holds of all other human endowments, 
 namely, that though different men may by nature possess 
 them in different degrees, yet all possess them in some 
 
 
 
 
 
 The Law of Mercy 201 
 
202 Ecce Homo 
 
 
 
 degree; and also that they require development by ex 
 ternal influences. Further, it is possible that in the 
 absence of such influences they do not die but remain 
 within the man undiscovered and dormant. Accordingly, 
 though it is quite true that where virtuous impulses are 
 not active virtue cannot live, yet it is by no means c ’ 
 that where such impulses are not active they do not exis 
 and may not, by the application of some influence, 
 roused into activity. 
 
 But, answers the world, the better impulses do sooner 
 or later die of this torpor. It is true that they do not di e 
 at once, and there is a considerable period during which 
 repentance is possible. But it never lasts longer than 
 youth: this is the flexible and elastic time. Upon the 
 young try all your methods of conversion and regenera 
 tion; but when youth is over, in middle age, when physical 
 growth has ceased, when life has been explored, when habit 
 ‘has become as powerful as nature, when no new idea is 
 welcome and few new ideas are intelligible, when a man’s 
 character is understood by his neighbours, and any change 
 in his conduct would excite their surprise and disturb 
 their calculations, when all things concur to produce uni- 
 formity and to prescribe an unchangeable routine both of 
 thought and action,—in this stage moral disease is incur= 
 able, repentance impossible. | 
 
 Again, there is much truth in this. It is an easy thi 
 to bring the tears of repentance to the eyes of a boy; vy 
 see the most striking changes pass upon the whole li 
 and mode of thinking of young men; but the period of 
 experiments, the noviciate, expires, and the vicious habits 
 of middle life resist, for the most part, the contagion of 
 virtue and of noble examples. The power of the ordinary 
 agencies of moral restoration which are at work in the 
 world is thus limited. But the world will surely admit 
 exceptions. Agencies have at different times beem 
 brought to bear which have had a greater power than 
 and which have roused good impulses in hearts that 
 seemed dead. A Whitefield, a Bernard, a Paul—not te 
 say a Christ—have certainly shown that the most con- 
 firmed vice is not beyond the reach of regenerating i 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The Law of Mercy 203 
 
 fluences. Inspired men like these appearing at intervals 
 have wrought what may be called moral miracles. Nor 
 is it possible to set bounds to the restoring and converting 
 power of virtue, when, as it were, it takes fire—when, 
 instead of a rule teaching a man to do justice to his neigh- 
 bours, and to benefit them when an occasion presents 
 itself, it becomes a burning and consuming passion of 
 benevolence, an energy of self-devotion, an aggressive 
 ardour of love. Well! it is this aggressive, exceptional 
 virtue that Christ assumes to be employed, and that the 
 world leaves out of calculation. Christ is consistent 
 here; we have remarked repeatedly that he demands an 
 enthusiasm, and it is consistent therefore that he should 
 impose tasks to which only an enthusiasm is equal. 
 Once more, however, the world may answer, Christ 
 may be consistent in this, but is he wise? It may be true 
 that he does demand an enthusiasm, and that such an en- 
 _thusiasm may be capable of awakening the moral sense in 
 hearts in which it seemed dead. But if, notwithstanding 
 this demand, only a very few members of the Christian 
 Church are capable of the enthusiasm, what use in im- 
 posing on the whole body a task which the vast majority 
 are not qualified to perform? Would it not be well to 
 “recognise the fact which we cannot alter, and to abstain 
 from demanding from frail human nature what human 
 nature cannot render? Would it not be well for the 
 Church to impose upon its ordinary members only ordin- 
 ary duties? When the Bernard or the Whitefield ap- 
 pears, let her by all means find occupation for him. Let 
 her in such cases boldly invade the enemy’s country. But 
 in ordinary times would it not be well for her to confine 
 herself to more modest and practicable undertakings? 
 There is much for her to do even though she should 
 honestly confess herself unable to reclaim the lost. She 
 “may train the young, administer reproof to slight lapses, 
 ‘Maintain a high standard of virtue, soften manners, diffuse 
 enlightenment. Would it not be well for her to adapt 
 her ends to her means? 
 No, it would not be well; it would be fatal to do so; 
 and Christ meant what he said, and said what was true, 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 204 Ecce Homo 
 
 when he pronounced the Enthusiasm of Humanity to be 
 everything, and the absence of it to be the absence of 
 everything. The world understands its own routine well 
 enough; what it does not understand is the mode of 
 changing that routine. It has no appreciation of the 
 nature or measure of the power of enthusiasm, and or 
 this matter it learns nothing from experience, but after 
 every fresh proof of that power relapses from its brief 
 astonishment into its old ignorance, and commits pre- 
 cisely the same miscalculation on the next occasion. The 
 power of enthusiasm is, indeed, far from being unlimited; 
 in some cases it is very small. History is full of instances 
 in which it has foamed itself away: in utter impotence 
 against physical obstacles. Painful it is to read, and yet 
 one reads again and again, of citizens who have united 
 in close league against some proud invader; with enthu 
 siastic dependence upon the justice of their cause, the 
 invincible force of their patriotism, and the protection of 
 Providence, when justice has been found weaker than 
 power, and enthusiasm than numbers, and Providence 
 has coldly taken the side of the stronger battalions. But 
 one power enthusiasm has almost without limit—the 
 power of propagating itselfi—and it was for this that 
 Christ depended on it. He contemplated a Church in 
 which the Enthusiasm of Humanity should not be felt by 
 two or three only but widely. In whatever heart it 
 might be kindled, he calculated that it would pass rapidly 
 into other hearts, and that, as it can make its heat felt 
 outside the Church, so it would preserve the Church itself 
 from lukewarmness. For a lukewarm Church he would 
 not condescend to legislate, nor did he regard it as at all 
 inevitable that the Church should become lukewarm. He 
 laid it as a duty upon the Church to reclaim the lost 
 because he did not think it utopian to suppose that the 
 Church might be not in its best members only, but through 
 its whole body, inspired by that ardour of humanity that 
 can charm away the bad passions of the wildest heart, and 
 open to the savage and the outlaw lurking in moral wilder- 
 nesses an entrancing view of the holy and tranquil order 
 that broods over the streets and palaces of the city of God. 
 
The Law of Mercy 205 
 
 : Nevertheless the stubborn fact remains. Whatever 
 ‘may be theoretically possible to the Enthusiasm of 
 Humanity, it does not at the present day often rise to 
 ‘this energy. We do not, as a matter of fact, often see 
 these wonderful conversions take place; and when they 
 do appear to take place, we have had so much experience 
 of the hollowness of such appearances that we expect to 
 find in the end the change transitory or else hypocritical ; 
 or, if it be genuine, that the convert was never a criminal 
 of the deepest dye, but perhaps rather unfortunate than 
 guilty. Must we not, then, still conclude that Christ has 
 in this instance made a miscalculation and that if he has 
 ‘not overrated the power of Enthusiasm so long as Enthu- 
 siasm exists, he has at least overrated the probability of 
 ‘its continuing long, and underrated the power of the 
 agencies which are always at work to damp and quench 
 it? Instead of presuming that the Church would gener- 
 ally be under the influence of enthusiasm, ought he not 
 ‘rather to have foreseen that it would generally be luke- 
 ‘warm and enthusiastic only at rare intervals? The 
 answer is, that Christ does not actually seem to have been 
 thus sanguine, but he counted the Enthusiasm not merely 
 an important but an absolutely essential thing, and there- 
 fore left no directions as to what should be done when it 
 was absent. He did not disguise from himself the proba- 
 bility of great seasons of depression occurring in the 
 ‘Church, ebbs in the tide of the Enthusiasm of Humanity. 
 He spoke of a time when the love of many should wax 
 cold; he doubted whether on his return to the earth he 
 should find faith in it. And the Apostles in like manner 
 became sensible that their inspiration was liable to inter- 
 missions. They regard it as possible to grieve the Divinity 
 who resided within them, and even to quench his influence. 
 But neither they nor Christ even for a moment suppose 
 that, if he should take his flight, it is possible to do without 
 him, or that the sphere of Christian duty is to be narrowed 
 to suit the lukewarmness of Christian feeling. Chris- 
 tianity is an enthusiasm or it is nothing; and if there 
 sometimes appear in the history of the Church instances 
 of a tone which is pure and high without being enthu- 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 206 Ecce Homo 
 
 siastic, of a mood of Christian feeling which is calml 
 favourable to virtue without being victorious against vice 
 it will probably be found that all that is respectable it 
 such a mood is but the slowly-subsiding movement of an 
 earlier enthusiasm, and all that is produced by the luke 
 warmness of the time itself is hypocrisy and corrupt cor 
 ventionalism. 
 
 Christianity, then, would sacrifice its divinity if it abar 
 doned its missionary character and became a mere educe 
 tional institution. Surely this Article of Conversion i 
 the true articulus stantis aut cadentis ecclesie. When 
 power of reclaiming the lost dies out of the Church, i 
 ceases to be the Church. It may remain a useful institu: 
 tion, though it is most likely to become an immora 
 and mischievous one. Where the power remains, there, 
 whatever is wanting, it may still be said that “ the taber- 
 nacle of God is with men.” 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 THE LAW OF RESENTMENT 
 
 Tr is not the fault of the divine virtue of Mercy that it is 
 So readily counterfeited by the vice of insensibility. The 
 difference is indeed vast, but it often does not express 
 itself at all in outward deeds. The difference lies in that 
 indignation at vice which in the merciful man may often 
 be suppressed, while in the merely tolerant man it has no 
 existence. Mercy has been defined above as a feeling of 
 mixed indignation and pity; properly speaking, Mercy is 
 present wherever such a feeling is entertained, whether the 
 action dictated by the feeling be punishment or forgiveness. 
 There are occasions when the wise man who entertains 
 this compound feeling will see fit to indulge the pity and 
 Suppress the indignation; there are other occasions when 
 he will gratify the indignation and resist the impulses of 
 pity. But he is not merciful unless he feels both. Thus 
 the man who cannot be angry cannot be merciful, and we 
 shall be able to assure ourselves that that unbounded 
 compassion for sinners which Christ showed was really 
 Mercy and not mere tolerance, by enquiring whether on 
 other occasions he showed himself capable of anger. 
 _ Of the two feelings which go to compose Mercy the 
 indignation requires to be satisfied first. The first im- 
 pulse roused by the sight of vice should be the impulse 
 of opposition and hostility. To convict it, to detect it, to 
 contend with it, to put it down, is the first and indispens- 
 able thing. It is indeed a fair object of pity even while 
 it remains undetected and prosperous, but such pity 
 must be passive and must not dare to express itself in 
 deeds. It is not mercy but treason against justice to 
 relent towards vice so long as it is triumphant and in- 
 solent. So long, if we may venture upon the expression, 
 207 ¢ 
 
208 Ecce Homo 
 
 mercy will be even sterner and more unpitying 
 justice, as the poet felt when he wrote— 
 
 And oh! if some strange trance 
 The eyelids of thy sterner sister press, 
 Seize, Mercy, thou, more terrible, the brand, 
 And hurl her thunderbolts with fiercer hand. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 But the moment that indignation begins to be in som 
 measure satisfied, pity awakes; and when indignation 
 satiated then Pity occupies the whole mind of the merciful 
 man. We have seen Christ when his feelings were i 
 this latter condition, when he moved among that class ¢ 
 criminals upon whom justice had in some measure done i 
 work. They were suffering the sentence of social excom 
 munication. His indignation towards them was not dea 
 but satisfied, and therefore in his demeanour few traces ¢ 
 it appear. But there must have been in Palestine anothe 
 class of criminals, a class which is found in all countrie: 
 whose vices are not detected or pass for virtues, and wht 
 accordingly reap all the advantages and suffer none of th 
 penalties of crime. In the presence of such a class t 
 Mercy, as we have seen, makes her face as a flint, am 
 hardens and stiffens into mere Justice. 
 We find, then, in Palestine a class of persons toward 
 whom Christ’s demeanour was precisely of this kind. I 
 was a class not less influential and important than migh 
 be produced in England by fusing the bar, the clergy, an 
 universities and the literary class into one vast intellectua 
 order. It is to be remembered that with the Jews theo 
 logy, law, science, and literature were but differen’ 
 aspects of one thing, the Divine Revelation which ha 
 been made to their fathers and which was contained fo 
 them in the Scriptures of the Old Testament supplemented 
 in the view of the most influential party, by a Tradition 
 of equal antiquity and authority. As there was but on 
 sort of learning, there was but one learned profession 
 consisting of the expounders of this ancient wisdom. A 
 least these constituted the one learned profession whic 
 had much influence at this time, and which could be sai 
 to deserve the title. The old Aaronic priesthood sti 
 existed, but it bore the stamp of a ruder age and wante 
 
The Law of Resentment 209 
 
 ‘the character and acquirements which conferred influence 
 in an age of books and study. As in Greece the priest- 
 hood passed into insignificance and resigned the task of 
 instructing the people, so far as they had ever undertaken 
 it, to the philosophers, so in Judea they were eclipsed 
 first by the prophets and afterwards, when the faith in 
 inspiration began to die out, by the commentators on the 
 old Law. The order of Aaron gave place to the order 
 which regarded Ezra as its founder; the priest gave place 
 to the Scribe or Lawyer. 
 _ At the time when the national institutions of Judea 
 were threatened by the Greek kings of Syria, there sprang 
 up a party composed of those who clung most fondly to 
 ancient traditions, the object of which was to preserve the 
 nation from losing its peculiarity through the infection of 
 Greek manners and opinions. They bore the name of 
 Pharisees. As the national party they found it easy to 
 become popular, and, in spite of some opposition and per- 
 secution from the Asmonean kings, they continued in the 
 time of Christ to exercise a commanding influence over the 
 people. It is natural to suppose that this party included 
 most of that great learned profession just described. A 
 Scribe would naturally be a Pharisee, inasmuch as one 
 who devoted his life to the study of the Law would natur- 
 ally be zealous in defence of it. Accordingly in the New 
 Testament, the Scribes, Lawyers, and Pharisees are com- 
 monly named together, being in fact partly identical and 
 altogether congenial in views and interests. And they 
 may be considered as composing practically one party. 
 With the main object which this party had in view 
 mone can have sympathised more than Christ. None, 
 certainly, regarded the ancient revelation with more 
 reverence than he; none can have been more unwilling 
 to see the national institutions of the Jews supplanted 
 and superseded by the customs of the surrounding nations. 
 It might therefore have been expected that Christ would 
 rather take the lead among the Scribes and lawyers 
 than set himself in opposition to them. And, indeed, it 
 is likely enough that, as Socrates passed with the world for 
 a sophist, so Christ was regarded -by the people in general 
 ce) 
 
210 Ecce Homo 
 
 as a leading Scribe or expounder of the Law. But if 
 examine the character of that great party more closel 
 we shall find that they not only differed from Christ 
 were radically opposed to him, and that they were nm 
 only in spirit unchristian but “essentially anti-christian, 
 The whole course of this investigation has shown that the 
 substance of Christ’s teaching was his doctrine of Enthu- 
 siasm, or of a present Spirit dictating the right course of 
 action and superseding the necessity of particular rules. 
 Now the doctrine of the Scribes, lawyers, and Pharisees 
 may be briefly summed up by saying that it consisted in 
 the denial of a present Spirit, and in the assertion of the 
 paramount necessity of particular rules. They believed 
 that the inspiring Power which had dwelt with their 
 ancestors and made them virtuous was withdrawn, and 
 they compiled out of the works of those ancestors af 
 elaborate system of rules which might serve them for g 
 ance in his absence. In other words, their doctrine 
 Christ’s were precisely contrary to each other. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 but the legalist believed that in order to do this it wa 
 necessary to adopt a defensive attitude, to throw up wa 
 of partition, and as much as possible to isolate the Je 
 from those dangerous influences which might otherwisé 
 have obliterated his nationality. This belief was a con 
 fession of the weakness of the Jewish principle, a confes- 
 sion that it had ceased to be a match for the influences in 
 the midst of which it was placed, and it suggested a numbel 
 of hateful and immoral contrivances for perpetuating the 
 division between Jew and Gentile. The hatred which the 
 Jews incurred from the surrounding nations, the fancy 
 current among the Gentiles that Moses had forbidder 
 them to show a traveller the way unless he professed the’ 
 own belief, or to direct a thirsty man to the fountain 
 unless he were circumcised, had its rise in this odious 
 theory of isolation. 
 Christ, on the contrary, proposed to preserve Judai 
 by putting it upon the offensive, by making it universa 
 And this plan implied his belief in its invincible, heaven: 
 inspired strength. He held that the same Divine Powe 
 
’ 
 
 The Law of Resentment 211 
 
 which had originally legislated for the Jews was still 
 present, completing his legislation and annulling whatever 
 
 in it was outworn by the Enthusiasm of Humanity 
 
 kindled in men’s hearts and issuing decrees as authorita- 
 tive as those of Moses. And in this Enthusiasm he con- 
 fided as powerful enough to resist whatever was corrupting 
 in Gentile influences and to assimilate what was good. 
 Therefore, while the legalists provoked the Gentile world 
 
 _ to that final attack upon the Jewish nation which deprived 
 it of its temple and its country, Christ initiated that recon- 
 
 ciliation of Jew and Gentile which was seen in the early 
 
 : Church. 
 
 Again, both Christ and the legalist devoted themselves 
 to the promotion of moral virtue. They agreed in think- 
 
 ing everything unimportant in comparison with Duty. 
 But the legalist believed that the old method by which 
 their ancestors had arrived at a knowledge of the require- 
 
 ments of Duty, namely, divine inspiration, was no longer 
 
 available, and that nothing therefore remained but care- 
 
 fully to collect the results at which their ancestors had 
 
 arrived by this method, to adopt these results as rules, 
 and to observe them punctiliously. Devoutly believing 
 
 that in the most trifling matter where action was involved 
 
 there was a right course and a wrong one, and at the same 
 time entirely deserted by the instinct or inspiration which 
 
 distinguishes the one from the other, they invented the 
 most frivolous casuistry that has ever been known. They 
 overburdened men’s memories and perplexed their lives 
 with an endless multitude of rules, which sometimes were 
 simply trivial: e.g. “‘ An egg laid on a festival day may 
 be eaten according to the school of Shammai, but the 
 school of Hillel says it must not be eaten,” and at other 
 times were immoral, as in the case of the Corban which 
 Christ selected for censure. 
 
 Precisely in opposition to this school Christ proclaimed 
 that the inspiration which had instructed the ancient 
 Jews was not only not withdrawn, but was given to his 
 own generation in far greater measure than to any pre- 
 vious one. John the Baptist, he said, was the greatest 
 of the prophets, and the least of his own followers was 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 212 Ecce Homo 
 
 greater than John. The inspiration of the prophets had 
 revealed to them some of their duties, but had left them 
 unenlightened about others; an inspiration was now 
 given which should illuminate the whole province of moral 
 obligation. Casuistry therefore, so far from being im 
 portant, was less needed than ever, and it was so far from 
 being necessary to supplement the written Scriptures by 
 a traditional law that those written Scriptures themselves, 
 though they retained their sacredness and value, yet 
 ceased henceforth to be, in the strict sense, a binding law. 
 
 So direct was Christ’s opposition to the legal party. 
 The method of promoting moral virtue which he proposed 
 was not regarded by him as merely better than the 
 casuistry of his opponents, but as the only method. The 
 other method, in his view, could not produce virtue, 
 though it might sometimes procure the performance of a 
 right deed; it could but destroy in men’s minds the very 
 conception of virtue. It could issue in nothing but a 
 certain moral pedantry and in pride. Therefore he de- 
 nounced without qualification the whole system and the 
 teachers of it. Apologetic voices might perhaps have 
 been raised, urging that these teachers, if their system was 
 worthless and mischievous, nevertheless did, at least in 
 some cases, the best they could, that they were serious and ~ 
 made others serious, and that at the worst any moral 
 teaching was better than none. We do not know how 
 Christ would have answered this plea, but we know that 
 he suffered no such considerations to mitigate the stern- 
 ness of his condemnation. He who could make allowance 
 for the publican and the prostitute made no allowance at 
 all for the Pharisee. If we examine the charges he makes 
 against them we shall see that he accuses them in the 
 first place of downright, undisguised vice. He calls them 
 plunderers of the poor, and declares that the countless 
 rules which they impose upon others they take no trouble 
 to observe themselves. We have not the evidence before 
 us which might enable us to verify these accusations. A 
 that can be said is that those who are constantly endeay: 
 ouring to avoid infinitesimal sins, such as that of eating an 
 egg laid on a festival day, are particularly apt to fall into 
 
The Law of Resentment 213 
 "sins that are “ gross as a mountain, open, palpable.” In 
 this sense it is true that “la petite morale est ’ennemi de 
 la grande.” But it is evident that Christ was not better 
 _ pleased with their good deeds than with their bad ones. 
 Their good deeds had the nature of imposture, that is, 
 they did not proceed from the motives from which such 
 deeds naturally spring and from which the public suppose 
 them to spring. When these men tithed their property for 
 the service of religion, did they do so from the ardent 
 feelings which had suggested the oblations of David in old 
 times? No doubt the people thought so, but in truth they 
 paid tithes from a motive which might just as well have 
 prompted them to take tithes—respect for a traditional 
 tule. When they searched and sifted the Scriptures, 
 _fancying, as Christ said, that in them they had eternal 
 ife, did they do so because they felt deeply the wisdom of 
 the old prophets and legislators? The people, no doubt, 
 thought that these diligent students were possessed with 
 the spirit of what they read, but the truth was that they 
 only pored over the ancient scrolls because they under- 
 stood that it was proper to read them. Therefore the 
 ‘More they read the less they understood, and they paid 
 the same reverence to the languid futilities of some pur- 
 blind commentator as to the inspirations of Isaiah. When 
 they lauded the ancient prophets and built their sepul- 
 chres, was it because they were congenial spirits, formed 
 in their school and bent upon following in their steps? 
 The people thought so, but Christ pronounced with 
 memorable point and truth—what is true of many other 
 worshippers of antiquity besides the Pharisees—that they 
 were the legitimate representatives of those who killed the 
 prophets, and that they betrayed this by the very worship 
 which they paid to their memory. 
 
 Let us linger on this for a moment. It is trite, that 
 an original man is persecuted in his lifetime and idolised 
 after his death, but it is a less familiar truth that the 
 posthumous idolators are the legitimate successors and 
 Tepresentatives of the contemporary persecutors. The 
 glory of the original man is this, that he does not take his 
 virtues and his views of things at second hand, but draws 
 
\ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 214 Ecce Homo 
 
 wisdom fresh from nature and from the inspiration within 
 him. To the majority in every age, that is, to the super- 
 ficial and the feeble, such originality is alarming, perpl 
 ing, fatiguing. They unite to crush the innovator. But 
 it may be that by his own energy and by the assistance of 
 his followers he proves too strong for them. Gradually, 
 about the close of his career, or, it may be, after it, they are 
 compelled to withdraw their opposition and to imitate the 
 man whom they had denounced. They are compelled to 
 do that which is most frightful to them, to abandon their 
 routine. And then there occurs to them a thought which 
 brings inexpressible relief. Out of the example of he 
 original man they can make a new routine. They may 
 imitate him in everything except his originality. For on 
 routine is as easy to pace as another. What they dread 
 is the necessity of originating, the fatigue of being really 
 alive. And thus the second half of the original man’ 
 destiny is really worse than the first, and his failure i 
 written more legibly in the blind veneration of succeeding 
 ages than in the blind hostility of his own. He broke the 
 chains by which men were bound; he threw open to them 
 the doors leading into the boundless freedom of nature 
 and truth. But in the next generation he is idolised and 
 nature and truth as much forgotten as ever; if he co 
 return to earth he would find that the crowbars and files 
 with which he made his way out of the prison-house have 
 been forged into the bolts and chains of a new prison 
 called by his own name. And who are those who idolise 
 his memory? Who are found building his sepulchre? 
 Precisely the same party which resisted his reform; thosé 
 who are born for routine and can accommodate them- 
 selves to everything but freedom; those who in clinging 
 to the wisdom of the past suppose they love wisdom bu 
 in fact love only the past, and love the past only becaus 
 they hate the living present; those, in a word, who sé 
 Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in opposition to Christ, and 
 appeal to the God of the dead against the God of the 
 living. 
 
 Thus it was that the legal party were actors in every 
 thing, winning the reverence of the multitude by fe 
 
 Cx" 
 
The Law of Resentment 205 
 
 
 
 pretences, imitating inspired men in everything except 
 _ their inspiration, following motives which did not actuate 
 them but which they supposed ought to actuate them. 
 _ And as must most infallibly happen to men living in such 
 _conventionalism, destitute of convictions, the healthy play 
 of life artificially suspended, over the whole inert stagna- 
 tion of the soul there grew a scurf of feeble corruption; 
 petty vices, littlenesses, meannesses, were rife within them. 
 They grew conceited, pompous, childish. They liked to 
 hear the sound of their titles, to exaggerate the distinc- 
 tions of their dress, to reflect upon their superiority to 
 other men, to find that superiority acknowledged, to be 
 greeted reverentially in public places, to recline on the 
 first couch at dinner parties. The virtues to the cultiva- 
 _tion of which in themselves and others they had devoted 
 ‘their lives refused altogether to be cultivated by the 
 methods they used, and in the void place of their hearts 
 where morality and sanctity, justice and the love of God, 
 : should have been, there appeared at last nothing to mark 
 the religious man, nothing, we may suppose, except a 
 little ill-temper, a faint spite against those who held wrong 
 opinions, a feeble self-important pleasure in detecting 
 heresy. 
 _ Such was the party which Christ denounced with so 
 ‘much passion. It may strike us that however corrupt 
 they may have been they could hardly deserve to be pro- 
 nounced worse than publicans and harlots. But Christ 
 ‘never went so far as this. He did indeed in a parable 
 ‘contrast the prayer of a Pharisee unfavourably with the 
 prayer of a publican, but it was a publican repenting, and 
 the moral of the comparison is, “‘ Better commit a great 
 ‘sin and be ashamed of it, than a smaller one and be proud 
 of it.’ And when he said that the very harlots entered 
 the Christian Church before the Pharisees, he again meant 
 to charge them not with being worse but less corrigible 
 than those whose vices were too gross to leave room for 
 self-delusion. Still it is plain that he gave way to anger 
 far more in addressing Pharisees than in addressing 
 publicans and harlots. 
 In doing so he only followed the rule laid down above. 
 
216 Ecce Homo 
 
 It is not to be supposed that, as a lover of men, he fel 
 less pity for those whom he denounced when all the world 
 admired them than for those whose part he took when 
 all the world disowned them. Indeed his most passionate 
 invective closes in that singular lamentation over Jeru- 
 salem in which the saddest feelings of a sensitive patriot 
 are so inimitably blended with the regal sense of persona } 
 greatness which he continually and with so much uncon- 
 sciousness betrayed. He felt pity as well as anger, but 
 he thought the anger had a better right to be expressed. 
 The impostors must be first unmasked; they might be 
 forgiven afterwards, if they should abandon their conven 
 tionalities. The lover of men is angry to see harm done 
 to men. Harm was done by the publican and the pros- 
 titute, but anger could do no more against these than it 
 did already. Men were on their guard against them, 
 their power for evil was circumscribed as far as it could 
 be, and justice was satisfied by the punishment of infamy 
 which had been inflicted upon them. But the lover of 
 men, when he contemplated the vast and united phalanx 
 of legalists, saw that which carried him out of himself 
 with anger and pain. He saw the multitude sitting at 
 their feet as learners and addressing them with titles o 
 veneration. He saw those whose lot confined them to 
 the narrow cares of subsistence, those whose limbs indeed 
 were continually exercised in handicrafts and their shrewd 
 
 ness in trades, but whose higher faculties rusted in disuse, 
 and those of higher station, upon whom fell larger tasks 
 of administration and government but still secular tasks 
 overwhelming the mind with details and concealing 
 eternal principles from its view,—he saw all this miscel- 
 laneous crowd gathering round their revered teachers 
 eager for the wisdom and the instruction which might 
 save their souls in the all-engulphing vortex of earthly 
 life. He saw that in the hands of these teachers was laid 
 the life and salvation of the nation, and that from them 
 was certain to pass readily into other minds whatever 
 enthusiasm of goodness might dwell in their own. H 
 
 looked for this enthusiasm; doubtless he was prepared to 
 find it immature and not altogether that Enthusiasm of 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
: The Law of Resentment 219 
 
 Humanity which dwelt in himself. He observed these 
 teachers—and he found they were mountebanks. Their 
 gestures, their costume, were theatrical; their whole life 
 was an acted play; the wisdom that came from their lips 
 was repeated with more or less fluency, but it had been 
 learned by rote; sometimes it was good, the wisdom of 
 Moses or Isaiah, sometimes it was the dotage of a Sham- 
 mai; but, wise or foolish, it came with equal emphasis 
 from those who, solely occupied with the fretting and the 
 strutting they considered proper to the part, declaimed it 
 in the dress of teachers to an admiring audience. And 
 marking this, he considered that the power of these men 
 to do mischief was equal to or greater than their power to 
 do good. It would be better that the Jews should have 
 no teachers of wisdom at all, than that they should have 
 teachers who should give them folly under the name of 
 wisdom. Better that in the routine of a laborious life 
 they should hear of wisdom as a thing more costly than 
 pearls but beyond their reach, than that it should seem 
 to be brought within their reach and they should dis- 
 cover it to be paste. Acknowledged penury of wisdom 
 might leave them rich in humility, reverence, and faith; 
 abundance of false wisdom could but make them im- 
 postors or cynics. If a divine revelation be the first of 
 blessings, then the imposture that counterfeits it must be 
 by far the greatest of all evils. And if the unlucky male- 
 factor who in mere brutality of ignorance or narrowness 
 of nature or of culture has wronged his neighbour excite 
 our anger, how much deeper should be our indignation 
 when intellect and eloquence are abused to selfish pur- 
 poses, when studious leisure and learning and thought 
 turn traitors to the cause of human well-being, and the 
 wells of a nation’s moral life are poisoned? 
 
 This, then, was the class of persons with whom Christ 
 was angry, and these were the reasons of his anger. But 
 now let us enquire what was the character of his anger. 
 We must remember that this is he who was called a lamb. 
 He was distinguished from the other remarkable char- 
 acters of antiquity by his gentleness. He introduced 
 into human nature those blended and complex feelings 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 218 Ecce Homo 
 
 which distinguish modern characters from ancient. No 
 the question may be raised whether this complexity 
 character is not purchased at some expense of strength, 
 Ancient valour was well-nigh pitiless. Modern soldiers 
 mix pity with their valour: have they lost any valour by 
 doing so? In like manner, when we are angry with men 
 in these days, we are commonly angry with discrimination. 
 We make reserves; we give some credit for good inten- 
 tions; we make some allowance for temptations; we ar 
 sorry to be angry, and do not, like the ancients, enjoy the 
 passion as if it were wine. The question then arises, has 
 the passion of anger grown at all feebler in us? Are w 
 at all emasculated by the complexity: of our emotions? 
 To find an answer let us look at the great Exemplar of 
 modern characters; let us enquire whether he was feeb. 
 in his anger; let us consider the wrath of the Lamb. 
 The faults of the legal party were such as it is very diffi- 
 cult to reprove, because they were of so refined and impa 
 pable a character. These men had not been guilty for th 
 most part of open crime; if they had done wrong, the 
 had done so probably not without some good intention 
 if they had deluded others, they had deluded themselves 
 first. Christ recognised the impalpable, insidious char. 
 acter of their corrupting influence when he charged his 
 followers to beware of the leaven, that is, the infection, of 
 the Pharisees. It is difficult to reprove a party like this, 
 without either making so many qualifications as to de- 
 prive the reproof of most of its force, or, on the other hand. 
 committing an apparent injustice. But Christ’s ange 
 was not to be restrained by such considerations. O 
 invective has been preserved, probably on account of 
 the concentrated passion of indignation which breathes 
 through it, and perhaps also because, more than anything 
 else, it determined the legalists to lay their plot against 
 Christ’s life. It makes no qualifications, it says not a 
 word about good intentions nor about overwhelming 
 temptations. Delivered in the presence of the multitude 
 on whose admiration the legalists lived, it denounces a 
 succession of woes upon the whole all-powerful order, re 
 iterating many times the charge of imposture, and coup 
 
: 
 
 : The Law of Resentment 219 
 
 ling it with almost every other biting reproach that can be 
 imagined. It charges them with childish pedantry, with 
 vexatious and grinding oppression, and, what was especi- 
 ally severe as addressed to the learned class, with ignor- 
 ance and with the hatred of knowledge. To the men who 
 supposed that they monopolised the most infallible rules, 
 the most exquisite methods of discovering truth, he says, 
 “You have taken away the key of knowledge; you enter 
 not in yourselves, and those that were entering in you 
 hinder.” Finally, he calls them children of hell, serpents, 
 a brood of vipers, and asks how it is possible for them to 
 escape damnation. 
 
 Here, then, we see Christ in his attitude of hostility. 
 His language itself is not wanting in energy, and it derived 
 double emphasis from his position. In his political ap- 
 pearance he may be compared to the Gracchi. As they 
 assailed a close and selfish ruling order by marshalling the 
 people against it, and assuming that peculiar position of 
 authorised agitators which the Roman constitution offered 
 in the tribunate, so did Christ assail the order of legalists. 
 The old Jewish constitution recognised the claim of the 
 prophet to a certain authority. One who, advancing 
 pretensions to the prophetic character, succeeded in pro- 
 ducing conviction, so that by a kind of informal but irre- 
 sistible plebiscitum he was recognised to be that which he 
 professed to be, was thenceforward regarded as a mouth- 
 piece of the Invisible King, and held an indefinite but at 
 the same time constitutional authority in the land. He 
 was not a mere influence, but, as it were, a magistrate, and 
 almost, if he pleased, a dictator. This singular institu- 
 tion had, it is true, lain dormant for many centuries, not 
 that the Jews had ceased to believe in prophets, but that 
 no person had succeeded in winning the plebiscitum which 
 conferred the prophetic authority. The office was under- 
 stood not to be abolished but simply to be in abeyance. - 
 It is recorded that Judas Maccabeus when he purified the 
 temple reserved some matters until a prophet should 
 appear to give directions about them. The reign of the 
 prophets had now begun again. John the Baptist had 
 received that universal testimony to his divine mission 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 220 Ecce Homo 
 
 which the legalists themselves, with all their contempt 
 for the “cursed ” populace, found it impossible to resis’ 
 To his authority Christ had succeeded. When, therefore 
 he assailed the dominant order, he did so as a magistrate, 
 and his act was a political one. His power was less de- 
 fined, but it was not less real than that of a Roman tribune 
 of the people, and in extent it was greater, because it was 
 undefined, and because it was perpetual and persona 
 instead of being delegated for the term of a year. Ac 
 knowledged as a prophet, and making no concealment ¢ 
 the fact that he regarded himself as a king, he must have 
 meant his denunciations of the legal party for a morte 
 defiance. They were the final brimming over of the 
 of indignation. They made all reconciliation between hin 
 and them impossible. 
 Our biographies tell us that he early foresaw in wha 
 the quarrel would end. He saw that he was driving h 
 opponents to that point that, with their love of powe 
 and position, they must murder him. His life had beet 
 tranquil; the times were tranquil. How easy it mig 
 have been to lead a useful life, teaching men everywhere 
 setting an example of high aims and thoughts, leavening 
 gradually the nation with his morality and sanctity! 
 How easy it might have been to procure for himself a lon, 
 life, which would have been full of blessing to mankind 
 and up to the end to see that which was the great wish of 
 the Hebrew patriot, “ peace upon Israel!” What pre 
 vented this happy prospect from being realised? Surely 
 we may think, to avoid bloodshed and shocking crime: 
 a Christian would sacrifice much. What prevented 
 prospect from being realised? We must answer, Christ 
 himself prevented it, simply because he would not restrair 
 his anger. He might have remained silent about thi 
 Pharisees; he might have avoided meeting with them ot 
 talking of them; he might at least have qualified the 
 severity of his reproofs. None of these things would h 
 do; he gave his anger way, and drove his opponents t 
 that which such men call the “ necessity ” of destroying 
 him. 
 His resentment did not indeed show itself in action 
 
The Law of Resentment 221 
 
 He did not arm his followers against them; he would not, 
 srobably, had he been placed in a condition to do so, have 
 Jone to them what Elijah did to the prophets of Baal at 
 she brook Kishon. Yet it appears that the anger he felt 
 would of itself have carried him as far as this. Setting 
 orth in a parable his own relation to the legalists, and 
 Jescribing himself, as usual, as a king, he concluded with 
 epresenting the king as saying, “ And as for those mine 
 nemies which would not that I should reign over them, 
 ring them hither and slay them before me.’ 
 
 In this profound resentment he never wavered. It is 
 he custom to say that Christ died forgiving his enemies. 
 frue, no doubt, it is that he held the forgiveness of pri- 
 yate enemies to be among the first of duties; and he did 
 orgive the personal insults and barbarities that were 
 yractised upon him. But the legalists, whose crime was 
 iainst the kingdom of God, the nation, and mankind, 
 t does not appear that he ever forgave. The words of 
 orgiveness uttered on the Cross refer simply to the Roman 
 oldiers, for whom pardon is asked expressly on the ground 
 hat they do not understand what they are doing. The 
 vords may even contain distinct allusion to that other 
 lass of criminals who did know what they were doing, 
 ind for whom therefore the same prayer was not offered. 
 it least this interpretation suggests itself to one who 
 ndeavours to discover from the expressions which he 
 lropped what was passing in Christ’s mind during the 
 yeriod of his sufferings. For those expressions indicate 
 hat he was neither thinking of his murderers with pity 
 nd forgiveness nor yet turning his mind to other subjects, 
 jut that he was brooding over their conduct with bitter 
 ndignation. To the high priest he replied with a menace, 
 You shall see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand 
 f power.” To the women that followed weeping as 
 e was led to execution, he said, ‘‘ Weep not for me, but 
 or yourselves and your children. For if they (the 
 egalists) do these things in the green tree, what shall be 
 lone in the dry?” And to Pilate he said (drawing pre- 
 isely the same distinction between the conduct of the 
 tomans and that of the Jews which we conjecture to be 
 
222 Ecce Homo 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 implied in the words, “ Father, forgive them, for the 
 know not what they do ’’), ‘‘ You would have no authority 
 at all against me, were it not given you from abo 
 therefore he who delivers me to you has greater sin 
 meaning, apparently, “‘ I should not be amenable to Roma 
 authority at all but for that providential appointmen 
 which has placed the country for the time in foreign 
 the greater is the treason of him, the chief priest, 
 hands his countryman over to a foreign magistra 
 These passages seem to show that if no forgiveness of his 
 real murderers was uttered by Christ, it was not by 
 chance, but because he continued to the last to think of 
 them with anger. 
 It seemed worth while to discuss this subject at som 
 length, lest it should be supposed that Christianity 
 really the emasculate, sentimental thing it is sometime 
 represented to be. Because it has had a considerable 
 effect in softening manners, because it has given a ne¥ 
 prominence and dignity to the female sex, and because} 
 has produced great examples of passive virtues, Chris 
 tianity is sometimes represented as averse to strong pa 
 sions, as making men excessively unwilling to inflict pain 
 as fostering a morbid or at least a feminine tenderness, 
 War, for example, and capital punishment, are frequenth 
 denounced as unchristian, because they involve cir 
 stances of horror; and when the ardent champions of 
 some great cause have declared that they would persevert 
 although it should be necessary to lay waste a continen 
 and exterminate a nation, the resolution is stigmatised a 
 shocking and unchristian. Shocking it may be, but ne 
 therefore unchristian. The Enthusiasm of Humanity doe 
 indeed destroy a great deal of hatred, but it creates a 
 much more. Selfish hatred is indeed charmed away, bu 
 a not less fiery passion takes its place. Dull serpentine 
 malice dies, but a new unselfish anger begins to live 
 The bitter feelings which so easily spring up against those 
 who thwart us, those who compete with us, those who 
 surpass us, are destroyed by the Enthusiasm of Humanity 
 but it creates a new bitterness, which’ displays itself ¢ 
 occasions where before the mind had reposed in a ben 
 
The Law of Resentment 223 
 volent calm. It creates an intolerant anger against all 
 who do wrong to human beings, an impatience of selfish 
 enjoyment, a vindictive enmity to tyrants and oppressors, 
 a bitterness against sophistry, superstition, self-complacent 
 heartless speculation, an irreconcilable hostility to every 
 form of imposture, such as the uninspired, inhumane soul 
 sould never entertain. And though Christ so understood 
 ais own special mission as to refrain from all acts of hostil- 
 ty or severity towards human beings, yet in the Christian 
 view, which connects acts so closely with instinctive im- 
 guises, an act must be right which is dictated by a right 
 mpulse, and there will be cases when the Christian will 
 jold it his duty to inflict pain. 
 _ What is called the Middle Age may be described as the 
 yeriod of Christian barbarism; that is, it was the time 
 vhen genuine Christian impulses were combined with the 
 featest intellectual rudeness. But as impulse is com- 
 only strong where intellect is dormant, we may note the 
 Bring of Christian feeling more easily in the Middle Age 
 han in the Modern Time. Now it is in the Middle Age 
 hat we meet with wars of religion, and with capital 
 mnishments for speculative error. Intellectually con- 
 idered both were frightful mistakes. The Enthusiasm 
 f Humanity, enlightened by a complete view of the facts, 
 rould not have dictated either. But it was the want of 
 nlightenment, not the want of Christian humanity, that 
 jade it possible for men to commit these mistakes. Those 
 yrian battle-fields where so many Crusaders committed 
 their pure souls unto their Captain, Christ ”; the image 
 f Christ’s death turned into an ensign of battle; the 
 halice of the Last Supper giving its name to an army— 
 aese things may shock, more or less, our good sense, but 
 ney do not shock, they rather refresh and delight, our 
 umanity. These warriors wanted Christ’s wisdom, but 
 aey had his spirit, his divine anger, his zeal for the 
 anchises of the soul. Our good sense may be shocked 
 ill more when we think of the auio da fé. We may well 
 <claim upon the folly of those who could dream of curing 
 tellectual error by intellectual bondage. Our humanity 
 self may be shocked by the greater number of these 
 
224 Ecce Homo 
 
 
 
 
 
 deeds of faith. We may say of the perpetrators of Ch 
 These are they that kill the prophets; their zeal for tru 
 is feigned; they are the slaves of spiritual pride. Bu 
 you could be sure that it was not the prophet but the pe 
 nicious sophist that burned in the fire, and if by reduci 
 his too busy brain to safe and orthodox ashes you cou 
 destroy his sophistries and create in other minds a w 
 
 an unwholesome dread of intellectual activity and freed E 
 then Christian humanity might look with some satisf 
 tion even on an auto da fé. At any rate, the ostensil 
 object of such horrors was Christian, and the indignat 
 which professedly prompts them is also Christian, and : 
 assumption they involve, that agonies of pain and ble 
 shed in rivers are less evils than the soul spotted and 
 
 wildered with sin, is most Christian. 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 THE LAW OF FORGIVENESS 
 
 WE have now considered the Christian character in many 
 of its aspects. We have seen that the Christian is one 
 whose steps are guided by an enthusiasm that never 
 leaves him and that does not allow him to doubt what 
 he ought to do. We have seen that this enthusiasm is 
 that love of man in the ideal of man, which in a low degree 
 is natural to all, made powerful and ardent by a clearer 
 knowiedge of the ideal in Christ and by a sense of personal 
 relation to Christ. We have seen that the operation of 
 this enthusiasm is to make morality positive instead of 
 negative, a constant endeavour to serve mankind instead 
 of an endeavour to avoid injuring them. We have con- 
 sidered some of the principal kinds of service to mankind 
 which it dictates. Of these the first was philanthropy, 
 or an attention to their physical wants and happiness. 
 The second was edification, or attention to their moral im- 
 provement. And when engaged in this latter duty we 
 found the enthusiasm assuming two special aspects in 
 relation to two peculiar classes of men. In the presence 
 of immorality disguised and prosperous it exhibited itself 
 in prophetic indignation, intolerant aggressive zeal, vehe- 
 ment reproof. On the other hand, in dealing with im- 
 morality punished, repudiated, and outcast, it appeared 
 as Mercy. 
 
 The picture of the Christian in his active relations to 
 Society is complete. So far as society is the passive object 
 of his cares, it is in this way that he will deal withit. But 
 cases arise in which the initiative is not in his hands. It 
 is important to know not merely how he will treat others, 
 but also how he will receive others’ treatment of himself. 
 So long as this treatment is good and benevolent, the 
 
 225 P 
 
? 
 
 226 Ecce Homo f 
 
 Enthusiasm of Humanity will but make natural gratitude 
 more lively. But when it is injurious how will the Chris- 
 tian deal with it? § 
 
 Now it was on the treatment of injuries that Christ 
 delivered the third of those special commands of which 
 mention has been made. The famous sentences of the 
 Sermon on the Mount which refer to this subject will at 
 once occur to the reader, but there is another precept 
 which it is important to bear in mind at the same time. 
 In the Sermon on the Mount he bids his followers bear 
 with absolute passive tolerance the most contumelious 
 injuries: “If a man smite thee on the one cheek, turn 
 to him the other also,” etc. But the other precept is 
 different: “If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke 
 him, and if he repent forgive him.” Now the difference 
 between these two precepts is not slight but substantial. 
 The first distinctly forbids resenting an injury, the second 
 as distinctly commands it. The expression, “ Turn to him 
 the other also,” in the first is evidently selected with care 
 to convey an extreme degree of uncomplaining submission. 
 It is the direct opposite of the phrase, “ Rebuke him,” 
 which occurs in the other precept. And that by “Re- 
 buke him,” Christ did not mean a faint expostulation, 
 appears from what follows. For he adds: “if your 
 brother will not hear you, bring it before the church; and 
 if he refuse to hear the church, let him be to you as a 
 heathen man or a publican; ” in other words, let him be 
 expelled from the Christian society. The two precepts, 
 therefore, differ essentially and cannot be obeyed together. 
 If you adopt the course prescribed in the one you must 
 deviate from that prescribed in the other. 
 
 Nevertheless the two precepts do not necessarily con- 
 tradict each other. Christ may mean to distinguish two 
 kinds of injuries, the one of which is to be resented and 
 the other to be suffered passively. Or he may mean 
 to distinguish two classes of men committing injuries. 
 Whether either of these two suppositions be true, and, if 
 so, which, will be considered further on. In the mean- 
 while it is to be noted that in one respect the two precepts 
 agree; in other words, that from these two commands 
 
 ; 
 
5 The Law of Forgiveness 227 
 
 _ of Christ a general Christian law in reference to injuries 
 
 _may be gathered. For in both precepts it is implied that 
 every injury that can be committed is to be forgiven on 
 certain conditions. In the one case we are told that in- 
 juries are to excite in our minds no resentment at all, that 
 curses are to be requited with blessings, and persecution 
 with prayers; in the other case we are indeed commanded 
 to resent the injury, but at the same time we are com- 
 manded to accept in all cases the repentance of the 
 offender. 
 
 Now this law that all injuries whatever are to be 
 forgiven on certain conditions divides itself, when we 
 consider it, into two. For it is necessary to examine 
 separately the maxim that we are to be prepared, as a 
 general rule, to forgive injuries, and the maxim that there 
 is no injury so deadly but that it comes under this general 
 tule. Let us begin, therefore, by examining the maxim 
 that injuries as a general rule are to be forgiven on cer- 
 tain conditions. 
 
 It has already been remarked as a characteristic of 
 Christianity that, while it excites an intense disapproba- 
 tion of wrong-doing, it nevertheless regards wrong-doing 
 as venial. Criminals that had been regarded under much 
 laxer systems with unmixed hatred became under Chris- 
 tianity objects of pity. But it does not immediately 
 follow that the injured party himself would be required 
 to regard his injurer in that light. The relation of the 
 injured party to the criminal is peculiar; his feelings are 
 different from those of the bystander who has suffered 
 nothing by the crime; and the Enthusiasm, though it 
 moves the bystander to mercy, may very possibly produce 
 a different effect upon him. In order to discover whether 
 it does so or not it is necessary to enquire in what respect 
 the natural feeling of the injured party himself towards 
 the criminal differs from that of the bystander. Now the 
 feeling of the bystander or disinterested person towards 
 crime was examined in an earlier part of this treatise. It 
 was there shown that in uncivilised times the feeling was 
 pure indifference, but that as men advanced in moral cul- 
 ture they acquired a sympathy with one another. This 
 

 
 ‘228 Ecce Homo 
 
 sympathy produced the effect that whenever a given per- 
 son was disturbed by any emotions, the bystander who 
 observed him became affected by similar emotions. Such 
 sympathetic emotions were always less powerful than the 
 original ones, but they were stronger in proportion to the 
 strength of the sympathy out of which they grew. The 
 resentment which a man feels at crime from which he 
 does not personally suffer is of this sympathetic kind. It 
 is a reflection from the resentment felt by the injured 
 party himself. Now we have seen that this sympathetic 
 resentment is modified and made less pitiless by Chris- 
 tianity, and the question is, could this happen and yet 
 the same effect not be produced by the same agent upon 
 the original resentment? Plainly there is one way and 
 only one way in which this might be. If Christianity 
 mitigates sympathetic resentment by diminishing the 
 sympathy which is one of its factors, then the mitigation 
 will not extend to that resentment which is independent 
 of sympathy. But we know that, so far from this, sym- 
 pathy is vastly increased by the Christian enthusiasm. 
 It follows that sympathetic resentment would be vastly 
 increased at the same time, if Christianity did not also 
 operate, and in a still greater degree, to soften the resent- 
 ment itself. But if it operates upon the resentment itself, 
 it will do so in the injured party who is animated by that 
 alone as well as in the bystander, and therefore Chris- 
 tianity which enjoins mercy to criminals must at the 
 same time enjoin forgiveness of personal injuries. 
 
 But no such indirect argument is required to show that 
 Christianity must needs tend to diminish the sense of per- 
 sonal injury. We know that it is easier to forgive in- 
 juries to those whom we love, whether the love we feel be 
 that love which is grounded on admiration, or that which 
 arises out of the sense of relationship. Now Christianity 
 creates for all mankind a sentiment which, though not 
 identical with either of these, yet bears a considerable 
 resemblance to them, and can hardly fail to operate in the 
 same way. We may be sure also that revenge diminishes 
 in proportion as we gain the power of going out of our- 
 selves and of conceiving and realising interests and rights 
 
The Law of Forgiveness 2290 
 
 not our own. Revenge is the monomania of the isolated 
 _and unsympathising heart which intensely grasps the 
 _ notion of personal right and property but for itself alone, 
 and for which there is but one being and one self in the 
 universe. It cannot therefore but be diminished by an 
 enthusiasm which creates a moral universe for the soul 
 _where before there was darkness, which forces it to relax 
 its stiff and crabbed tenacity by enlarging its sphere, 
 which gives it the softness which comes with warmth, 
 which educates it in the wisdom of sympathy and the 
 calmness of wisdom. 
 
 But now what is to be the limit of forgiveness? It 
 would probably have been allowed by many of the 
 ancients that an unforgiving temper was not to be com- 
 mended. They would have said, We are not to exact a 
 penalty for every nice offence; we are to overlook some 
 things; we are to be blind sometimes. But they would 
 have said at the same time, We must be careful to keep 
 our self-respect, and to be on a level with the world. On 
 the whole, they would have said, It is the part of a man 
 fully to requite to his friends their benefits and to his 
 enemies their injuries. Christ, no doubt, bids men be 
 more generous than this, be less meanly solicitous about 
 their personal nights; but where does he place the limit? 
 what is the injury for which we are to take no apology? 
 
 Christ said, ‘“‘ If thy brother trespass against thee seven 
 times a day, and seven times a day turn again to thee, 
 saying, I repent, thou shalt forgive him.” Probably no 
 reader of this passage would doubt that it means abso- 
 lutely to take away all limitations of forgiveness, and to 
 proclaim that there is no injury, however deadly, or how- 
 ever frequently repeated, which the Christian is not to 
 forgive upon submission made. But to make this doubly 
 sure it is recorded that Peter put the question directly to 
 him, whether the seventh time was literally to be taken 
 as a limit. The enquiry, it is worth while to remark by 
 the way, throws a strong light upon the character of the 
 followers whom Christ had gathered round him. “ Lord, 
 how often shall my brother offend against me and I for- 
 give him? Until seven times?” There breathes, in the 
 
 Ls) 
 

 
 
 230 Ecce Homo 
 
 first place, through this question a singular earnestness 
 The use of the first person seems to show that Peter was 
 not considering the problem as part of the theory of 
 morals. He does not speak in the tone of Socrates’ di 
 ciples. But he seems to be intently considering how 
 Christ’s principle of forgiveness can practically be worked. 
 He speaks as though he had himself suffered an injury 
 and had succeeded more than once in forgiving it, and. 
 now came to his Master to know how long the trial was to” 
 last. But, on the other hand, the question shows a 
 singular want of the power or habit of generalising. It is 
 the question of one who has never been accustomed to 
 think, but who guides himself by precepts or texts a 
 by rote. He thinks it presumption to try to understand 
 his Master’s teaching, and accordingly he inevitably mis- 
 understands it. What was delivered as a principle he 
 instantly degrades into a rule. He has no power of dis- 
 tinguishing the form of the precept from the substance 
 and therefore being commanded to forgive an offending 
 brother even if he should commit seven injuries, he pro-— 
 ceeds at once to enquire how he should deal with the 
 eighth. No turn of expression could more nicely indicate 
 the process by which those high moralities which are the — 
 life of the world are converted into the conventionalities — 
 which are its bane. It is also worthy of remark that Christ — 
 in his reply refuses to abandon the figurative mode of 
 expression. He vindicates, as it were, his right to ie 
 these forms of language, and insists that his followers t 
 shall learn to understand them, but at the same time he — 
 alters the figure so far as to remove the particular mis-— 
 understanding into which Peter had fallen. He replied, 
 ““T solemnly declare to you, not until seven times, = 
 until seventy times seven.” ; 
 Here then is the prohibition of all mortal feuds. Ir- 
 reconcilable enmities are henceforth forbidden to human 
 beings. Mercy to a submissive foe is to be no longer an 
 exceptional and admirable reach of human goodness, but 
 a plain duty. There may be again contentions upon the 
 earth, wars between state and state, feuds between family 
 and family, quarrels between man and man, but the war 
 
| The Law of Forgiveness 231 
 “without treaty and without herald ” is in the modern 
 world, what it was not in the ancient, immoral. Human 
 beings have henceforth in all cases a right to terms, a 
 ‘right to quarter. However they may trample upon the 
 rights of others, they cannot trample upon their own; 
 
 ¢ 
 \ 
 
 however they may repudiate all human obligations, they _ 
 ‘cannot cancel, though they may change and modify, the ~ 
 
 obligations of others to them. 
 
 This is Christ’s most striking innovation in morality. It 
 has produced so much impression upon mankind that it is 
 commonly regarded as the whole or at least the funda- 
 mental part of the Christian moral system. When a 
 Christian spirit is spoken of, it may be remarked that a 
 forgiving spirit is usually meant. “But there is much 
 more in the Christian system than the doctrine of forgive- 
 ness, nor does its importance in that system consist in its 
 being the fundamental part upon which the other parts 
 depend, for it is not this in any sense. Its importance 
 lies simply in its being the most distinctive feature in the 
 system, and in its characterising Christian morality more 
 than any other doctrine of it. The other laws which have 
 been considered, the law of philanthropy, the law of edifi- 
 cation, the law of mercy and of moral resentment, though 
 Christianity gave a new importance to them, cannot be 
 called peculiar to Christianity. They were all in some 
 degree recognised in heathen moralities, and though the 
 originality of Christianity in respect to them is very real, 
 yet it does not at once strike the eye and is not easy to 
 make clear. But in the law of forgiveness, and still more 
 
 in the law of unlimited forgiveness, a startling shock was « 
 
 given to the prevailing beliefs and notions of mankind. 
 And by this law an ineffaceable and palpable division has 
 been made between ancient and modern morality. The 
 other Christian virtues were in a degree familiar to the 
 heathen world; that is to say, they had often been 
 witnessed and when witnessed they had always excited 
 admiration. As duties they had never been recognised, 
 but they had been known as the exceptional charac- 
 teristics of men of rare virtue. Now of forgiveness we 
 cannot certainly say that it was unknown to the ancients; 
 
232 Ecce Homo 
 
 under certain conditions, no doubt, it was very comm 
 among them. In domestic and family life, in which 
 the germs of Christian virtue are to be found, it was 
 undoubtedly common. Undoubtedly friends fell out and 
 were reconciled in antiquity as amongst ourselves. But 
 where the only relation between the two parties was that 
 of injurer and injured, and the only claim of the offender 
 to forgiveness was that he was a human being, there for- 
 giveness seems not only not to have been practised, but 
 not to have been enjoined nor approved. People not 
 only did not forgive their enemies, but did not wish to do 
 so, nor think better of themselves for having done so. 
 That man considered himself fortunate who on his death- 
 bed could say, in reviewing his past life, that no one had 
 done more good to his friends or more mischief to his’ 
 enemies. This was the celebrated felicity of Sulla; this" 
 is the crown of Xenophon’s panegyric on Cyrus the 
 Younger. No one in antiquity was more capable of 
 amiable feelings than Cicero. Yet so much could he gloat 
 over the misfortunes of an enemy, that in the second year 
 after the death of Clodius he dates a letter the s6oth day 
 after the Battle of Boville—that is, the fray in which 
 Clodius was killed. This is to be noted not merely as an 
 indication of the feeling which Cicero could cherish, but 
 of the state of public opinion which could permit him, 
 without any sense of degradation, to display the feeling to 
 a friend. Still more striking is an example which may be 
 drawn from the life of Julius Cesar. He is eminent in 
 antiquity as one who knew how to forgive. It is much to 
 his credit that his execution of Vercingetorix on the occa- 
 sion of his fourfold triumph has always been considered 
 a blemish upon his career. The execution of the con-— 
 quered general was a regular and important part of the 
 triumphal ceremony; there could be no reason, except — 
 Cesar’s extraordinary clemency, to expect that it would — 
 be omitted on this occasion. And yet the expectation © 
 was general.1 Why did he disappoint it? There was 
 everything.to incline his mind to generosity. Six years _ 
 had passed since Vercingetorix had been his enemy, six , 
 1 See Dio Cassius, xl. 41. 
 
 . 
 
The Law of Forgiveness 2943 
 
 years full of success and glory. Vercingetorix had been 
 a chivalrous enemy, and his surrender had been made in a 
 manner specially calculated to affect the feelings of his 
 conqueror. Czsar had pardoned multitudes of those 
 who had injured him, of those who hated him mortally; 
 why could he not pardon one whose only crime was that 
 he had defended the independence of his country against 
 him? Czsar had pardoned many whom it might have 
 been expedient to destroy; why could he not pardon one 
 by whose death he gained nothing, and by whose forgive- 
 ness he would have conciliated a nation? The answer 
 seems to be that on those days of triumph Cesar gave 
 himself up to the enjoyment of his success, that he was 
 determined to drain to the dregs the whole intoxicating 
 cup, and that even he could not conceive of happiness as 
 perfect unless it were flavoured with revenge, or victory 
 as complete while his enemy breathed. The one man who 
 knew something of the pleasures of generosity was yet 
 carried away by the universal opinion about the sweetness 
 of vengeance, and could imagine no triumph but such as 
 those we see represented in Egyptian bas-reliefs, where 
 the victor’s foot is planted on the necks of his captives, or 
 that we read of in the life of the pupil of Aristotle, who 
 actually dragged the living body of one of the most heroic 
 of his enemies at the tail of his chariot. 
 
 The Roman Triumph with its naked ostentation of 
 revenge fairly represents the common feeling of the 
 ancients. Nevertheless, forgiveness even of an enemy 
 was not unknown to them. They could conceive it, and 
 they could feel that there was a divine beauty in it, but 
 it seemed to them not merely, like the other Christian 
 virtues, more than could be expected of ordinary men, 
 but almost more than could be expected of human nature 
 itself, almost superhuman. A passage near the close of 
 the Ajax of Sophocles will illustrate this. As there was 
 nothing of the antiquarian spirit about Greek tragedy, as 
 it probably never occurred to Sophocles that the ancient 
 heroes he depicts belonged to a less civilised age than his 
 own, but, on the contrary, as he conceived them to be 
 better and nobler than his contemporaries, we may fairly 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 234 Ecce Homo 
 
 suppose the feelings described in this passage to be of the 
 highest standard of the poet’s own age, the age of Pericles, 
 Ulysses, after the death of his enemy Ajax, is described 
 as relenting towards him so far as to intercede with 
 Agamemnon that his body may be decently buried, and 
 not be exposed to the beasts and birds. This may seem 
 to be no great stretch of generosity. But the request is 
 received by Agamemnon with the utmost bewilderment 
 and annoyance. “ What can you mean?” he says, “ do 
 you feel pity for a dead enemy?” On the other hand, the 
 friends of Ajax are not less astonished, and break out into 
 rapturous applause, “ but,” says Teucer, “I hesitate to 
 allow you to touch the grave, lest it should be disagreeable 
 to the dead man.” | 
 The impression of strangeness which these words, Do 
 you feel pity for a dead enemy ? produce upon us is a proof 
 of the change which Christianity has wrought in manners. 
 A modern dramatist might have written the words, if he 
 had been delineating an extremely savage character, but 
 Sophocles is doing no such thing. He is expressing the 
 natural sentiment of an average man. A modern poet, 
 endeavouring to do the same thing, hits upon a precisely 
 opposite sentiment :— : 
 Sirs, pass we on, i 
 And let the bodies follow us on biers. ; 
 
 Wolf of the weald and yellow-footed kite, 
 Enough is spread for you of meaner prey. 
 
 And that the change of feeling indicated by this difference - 
 of language has really taken place is not to be disproved - 
 by special instances of atrocious malignity, however 
 numerous, which may be quoted from modern history, — 
 nor yet by the fact that the duel is a peculiarly modern . 
 institution. That there have been and are revengeful 
 men proves nothing, but it proves much that such char- - 
 acters are now remarked as exceptions and excite always 
 dislike, in extreme cases horror and disgust. In anti- 
 quity they were, as a rule, not disapproved, but in the 
 extreme case they incurred censure of the same gentle 
 kind as we pass on those who push any good or natural 
 feeling to extravagance. The duel is, no doubt, at first 
 
! 
 
 7 The Law of Forgiveness "23s 
 
 ‘sight a startling phenomenon. It seems bold to assert 
 ‘that the moderns are more forgiving than the ancients, 
 when it is certain that in antiquity the grossest personal 
 
 ‘insults were constantly overlooked, and that we find a 
 Cicero holding amicable intercourse with men whom he had 
 assailed in public with venomous personal abuse, whereas 
 
 fifty years ago a man was held disgraced who did not wash 
 out an insult in blood. When we remember this it may 
 seem more correct to say that the modern spirit has con- 
 
 -secrated revenge and made it into a duty, than to say that 
 it has adopted Christ’s law of forgiveness. 
 
 And, indeed, it is impossible to deny that the duel is 
 an example of the failure of Christianity. It is a barbaric 
 usage, which may be traced distinctly to a barbaric origin, 
 and which is entirely opposed to Christ’s law. Assuredly 
 if a Paul or a John could have witnessed two Christians 
 facing each other with loaded pistols to avenge a hasty 
 word, they would have called for the crack of doom to end 
 all. And yet it is a usage which prevailed through all 
 Christian countries at a very recent period. Barbarism 
 in this instance prevailed signally over Christian influences. 
 Further, it is not to be denied that the spirit of revenge 
 entered into this usage. Nevertheless if we compare in 
 our imaginations the duellist of modern times with the 
 Agamemnon of Sophocles insulting the corpse of his dead 
 enemy, or with the Ajax of the same play torturing in his 
 tent the ram he supposes to be Ulysses, we shall perceive 
 a vast difference between the two, and shall remain con- 
 vinced, in spite of all adverse appearances, that the spirit 
 of revenge, if not expelled from human life, has been at 
 least dethroned and fettered by Christ. The revenge 
 described by Sophocles is unmixed hatred and spite. It 
 delights in mischief as mischief; it is intent upon its prey 
 as a vulture upon a carcase; it feasts upon the misery of 
 its object as upon delicious food. The feelings of the 
 duellist may in exceptional cases have been similar, but in 
 ordinary cases they were totally different. And it was 
 only because they were assumed to be totally different 
 that the usage was approved by society. Into these feel- 
 ings revenge scarcely entered at all. Often, instead of 
 
236 Ecce Homo 
 
 wishing the destruction of his enemy, he rather desi 
 him to escape. Even if the enmity was mortal, at | 
 he only wished for his destruction, not that he might suff 
 as much misery as possible. What he desired principall 
 was first to show that he possessed the courage to expo: 
 himself to danger, next, to show that he possessed t 
 sense of personal dignity which could not put up with 
 insult, and that resolution which might save him fro 
 the risk of insult in future. And it was for the sense of 
 personal honour which it was supposed to keep alive i 
 men, and for the value which it gave to courage, that t 
 duel was long maintained and defended by society. 
 usage, then, was not a consecration of revenge, but of the 
 principle of self-respect. Doubtless public opinion a 
 proved also of a moderate gratification of revenge, but 
 assuredly a remorseless spirit was no more approved or 
 admired by those who approved of duels than by oh 
 and was only even excused in the case of an extreme an 
 intolerable injury. , 
 We may therefore maintain that the general principle 
 of the forgiveness of injuries, as announced by Christ, 
 been accepted by the world, has become part of morality 
 and has made a great and perceptible difference in the 
 average of human characters. The principle of unlimited 
 forgiveness, even on condition of repentance, remains, no 
 doubt, to a certain extent a stumblingblock. Few of us 
 even profess that there are no injuries which we are not 
 prepared to forgive; probably few of us wish to have the 
 forgiving spirit in this perfection. It is not merely that 
 such unlimited forgiveness is almost impossible to practise; 
 men do not merely regard it as an unattainable virtue, but 
 they deny it to be a virtue at all. Not under the influence 
 of strong passion, but deliberately, they regard it as a 
 mark of servility and suspect it of being inseparable from 
 creeping vices. Modern literature is full of the evidences 
 of this feeling. Shakspeare says,— 
 
 
 
 
 Swear priests, and cowards, and men cautelous, 
 Old feeble carrions, and such suffering souls 
 That welcome wrongs; unto bad causes swear 
 Such creatures as men doubt; 
 
The Law of Forgiveness 237 
 
 and a modeen novelist makes one of his characters say, 
 “There are some wrongs that no one ought to forgive, 
 and I shall be a villain on the day I shake that man’s 
 hand.” It is therefore a plausible opinion that mankind 
 have accepted half of the Christian doctrine of forgive- 
 ness and rejected the other half, that they have consented 
 to forgive, but not all injuries, not until seventy times seven. 
 Nevertheless this opinion will not bear examination. It 
 will be found that men do approve and admire unlimited 
 forgiveness provided it be certainly sincere, and that they 
 would themselves think it might to accept repentance of 
 the most extreme injury, provided the penitence were 
 certainly sincere. But in most practical cases that arise 
 both repentance and forgiveness lie under the suspicion 
 of being spurious. There is a manifest temptation on the 
 part of the offender to feign repentance; it is his natural 
 expedient for averting punishment. Repentance there- 
 fore is very extensively counterfeited, and there has arisen 
 a prejudice against the name which is easily confounded 
 with a prejudice against the thing. The thing repentance 
 all would agree is good, but then it is rare; for the name 
 repentance people generally have slight respect because it 
 seldom represents the thing. And the suspicion attach- 
 ing to professions of repentance increases with the heinous- 
 ness of the injury. It is a common belief that a person 
 capable of committing atrocious wrong must be incapable 
 of repenting of it, and such a person’s professions are 
 accordingly contemptuously disregarded. When there- 
 fore people deliberately consider it mean to forgive 
 extreme injuries they are really setting a limit not to the 
 duty of forgiveness but to the possibility of genuine re- 
 pentance. The words, “I shall be a villain on the day 
 that I shake that man’s hand,” do not mean that the 
 wrong done has been too great to be forgiven with honour, 
 but that it implies a criminality inconsistent with peni- 
 tence. The words, “ There are some injuries that no one 
 ought to forgive,” mean really, There are some injuries of 
 which it is impossible to repent. In the same way, the 
 contempt with which we often regard those who forgive 
 injuries does not really imply any dislike of the principle 
 
238 Ecce Homo 
 
 of forgiveness itself, but only a suspicion that in the par 
 ticular case the forgiveness was not genuine. For fo 
 giveness is a thing not less liable to be counterfeited thar 
 repentance. When we were considering the virtue ¢ 
 Mercy we remarked that the acts which it dictates ar 
 often precisely those which would be suggested by mer 
 laxity or indifference to wrong. Just so forgiveness a 
 in the same way as mere servility. The bystander there 
 fore may easily have a difficulty in distinguishing them, 
 and, as forgiveness, like all high virtues, is rare, and ser 
 vility, like all low vices, common, the chances are in any 
 given case that the act which might have been dictated b y 
 either was actually dictated by the latter. When the 
 wrong forgiven is exceptionally heinous this probability 
 becomes still greater, and so men form a habit of regard- 
 ing the forgiveness of extreme injuries as a contemptible 
 thing except in those cases where their previous know 
 ledge of the person who forgives makes it impossible to 
 suspect him of servility. In such cases they betray their 
 genuine approbation of the principle of unlimited forgive- 
 ness by enthusiastic admiration. 
 
 A few cases of forgiveness will yet remain which we can 
 scarcely help regarding with repugnance even though we 
 have no antecedent reason to suspect servility. Othello 
 is certainly not wanting in manly spirit, yet we should 
 despise and almost detest him if he forgave Tago. But 
 this, again, does not prove that forgiveness itself is in any 
 circumstances shocking to us. What it proves is that 
 circumstances may be imagined of injury so extreme an¢ 
 malignant that the difficulty of forgiveness becomes in 
 calculable, and that any other way of accounting for the 
 injured man’s abstinence from revenge, however improb 
 able and almost impossible in itself, becomes easier 
 conceive than that he could be capable of sincere forgive- 
 ness. But every virtue, and not forgiveness only, be 
 comes in certain cases impossible to human infirmity, 
 Every virtue in the extreme limit becomes confounded 
 with some vice, and the only peculiarity in the case of 
 this virtue is that the vice which counterfeits it is pecu: 
 larly contemptible. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
| 
 The Law of Forgiveness 239 
 
 To sum up: the forgiveness of injuries, which was re- 
 
 garded in the ancient world as a virtue indeed but an 
 almost impossible one, appears to the moderns in ordinary 
 cases a plain duty ; and whereas the ancients regarded with 
 admiration the man who practised it, the moderns regard 
 ‘with dislike the man who does not. Where the injury 
 forgiven is extreme the moderns regard the man who for- 
 gives as the ancients regarded the man who forgave an 
 ordinary injury, that is, with extreme admiration, pro- 
 vided they are convinced of the genuineness of the forgive- 
 ness. On the whole, therefore, it appears that a new 
 virtue has been introduced into human life. Not only 
 has it been inculcated, but it has passed so completely 
 into the number of recognised and indispensable virtues, 
 that every one in some degree practises it, and that by not 
 practising it men incur odium and loss of character. To 
 the other great changes wrought in men’s minds by Christ 
 this is now to be added, the most signal and beneficent, if 
 not the greatest, of all. It is here especially that Chris- 
 tianity coincides with civilisation. Revenge is the badge 
 of barbarism; civil society imposes conditions and limita- 
 tions upon it, demands that not more than an eye shall be 
 exacted for an eye, not more than a tooth for a tooth, then 
 takes revenge out of the hand of the injured party and 
 gives it to authorised public avengers, called kings or 
 judges. A gentler spirit springs up, and the perpetual 
 bandying of insult and wrong, the web?* of murderous 
 feuds at which the barbarian sits all his life weaving and 
 which he bequeaths to his children, gives place to more 
 tranquil pursuits. Revenge begins to be only one out of 
 many occupations of life, not its main business. In this 
 stage it becomes for the first time conceivable that there 
 may be a certain dignity and beauty in refraining from 
 revenge. So far could ordinary influences advance men. 
 They were carried forward another long stage by a sudden 
 divine impulse followed by a powerful word. Not the 
 Enthusiasm of Humanity alone, not the great sentences 
 1... . 006’ july avdoceuer, olow dpa Leds 
 éx vedrnros €dwke Kal els yijpas ToNuTEvew 
 dpyahéous oemous. 
 
240 Ecce Homo 
 
 of the Sermon on the Mount alone, but both together, 
 creative meeting of the Spirit and the Word, brought 
 life the new virtue of forgiveness. To paraphrase 
 ancient Hebrew language, the Spirit of Christ b 
 upon the face of the waters, and Christ said, Let there 
 forgiveness and there was forgiveness. 
 
 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 _ THE LAW OF FORGIVENESS—continued 
 
 But up to this point in considering Christ’s principle of 
 forgiveness we have disregarded entirely the words in 
 which he proclaims it. That we should be prepared to 
 forgive all injuries upon condition of repentance is involved 
 in those words, but they contain much more. It has been 
 remarked that the two texts which refer to the subject of 
 injuries coincide to this extent, but that from this point 
 they differ irreconcilably. Having considered that in which 
 they agree, it is time for us to discuss that in which they 
 differ. 
 
 The one text commands the Christian, if a brother tres- 
 pass against him, to rebuke the offender. The other gives 
 a directly contrary precept, “‘ If a man smite thee on the 
 one cheek, turn to him the other also.” This apparent 
 contradiction will be removed if it can be shown that 
 Christ was not contemplating the same class of injurers 
 in the two cases. Now if we examine the first passage we 
 immediately discover that the injurer referred to is a 
 Christian. In the first place, he is called a brother, which 
 we know to have been the term adopted by the first Chris- 
 tians in speaking of each other. In the second place, the 
 text goes on to direct that if the offender do not listen to 
 the rebuke, the matter be brought before the Church, and 
 that if he continue contumacious he be treated for the 
 future as a heathen, in which it is of course implied that at 
 the beginning he had been a Christian. So much then being 
 certain, it is natural to conclude that the other text which 
 gives us different direction refers to injuries received from 
 heathens. Let us examine whether this conjecture is con- 
 firmed by the expressions used in the passage itself. 
 
 That passage (Matt. v. 38-48) divides itself into two 
 
 241 Q 
 
242 Ecce Homo 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 parts—one which tells us what feelings we ought to enter- 
 tain towards those who injure us, the other which tells us 
 what we ought todo to them. Now in the first part + there 
 is nothing which, after what has been said above, requires 
 any explanation. It forbids us to hate the injurer. It 
 directs us to continue well-disposed to him and to follow 
 the example of Almighty God, who does not at once in- 
 terdict the sinner agua et igni and leave him to perish, but 
 continues to him and to the land he tills the blessings of 
 sunlight and rain. As a matter of course, Christianity 
 must speak in this strain. The Christian is a man not 
 indifferent to his fellow-men, but regarding them as such 
 with an enthusiastic kindliness. If he were indifferent 
 them originally, his feelings towards each individual wo 
 be determined entirely by the behaviour of the individual 
 to him. He would love those who benefited him and hate 
 those who did him hurt. But as he starts from love, it 
 
 not to be supposed that injury would excite hatred in 
 
 spires by declaring that it must not have even this effect. 
 But because we are not to hate an enemy, it does not 
 immediately follow that we are not to take vengeance 
 upon him. The infliction of pain and damage is quite 
 consistent with love, as we all acknowledge in the instance 
 of a parent punishing a child. In fact, if Christ had said 
 no more than this we should rather have gathered that he 
 approved of the requital of injuries. For he bids us imi- 
 tate Almighty God, who though He does not withdraw 
 from sinners the rain and sunlight, yet most assuredly, as 
 Christ held, punishes them. If we are to imitate Him it 
 our treatment of injuries, then we ought to remember not 
 only that His tender mercies are over all His works, but 
 also that “ God is jealous, and the Lord revengeth; the 
 Lord revengeth and is furious.” 
 So far, then, this passage is in no way inconsistent with 
 that other in which we are directed to rebuke one whe 
 wrongs us, nor is there anything in it which strongly sug: 
 gests that Christ was thinking of one particular class 0 
 1 Which, however, stands second in St. Matthew (v. 43-48). 
 
The Law of Forgiveness 243 
 
 offenders more than another. The rule that we are to 
 love those who injure us is no doubt absolutely universal, 
 whatever course of action we adopt in reference to the in- 
 jury. But when the same passage tells us how we are to 
 act—when it directs us to endure the most outrageous in- 
 sults without a murmur of complaint or expostulation, to 
 offer the left cheek to him who smites us on the right, to 
 offer the cloak to him who takes away the coat—is this 
 tule equally universal, or is there anything to indicate that 0 
 the oppressor is to be understood to be a heathen? 
 
 It may seem impossible to limit one part of the passage 
 without at the same time limiting the other. But if 
 Christ’s thoughts were intent upon the question in what 
 way his followers were to conduct themselves towards the 
 heathen world in the midst of which they lived, so that 
 the other question, how they were to conduct themselves 
 towards each other, did not at the time occur to his mind, 
 nothing is more natural than that he should in the same 
 breath have delivered rules applicable only to the case 
 in hand and other rules equally applicable to it, but ap- 
 plicable to other cases as well. Now if we read the first 
 
 chapter of the Sermon on the Mount connectedly, we shall 
 
 see that he actually was occupied with this question, and 
 that, though heathen are not expressly mentioned, the 
 Christian is always supposed to be dealing with them. 
 Christ, in short, has given here a manual of the behaviour 
 he requires from his followers towards those who are not 
 his followers. For example, they are to consider them- 
 selves happy when men (i.e. heathen men) revile and per- 
 secute them. They are to consider themselves as lights 
 in the world, that is, as illuminating the darkness of 
 heathenism ; they are to be the salt of the earth, that is, 
 their Christian enthusiasm is to give a tone to the languid 
 and lifeless heathen society. And in the passage itself 
 with which we are dealing, it is sufficiently apparent that 
 the injuries supposed are not those to which in the inter- 
 course of life every one alike is liable; the blow on the 
 cheek, the spiteful treatment, the persecution, point to 
 the insults and cruelties which a hated and despised sect 
 had to expect from the outer world. 
 
 ¢) 
 Y 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 244 Ecce Homo 
 
 Add to this the word enemy. It may not strike 1 
 © at first in reading the passage that this cannot possib ly 
 apply to a fellow-Christian. That there are enmities an 
 hatreds between Christians is to us a familiar fact; w 
 find nothing very strange in the thought of one Christian 
 striking another on the cheek. But we must be careful 
 not to antedate this sad knowledge. It is inconceivabk 
 that in the very act of founding a society of brothers 
 sworn to mutual love, in the very freshness of Christian 
 feeling, Christ should have supposed the existence ¢ 
 savage enmities in the very bosom of the Church, an 
 should have commanded them to be tolerated. Such 
 gloomy foresight is not characteristic of the Sermon o 
 the Mount. On the contrary, there breathes through it 
 more of that ardour which realises a distant ideal, a 
 overlooks intermediate difficulties, than appears in any 
 other discourse of Christ. It is the first, the simplest, 
 the largest utterance of the new Law, the most inspired 
 expression of the civilisation of the modern world, the 
 fundamental document of ripe morality. It inaugurated 
 a golden age of reconciliation and union. It is the earliest 
 and softest note of that heavenly Dove which has built 
 its nest among men, and which, though often scared away 
 for a time, has still returned. True indeed it is, that the 
 actual reconciliation of mankind was further off than 
 might at that time have seemed. True that Christ on 
 other occasions recognised this with a strange sagacity 
 and certainty. Still, nothing is so incredible as that he 
 should have countenanced or tolerated in thought so 
 complete an obliteration of the distinction between the 
 Church and the surrounding world as might make it 
 possible to apply to the same person the terms “ enemy 
 and “ fellow-Christian.” 
 
 If, then, we take it for proved that the directions com 
 tained in this passage refer only to the case of injuries 
 inflicted by heathens, we arrive at this remarkable con- 
 clusion, that Christ held such injuries to stand on a materi- 
 ally different footing from those committed by Christians, 
 We have seen that in all cases whatever he command 
 
 © his followers to be ready to forgive on condition of 
 
 eG 
 
| The Law of Forgiveness 24.5 
 
 pentance. But he commands them, when dealing with a 
 brother Christian, firmly to exact that repentance, not to 
 pass the injury by, not even to rest content with a rebuke, 
 unless the rebuke accomplish its purpose, but to bring 
 the matter before the Church and prosecute it until the 
 offender make submission. On the other hand, when they 
 are dealing with a heathen, they are to bear themselves 
 quite differently. They are to compose themselves to 
 an absolute passive tolerance, and to bear in silence 
 whatever may be inflicted. And this is no mere political 
 contrivance for carrying a helpless sect through times of 
 ae Christians are not to tolerate injuries simply 
 
 ecause, in the presence of superior force, nothing would 
 be gained by resenting them. Their tolerance 1s not to 
 be reluctant or sullen, nor is it to be a stoical indifference. 
 They are to think of ‘their oppressors with positive good- 
 will; they are to requite curses not with silence, much 
 less with silent contempt, but with blessings, and malice 
 not with indifference but with acts of kindness. 
 
 Now what is the ground of this distinction? What so 
 great difference is there between the Christian and the 
 heathen that they should be treated so differently? 
 Several times in this treatise we have had occasion to mark 
 the essential difference between a Christian and a heathen. 
 We have found it to depend upon that universal relation 
 of every man to every other man beyond the special rela- 
 tion of kindred which Christians recognise and heathens 
 donot. It ison this universal relation of human beings to 
 each other that the Church is founded. And it must be 
 understood that they conceived this relation to be ante- 
 cedent to the foundation of the Church and altogether in- 
 dependent of it. Christians did not regard each other as 
 brothers because they were alike members of the Church, 
 but they became members of the Church because they re- 
 garded each other as brothers. Therefore they cherished 
 the same feeling towards those who were not members of 
 the Church and who did not reciprocate the feeling. On 
 the other hand, the heathen, as such, recognised only 
 special obligations towards particular classes of men, his 
 relations or fellow-citizens. If he recognised any wider 
 
246 Ecce Homo 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 obligations, they were formal obligations created by pe 
 tive legal enactment and resting, in his view, on no esse 
 tial justice. In the heathen theory the relation of men 
 towards each other, where no tie of nature or of treaty 
 had bound them together, was that of enemies. 
 were rival claimants of the earth’s wealth; their intere 
 were supposed to be conflicting; and therefore 
 natural condition was hostility. 
 
 This being so, an injury committed by a heathen mu 
 have been essentially different from an injury committe 
 by a Christian. Both alike were violations of obligation 
 but the latter was a conscious, the former an unconsciou 
 violation. They differed as much as homicide commi 
 in war upon an enemy differs from homicide committe 
 in peace upon a fellow-citizen. The heathen injured on 
 whom he conceived to be his enemy by a law of natum 
 and to be prepared at any moment to perpetrate a simile 
 injury upon himself. But an injury committed by 
 Christian was like one of those breaches of the right o 
 hospitality or of the right of a suppliant from which eve 
 barbarians shrank; it was the violation of a solemn com 
 pact. It was reasonable, therefore, that the two classes ¢ 
 injuries should be dealt with in a very different way. 
 injurious Christian was a proper subject of resentment 
 But it was unreasonable to be angry with the injuriou 
 heathen. Anger, where it is healthy and justifiable, is the 
 feeling excited in us by wrong, by laws broken, covenant 
 disregarded. The heathen as such broke no law and dis 
 regarded no covenant, for he knew of none. He might bi 
 noxious and mischievous, but he could not, in the stric 
 sense of the word, be injurious. It might be most neces 
 sary to inform him of the obligation he neglected, but i 
 was impossible to be angry with him for neglecting it. 
 
 This description of the heathen would be justly charge 
 with exaggeration if it professed to describe the ordina 
 or average heathen. But what it professes to describe 
 the ideal heathen, or the heathen as he would have bee: 
 had he lived consistently with his theory. Doubtles 
 this is as much an abstraction as a mathematical point 
 line. No person perfectly heathen probably ever existe 
 
The Law of Forgiveness 24.7 
 
 The individual heathen excelled his own moral system 
 ‘as much as the individual Christian falls short of his. 
 Natural kindness was in every one a kind of substitute 
 for Christianity. Still it is not easy to overestimate the 
 hardening effect of an antisocial theory of life which, 
 besides seconding all selfish instincts, did not appear to 
 ‘those who held it a theory but a truth too obvious, too 
 universally held, consecrated too much by usage, to 
 ‘admit of being questioned. We may imagine the almost 
 irresistible force of this universal prejudice upon minds 
 which had never heard it called in question, if we remark 
 ‘the difficulty which most men feel at the present day in 
 viewing otherwise than as the wildest of paradoxes the 
 proposition that the happiness of the brute creation 
 deserves a moment’s consideration when compared with 
 the convenience or profit of human beings. If a similar 
 insensibility to human sufferings compared with personal 
 convenience reigned with equal dominion in the minds of 
 the ancients, if their virtues extended no farther than the 
 family and the state, if they “ loved their brethren only,” 
 it was quite reasonable that the Christians should take 
 account of the fact in their dealings with them, and 
 instead of rebuking them for a hardness which violated 
 no principle which they acknowledged, should endeavour 
 to teach them better by forbearance and by unexpected 
 retaliations of kindness. 
 
 It will be worth while here to raise the question, If 
 injuries committed by heathens were thus sharply dis- 
 tinguished from injuries committed by Christians, how 
 would it be proper for a Christian to deal with an injury 
 received from a Jew? Judaism stands midway between 
 heathenism and Christianity. It rose out of heathenism 
 as twilight out of night, and melted into Christianity as 
 twilight into morning. In its earlier period it had many 
 peculiarities in common with heathenism, but its later 
 form closely resembled Christianity. It did not, indeed, 
 clearly announce the great Christian law of humanity, 
 and it had points which led those who embraced it in a 
 perverse spirit into an inhumanity almost worse, though 
 less brutal, than the inhumanity of heathenism. But it 
 contained the germs of the Christian humanity in its 
 
248 Ecce Homo 
 
 doctrine of the unity of God and of the creation of mar 
 in God’s image. It would therefore have been unreason- 
 able for a Christian to treat a Jew as one utterly untaught 
 in humanity. The Jew was the possessor of a certain 
 crude Christianity, and even if he had not been, yet an 
 injury done by him to a Christian would generally be the 
 trespass of a brother and not the attack of an enemy, since x 
 though the Jews were not Christians, the earliest Chris- 
 tians, at any rate, were for the most part Jews. 
 
 Christians could claim at the hands of Jews the rights 
 of countrymen and the rights of fellow-citizenship in 
 the ancient theocracy. Abraham and Moses belonged to 
 both, the Psalms of David and the prophecies of Isaiah 
 An injury done by a Jew was therefore a thing to be 
 resented by a Christian, and not a thing to be passively 
 tolerated. This being understood, it is instructive te 
 observe how exactly Christ, when he became the obje 
 of insult and injury, observed his own law. In his 
 murder both Jews and Romans were concerned. It has 
 
 _been pointed out in a former chapter, in how different a 
 ‘spirit he bore the cruelties of his accusers and those o i 
 his executioners. Towards the Jews he cherishes through- 
 out a bitter feeling of resentment, which breaks out be- 
 fore the high-priest into threatening words. But before 
 Pilate he bears himself gently; he exhibits no sign of 
 anger, and declares his Roman judge to be comparatively — 
 guiltless of his unjust condemnation. He prays that his. 
 Roman executioners may be forgiven, although they did 
 not merely obey orders but heaped wanton insults upon 
 him; and his reason is, “ they know not what they do.” 
 This litter of Roman wolves, to whom and to whose 
 ancestors no prophet had ever preached, whose only 
 morality in dealing with foreigners was to subdue and 
 crush them, what wonder if they revelled in brutal insult 
 of a Jew who had called himself a king? The burning 
 anger he had felt before Caiaphas subsided at once in the 
 presence of Roman brutality. He rebuked the brother 
 that trespassed against him, but when the enemy smote _ 
 him on the one cheek he turned to him the other. 
 
 Another point now requires notice. By Christ’s law 
 
 the Christian is commanded in some cases of injury to go _ 
 
 
 
 
The Law of Forgiveness 249 
 
 without redress altogether, in others to apply for it to the 
 Christian assembly. But the Christian assembly had no 
 _ power of compulsion, and therefore if the offender proved 
 contumacious, redress was denied to the injured man in 
 this case also. It appears, then, that in no case whatever 
 does Christ countenance any appeal to the secular courts. 
 Are we then to suppose that all that machinery for check- 
 ing and punishing crime, which has been established in 
 _ every human society alike, is rejected and repudiated by 
 Christ? Since he forbade his followers to avail themselves 
 of this machinery, are we to suppose that he disapproved 
 of it, and that he intended, when society should be re- 
 modelled in accordance with his morality, that it should 
 be abolished, and that men should depend in future for 
 their protection against violence upon the power of for- 
 giveness to charm away the lawlessness of the robler and 
 the plunderer? 
 
 It is certainly evident that if Christ’s law were univer- 
 sally practised in a Christian land the administration of 
 justice would be suspended. Where all alike contented 
 themselves with first rebuking and in case of contumacy 
 renouncing the society of those who injured them, there 
 would be no trials, for there would be no prosecutions. 
 Government would be obliged to abdicate its function of 
 maintaining tranquillity and good order in the kingdom. 
 Is this, then, what Christ intended, and did he believe that 
 the influence of the Enthusiasm of Humanity would be 
 _ such as to render law and police superiiuous? Of Christ’s 
 views on civil government we know very little. Still it is 
 not conceivable that he should have rejected altogether 
 the notion of punishment, since we see that in describ- 
 ing the Divine government he introduces it freely. In 
 various parables he has represented himself as a ruler, 
 and his conception of the functions of a ruler appears 
 not to differ from that commonly received. It most 
 distinctly includes criminal jurisdiction and punishment. 
 We may be sure that one who habitually considered 
 governors as charged with the duty of inflicting punish- 
 ment, cannot have considered it the duty of subjects to 
 prevent punishment from being inflicted. 
 
 It is in the circumstances of the Church at its founda- 
 
250 Ecce Homo 
 
 tion that we shall find the explanation of the difficulty 
 Christ forbids his followers to appeal to the secular courts 
 not because he disapproved of criminal law in the abs 
 
 but for the same reason for which he systematically 
 
 over everything relating to politics and government. I 
 was because the Church was established in the midst of a 
 heathen society which it was in no way to countenan 
 and yet in no way to resist. Of this society the Churc 
 was in one sense a mortal enemy; that is, she did not ac- 
 knowledge its right to exist, and she looked forward to 
 time when it should be reconstructed on the basis of an 
 acknowledgment of Christ and of the law of Humanity. 
 On the other hand, it was Christ’s fixed resolution to enter 
 into no contest with the civil power. Therefore he en- 
 joins upon his followers an absolutely passive behaviour 
 towards it, and in every rule that he lays down, while he 
 recognises the fact that the Church itself has no power 
 of compulsion, he makes no use whatever of that power 
 residing in the state. 
 
 It appears, then, that the law we have been considering 
 was dictated by special circumstances. It was given to 
 men who had practically no country. The paramount 
 duty to humanity had for a time suspended their obli- 
 gations to the government under which they lived. Or 
 rather they were men who, while bearing all the burdens 
 laid upon them by the government, declined for special 
 reasons all the advantages they might have derived from 
 government. It was for a society thus deprived by cir- 
 cumstances of all political interests that Christ legislated, 
 for a society which was directed to act as good citizens do 
 under a usurping but still a settled government,—that 
 is, to become political quietists, disturbing as little as 
 possible the public tranquillity, but at the same time coun- 
 tenancing as little as possible the unrighteous power. 
 Accordingly, in laying down a law for the treatment of 
 injuries, Christ entirely disregards the political bearings of 
 the question. He considers no interests but those of the 
 parties immediately concerned. To raise the question 
 whether his law of abstinence from prosecution is con- 
 sistent with social order is therefore to misunderstand it. 
 Owing to special circumstances this element was eliminated 
 
 
 
The Law of Forgiveness 251 
 
 from the problem. Like the First Law of Motion, this 
 law postulates the absence of external forces. What it 
 affirms is that, supposing a wrong committed in redressing 
 which only the injured party is interested, he should en- 
 deavour to bring the offender to submission by patience 
 if it be an offence of ignorance, by rebuke if he knew better, 
 but in no case by force. 
 
 The special circumstances have long passed away, and 
 it is now impossible to eliminate from the problem all that 
 bears upon public order. Society, and not the injured 
 party only, has now to be considered in the treatment of 
 an injury. Christ’s law therefore ceases in many cases 
 to be serviceable as a rule of life. But if this were so 
 in all cases, it would not therefore lose its value. The 
 First Law of Motion is still the foundation of mechanics, 
 although no body in the universe was ever actually in 
 the condition that law supposes. Christ’s law may be 
 no longer an invariable law for action, but it is an invari- 
 able law for feeling and for motive. Instead of abstain- 
 ing from prosecution it may now be a positive duty to 
 prosecute, but it must no longer be a pleasure to prosecute. 
 The prosecution that duty dictates is externally the same 
 act as the prosecution prompted by selfish revenge, but 
 essentially it is a totally different act. That this essential 
 difference is now clear, and that it is applicable to prac- 
 tice, is one abiding effect of Christ’s law. Nor is prose- 
 cution inconsistent with kindness. Punishments may 
 once more, since the Church became reconciled to the 
 State, have become Christian acts and may have their 
 use, and discharge in some cases the same functions that 
 Christ intended to be discharged by passive tolerance. 
 The sense of a rule higher than self-interest may be roused 
 sometimes by severity, sometimes by unexpected gentle- 
 ness, sometimes by the mixture of both. But though 
 the prohibition of severity must now be considered as 
 taken off, yet the emphatic recommendation of gentle- 
 ness remains. It remains a duty in all cases where such 
 a course is likely to succeed to endeavour by every act of 
 kindness consistent with duty to the public to point out 
 to the rude and heathenish heart “‘ the more excellent 
 way of charity.” 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 THE outline of Christian morality is now completely 
 drawn, and it only remains to take a parting glance at 
 the picture from some point where we can see it all in one 
 view. 
 
 Let us endeavour, then, once more to answer the ques- 
 tion, What is the Christian Church? 
 
 First, it is a commonwealth. In other words, it is a 
 society of men who meet together for common objects, 
 and it differs from the minor clubs or unions under which 
 men avail themselves of the principle of association, and 
 resembles those greater societies which we call states, in 
 this respect that it claims unlimited self-sacrifice on the 
 part of its members, and demands that the interest and 
 safety of the whole shall be set by each member above 
 his own interest and above all private interests whatever. 
 
 Secondly, as all commonwealths are originally based 
 upon some common quality, and for the most part on a 
 blood-relationship, real or supposed, of the members, so 
 is the Christian Church based upon a blood-relationship, — 
 but the most comprehensive of all, the kindred of every 
 human being to every other. 
 
 It is therefore absolutely open to all human beings who 
 choose to become members of it. 
 
 But the objects for which this commonwealth exists 
 are much less obvious and intelligible than those for 
 which the local commonwealths of the earth exist. Ac- 
 cordingly it is demanded of every member of the Christian 
 Commonwealth that he be introduced into it with a pre- 
 scribed form and in a public manner, that he be instructed 
 in the objects for which it exists, and that he testify his 
 membership from time to time by a common meal taken 
 
 252 
 
 
 
: 
 
 Conclusion 253 
 
 in conjunction with other members also according to a 
 prescribed form. 
 
 The effect of this system and of the absence of local 
 boundaries is that the objects of the Christian common- 
 wealth, though less obvious, are far better defined than 
 those of other commonwealths, and that it approaches 
 far nearer to the theoretical perfection of a state. Other 
 states are but accidental aggregates, whose attraction of 
 cohesion was originally a clannish instinct or a common 
 terror of some near enemy or the external pressure of 
 physical barriers; such states, though when once formed 
 they may conveniently be used for definite objects, yet 
 cannot properly be said to have any definite object at all. 
 But the Christian Commonwealth has the same object 
 now which it had at the beginning, and what that object 
 is it is and always has been easy to discover. 
 
 The Christian has, as such, a definite relation to every 
 other human being, to every Christian as a fellow-citizen, 
 and to every person who is not Christian as possessing 
 that humanity which is the ground of Christianity. 
 
 In ordinary states there arises out of the union, the 
 relationships, the intercourse, the common interests of 
 the citizens, a sense of duties towards each other and of 
 justice. This sense expresses itself in laws, which, at first 
 few and but half-just, have a reacting effect upon the 
 sense of justice which produced them, developing it and 
 causing it gradually to produce more and juster laws. 
 By this system of laws the citizens are taught to abstain 
 from doing serious injuries to each other, and a spirit of 
 sympathy is fostered which disposes them to help each 
 other in difficulties. The morality which thus springs 
 up does not at the beginning influence the citizens in 
 their dealings with foreigners, but is supposed to be in- 
 separable from the civic relation. In a time of general 
 intercourse between nations the obligations of justice 
 become in a certain degree recognised even between 
 foreigners, but grudgingly, and active sympathy between 
 them scarcely exists at all. 
 
 A similar process goes forward in the Christian Com- 
 monwealth, and, as it includes all mankind, the sense of 
 
254 Ecce Homo 
 
 duty which springs up in it is a sense of duty to man 
 man, and whatever kindness it fosters is also not exclu 
 sive but truly cosmopolitan or humane. In the Christi 
 Commonwealth also the sense of duty gives birth to laws; 
 and whatever laws are common to all secular states 
 transferred to it, while some new ones are suggested b 
 its peculiar conditions. But whereas in other states th 
 greatest importance is attached to these laws and t 
 greatest trouble taken to make them as just, as numerous, 
 and as exact as possible, in the Christian Commonwealth 
 a different view is taken. The laws themselves are not 
 considered as very important; no pains are bestowed 
 upon forming them precisely; and they exist rather as 
 tules generally understood in the minds of the citizens 
 than as written statutes. On the other hand, that sense 
 of obligation in which all laws have their origin is re- 
 garded as inexpressibly important. Every expedient is 
 used to increase the keenness of this sense to such a point 
 that it shall instantly and instinctively suggest the proper 
 course of action in any given case. 
 This increased and intense moral sensitiveness has an 
 effect upon the objective morality of the Christian Com- 
 monwealth, and it also gives a peculiar tone to the char- 
 acter of individual Christians. Its effect upon objective 
 morality is to create a number of new duties which the 
 duller moral sense of secular states does not apprehend. 
 These new duties, as has been said, are not carefully 
 formulated, but they are apprehended very plainly and 
 universally recognised. Of these new duties some do 
 not differ in kind from these which secular morality pre- 
 scribes. They are but new applications of principles 
 which under other systems are admitted but applied im- 
 perfectly. But besides these a whole class of new duties 
 arise in the Christian Commonwealth which are different 
 in kind from those acknowledged in secular common- 
 wealths. These are positive or active duties—duties, 
 that is, not of refraining from injuries but of promoting 
 actively the welfare of others. In secular states, though 
 men had frequently appeared who had performed these 
 duties, they had not performed them as duties but rather 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Conclusion 255 
 
 : as works of supererogation, and for performing them they 
 had received from their fellow-citizens not simple appro- 
 bation but such admiration as we bestow on those who 
 
 ilo something extraordinary. These extraordinary ser- 
 vices to humanity become ordinary and imperative in 
 the Christian Commonwealth. They fall naturally into 
 
 two classes—services to the bodies of men and services 
 to their characters and moral development; and to per- 
 form either class of duties well, truly to serve men’s 
 bodies or their souls, requires the most assiduous study, 
 calls for comprehensive knowledge and perpetual earnest 
 endeavour. 
 
 But the fact that in the Christian Commonwealth so 
 much importance is attached to a strong moral sense, 
 the fact that this is used as a substitute for strict laws, 
 modifies individual character even more than objective 
 morality. As this moral sense is expected to discover 
 the right course of action in any given case without the 
 help of a law, so, vice versa, it is not considered satis- 
 factory that the right act should be done, unless the 
 moral sense be active in dictating it. Merely for the pur- 
 pose of discovering the right act the moral sense would 
 often be unnecessary; in most cases the right act is 
 determined for us by the customs of society, or by our 
 own previous experience of similar cases. But the rule 
 of the Christian Commonwealth is, that though the feel- 
 ing be not necessary to discover the right act, yet the act 
 must always be accompanied by the feeling. Therefore 
 to perform an act of kindness coldly, an act of self-denial 
 reluctantly, an act of forgiveness with suppressed ill-will, 
 or any right act whatever from interested motives, 
 whether to escape punishment or to win applause, or 
 mechanically from a habit of following fixed maxims, 
 or from any other motive except the moral sense, is to 
 break the fundamental law of the Christian Common- 
 wealth. The Christian therefore must, it appears, cherish 
 a peculiar temperament, such that every combination 
 of circumstances involving moral considerations may 
 instantaneously affect him in a peculiar way and excite 
 peculiar feelings in him. He must not arrive at the nght 
 
256 Ecce Homo 
 
 practical conclusion after a calculation or a struggle, 
 by an instantaneous impulse. Rightly to appreciate wh 
 the circumstances are may indeed cost him thought ar 
 study, but when once the position is made clear to his 
 mind, the moral sense should speak as promptly as the 
 note sounds when the string of a musical instrument 
 struck. 
 This moral sensitiveness, this absolute harmony of ir 
 ward desire with outward obligation, was called by Chris! 
 and his Apostles by a name of which holiness is the ecog 
 nised English equivalent, and it is attributed to tk 
 presence of a Divine Spirit within the soul. It is th 
 absolute and ultimate test of true membership in the 
 Christian Commonwealth. He who has it not cannot be 
 a true member whatever he may have, and he who has 
 it is a member whatever he may lack. But how is this 
 moral sensitiveness produced? It is the effect of a single 
 ardent feeling excited in the soul. A single conception 
 enthusiastically grasped is found powerful enough te 
 destroy the very root of all immorality within the hes 
 As every enthusiasm that a man can conceive makes 
 certain class of sins impossible to him, and raises him not 
 only above the commission of them, but beyond the very 
 temptation to commit them, so there exists an enth 
 siasm which makes all sin whatever impossible. This 
 enthusiasm is emphatically the presence of the Holy 
 Spirit. It is called here the Enthusiasm of Humanity 
 because it is that respect for human beings which no one 
 altogether wants raised to the point of enthusiasm, 
 Being a reverence for human beings as such, and not fe 
 the good qualities they may exhibit, it embraces the bad 
 as well as the good, and as it contemplates human beings 
 in their ideal—that is, in what they might be—it desires 
 not the apparent, but the real and highest welfare of 
 each; lastly, it includes the person himself who feels i 
 and, loving self too only in the ideal, differs as much aS 
 possible from selfishness, being associated with self- 
 respect, humility and independence, as selfishness is 
 allied with self- contempt, with arrogance, and with 
 vanity. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Conclusion 257 
 
 Once more, how is this enthusiasm kindled? All vir- 
 tues perpetuate themselves in a manner. When the 
 pattern is once given it will be printed in a thousand 
 copies. This enthusiasm, then, was shown to men in 
 its most consummate form in Jesus Christ. From him 
 it flows as from a fountain. How it was kindled in him 
 who knows? “The abysmal deeps of personality ” hide 
 this secret. It was the will of God to beget no second son 
 like him. But since Christ showed it to men, it has been 
 found possible for them to imitate it, and every new imi- 
 tation, by bringing the marvel visibly before us, revives 
 the power of the original. As a matter of fact the En- 
 thusiasm is kindled constantly in new hearts, and though 
 in few it burns brightly, yet perhaps there are not very 
 many in which it altogether goes out. At least the con- 
 ception of morality which Christ gave has now become 
 the universal one, and no man is thought good who does 
 not in some measure satisfy it. 
 
 Living examples are, as a general rule, more potent 
 than those of which we read in books. And it is true 
 that the sight of very humble degrees of Christian 
 humanity in action will do more to kindle the Enthu- 
 Slasm, in most cases, than reading the most impressive 
 scenes in thelife of Christ. It cannot, therefore, be said that 
 
 ral perfection of man stands revealed in its root and 
 unity, the hidden spring made palpably manifest by 
 
 human sorrows will hide themselves, and all human 
 -denials support themselves against his cross.—But we 
 R 
 
258 Ecce Homo 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 are travelling into questions which we are not yet in a 
 condition to discuss. 
 
 Our subject has hitherto been Christian morality. ? 
 have considered the scheme by which Christ united mer 
 together, cured them of their natural antipathy, cured 
 them of their selfishness. But man has other enemies 
 beside himself, and has need of protections and support 
 which morality cannot give. He is at enmity with Natur 
 as well as with his brother-man. He is beset by two 
 enemies with whom he knows not how to cope. The firs 
 is Physical Evil; the second is Death. The harm whic 
 is done to us by our fellow-men we can at least understand 
 We understand either that they are angry with us for 
 
 which involve suffering to us. What we can understa 
 we can sometimes guard against, we can generally foresee 
 But when the forces of Nature become hostile to us, we 
 know neither why it is so nor what to do. Most of these 
 enemies attack us capriciously, but one of them is certain 
 to attack us sooner or later, and certain to prevail. H 
 may not be the worst among them; he may not be 2 
 enemy at all; but he is more dreaded than any, becaus 
 he is more mysterious. And though we know little o 
 Death, we cannot help thinking it a comfortless torpor, 
 that deprives the hero of his heroism, the face of its smil 
 the eye of its expression, that first strikes the human form 
 with a dull, unsocial stiffness, and then peels the beauty 
 from it like a rind and exposes the skeleton. In different 
 degrees men learn and always have learnt to overcome 
 this terror, and to meet death with contentment, and even 
 in some cases with joy. But death remains the fatal bar 
 to all complete satisfaction, the disturber of all great plans, 
 the Nemesis of all great happiness, the standing dire dis- 
 couragement of human nature. 
 
 What comfort Christ gave men under these evils, ho’ 
 he reconciled them to nature as well as to each other by 
 offering to them new views of the Power by which 
 world is governed, by his own triumph over death, and by 
 his revelation of eternity, will be the subject of ‘anothe 
 treatise. 
 
Conclusion 259 
 
 In closing the subject for the present, let us reflect for 
 a moment upon the magnitude of the work which Christ 
 accomplished, and the nature of which we have been 
 investigating. We may consider it in two very different 
 aspects. It was, in the first place, a work of speculation, 
 which we may compare with the endeavours of several 
 ancient philosophers to picture to themselves a common- 
 wealth founded on juster and clearer principles than the 
 states they saw around them. Plato made such an 
 attempt, and a later philosopher was on the point of 
 realising his conception in an actual, palpable, Platono- 
 polis. The Kingdom of God, the New Jerusalem, which 
 Christ founded, was similar to this speculative state. He 
 seized upon the substantial principles which lie at the 
 foundation of every civil society, and without waiting for 
 favourable circumstances or for permission of kings, and 
 not only dispensing with but utterly repudiating a local 
 habitation, he conceived a commonwealth developed, as 
 it were, from within. It was one of those daring imagina- 
 tions, in which, as a general rule, we allow philosophers to 
 indulge in their studies, not because we imagine for a 
 moment that they can ever be realised, but because they 
 are useful educational exercises for youth, and because in 
 filling up the paper design suggestions may be thrown out 
 which a practical man may be able gradually to work into 
 the constitution of some existing state. To make any 
 more practical use of such schemes almost all the practical 
 statesmen that ever lived would at once pronounce im- 
 possible. They know better, of course, than all other 
 men with how little wisdom the world is governed. They 
 regard the whole framework of all institutions as deter- 
 mined by the plain, universal, animal, propensities of 
 men and the irresistible constraint of external conditions. 
 They believe that for the most part nothing can be done 
 by the wisdom of individuals but to watch the operation 
 of these causes, to take advantage of each passion as it 
 rises, and sometimes to procure the adoption of a measure 
 which is solidly good, when it happens to be momentarily 
 popular. But any comprehensive scheme, appealing to 
 first principles and at the same time demanding sacrifices 
 
260 Ecce Homo 
 
 from men, they consider in the nature of things impractic- 
 able. Such, then, was Christ’s scheme regarded as a 
 speculation. 
 
 We do not compare Plato’s Republic with the republics 
 of Athens or Rome, because, however interesting the 
 former may be on paper, it has never been realised. It 
 may be very perfect, but Athens and Rome were more; 
 they existed. But the speculative commonwealth of 
 Christ may be compared to the commonwealths of the 
 world as well as to those of philosophers. For, however 
 impossible it may seem, this speculation of a common- 
 wealth developed from first principles has been realised on 
 a grand scale. It stands in history among other states; 
 it subsists in the midst of other states, connected with 
 them and yet distinct. Though so refined and philosophic 
 in its constitution, it has not less vigour than the states 
 which are founded on the relations of family, or language, 
 or the convenience of self-defence and trade. Not less 
 vigour, and certainly far more vitality. It has already 
 long outlasted all the states which were existing at the 
 time of its foundation; it numbers far more citizens than 
 any of the states which it has seen spring up near it. It 
 subsists without the help of costly armaments; resting on 
 no accidental aid or physical support, but on an inherent 
 immortality, it defied the enmity of ancient civilisation, 
 the brutality of medizval barbarism, and under the 
 present universal empire of public opinion, it is so secure 
 that even those parts of it seem indestructible which de- 
 serve to die. It has added a new chapter to the science of 
 politics; it has passed through almost every change of 
 form which a state can know; it has been democratical, 
 aristocratical; it has even made some essays towards 
 constitutional monarchy; and it has furnished the most 
 majestic and scientific tyranny of which history makes 
 mention. 
 
 For the New Jerusalem, as we witness it, is no more 
 exempt from corruption than was the Old. That early 
 Christian poet who saw it descending in incorruptible 
 purity “‘ out of heaven from God,” saw, as poets use, an 
 deal. He saw that which perhaps for a point of time was 
 
 
 
Conclusion 261 
 
 _ almost realised, that which may be realised again. But 
 what we see in ‘history behind us and i in the world about 
 us is, it must be confessed, not like ‘“‘ a bride adorned for 
 her husband.” We see something that is admirable and 
 much that is great and wonderful, but not this splendour 
 of maiden purity. The bridal dress is worn out, and 
 the orange-flower is faded. First the rottenness of dying 
 superstitions, then barbaric manners, then intellectualism 
 preferring system and debate to brotherhood, strangling 
 Christianity with theories and framing out of it a charla- 
 tan’s philosophy which madly strives to stop the progress 
 of science—all these corruptions have in the successive 
 
 ages of its long life infected the Church, and many new 
 
 and monstrous perversions of individual character have 
 disgraced it. The creed which makes human nature 
 
 richer and larger, makes men at the same time capable of 
 
 profounder sins; admitted into a holier sanctuary, they 
 are exposed to the temptation of a greater sacrilege; 
 awakened to the sense of new obligations, they sometimes 
 lose their simple respect for the old ones; saints that 
 have resisted the subtlest temptations sometimes begin 
 again, as it were, by yielding without a struggle to the 
 coarsest ; hypocrisy has become tenfold more ingenious 
 and better supplied with disguises; in short, human 
 nature has inevitably developed downwards as w ell as up- 
 wards, and if the Christian ages be compared with those of 
 heathenism they are found worse as well as better, and it 
 is possible to make it a question whether mankind has 
 gained on the whole. 
 
 To be sure, the question is a frivolous one. What good 
 for the grown man to regret his childhood, and to think 
 his intelligence and experience a poor compensation for 
 the careless happiness that accompanied his childish ignor- 
 ance? It was by Nature’s law that he grew to manhood, 
 and if infancy can be happy without wisdom, a foolish 
 and superstitious man cannot hope for the same happiness. 
 Those who saw “ old Proteus rising from the sea ” may or 
 may not have been happier than we are; we, at any rate, 
 should be none the happier for seeing him. But the 
 triumph of the Christian Church is that it is there—that 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 262 Ecce Homo 
 
 the most daring of all speculative dreams, instead of bei 
 
 when carried into effect, instead of being confined to a few 
 select spirits, has spread itself over a vast space of 
 earth’s surface, and, when thus diffused instead of givi 
 place after an age or two to something more adapted to’ 
 a later time, has endured for two thousand years, and, at 
 the end of two thousand years, instead of lingering as a 
 mere wreck spared by the tolerance of the lovers of the 
 past, still displays vigour and a capacity of adjusting itself” 
 to new conditions, and lastly, in all the transformations it 
 undergoes, remains visibly the same thing and inspired by 
 its Founder’s universal and unquenchable spirit. 
 
 It is in this and not in any freedom from abuses that 
 the divine power of Christianity appears. Again, it is in 
 this, and not in any completeness or all-sufficiency. It is” 
 a common mistake of Christians to represent their faith 
 as alone valuable and as, by itself, containing all that man 
 can want or can desire. But it is only one of many revela- 
 tions, and is very insufficient by itself for man’s happiness. 
 Some of the men in whom the Christian spirit has been 
 strongest have been among the most miserable of the race; 
 some nations have imbibed it deeply and have not been 
 led by it to happiness and power, but have only been con- 
 soled by it in degradation. Happiness wants besides some 
 physical conditions, animal health and energy; it wants 
 also much prudence, knowledge of physical facts, and 
 source. To assist us in arranging the physical conditions 
 of our well-being another mighty revelation has been made 
 to us, for the most part in these latter ages. We live unde 
 the blessed light of science, a light yet far from its meri- 
 dian and dispersing every day some noxious superstition, 
 some cowardice of the human spirit. These two revela 
 tions stand side by side. The points in which they have 
 been supposed to come into collision do not belong to our 
 present subject; they concern the theology and not the 
 morality of the Christian Church. The moral revelation 
 which we have been considering has never been supposed 
 to jar with science. Both are true and both are essential 
 to human happiness. It may be that since the methods 
 
Conclusion 263 
 
 _ of science were reformed and its steady progress began, 
 
 it has been less exposed to error and perversion than Chris- 
 tianity, and, as it is peculiarly the treasure belonging to 
 
 _ the present age, it becomes us to guard it with peculiar 
 
 jealousy, to press its claims, and to treat those who, con- 
 tent with Christianity, disregard science as Christ treated 
 the enemies of light, “‘ those that took away the keys of 
 knowledge,” in his day. Assuredly they are graceless 
 
 _ Zealots who quote Moses against the expounders of a 
 
 wisdom which Moses desired in vain, because it was re- 
 served for a far later generation, for these modern men, 
 to whom we may with accurate truth apply Christ’s words 
 
 _ and say that the least among them is greater than Moses. 
 
 On the other hand, the Christian morality, if somewhat 
 less safe and exempt from perversion than science, is more 
 directly and vitally beneficial to mankind. The scientific . 
 life is less noble than the Christian; it is better, so to speak, 
 to be a citizen in the New Jerusalem than in the New 
 Athens; it is better, surely, to find everywhere a brother 
 and friend, like the Christian, than, like the philosopher, 
 to “ disregard your relative and friend so completely as to 
 be ignorant not only how he gets on, but almost whether 
 he is a human being or some other sort of creature.” 1 
 But the achievement of Christ, in founding by his single 
 will and power a structure so durable and so universal, is 
 like no other achievement which history records. The 
 masterpieces of the men of action are coarse and common 
 
 “in comparison with it, and the masterpieces of specula- 
 
 tion flimsy and insubstantial. When we speak of it the 
 commonplaces of admiration fail us altogether. Shall we 
 speak of the originality of the design, of the skill dis layed 
 in the execution? All such terms are inadequate. Oren 
 ality and contriving skill operated indeed, but, as it were, 
 implicitly. The creative effort which produced that 
 against which, it is said, the gates of hell shall not prevail, 
 cannot be analysed. No architects’ designs were furnished 
 for the New Jerusalem, no committee drew up rules for 
 the Universal Commonwealth. If in the works of Nature 
 we can trace the indications of calculation, of a struggle 
 1 Plato, Theaet. p. 80. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 264 Ecce Homo- 
 
 with difficulties, of precaution, of ingenuity, then in 
 Christ’s work it may be that the same indications occ! 
 But these inferior and secondary powers were not con- 
 sciously exercised; they were implicitly present in the 
 - manifold yet single creative act. The inconceivable work 
 was done in calmness; before the eyes of men it was noise 
 lessly accomplished, attracting little attention. Who can 
 describe that which unites men? Who has entered into 
 the formation of speech which is the symbol of their union? 
 Who can describe exhaustively the origin of civil society 
 He who can do these things can explain the origin of th 
 Christian Church. For others it must be enough to say, 
 “the Holy Ghost fell on those that believed.” No man 
 saw the building of the New Jerusalem, the workmen 
 crowded together, the unfinished walls and unpaved streets 
 no man heard the clink of trowel and pickaxe; it de- 
 scended out of heaven from God. 
 
 THe 
 Ss €ETCHWORTH 
 TEMPLE PRES. L : D 
 

 

 
This Book is Due 
 
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