2. The Foundation is Jesus Christ. — " Other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ." What does the Apostle mean by " Jesus Christ " ? The one thing fundamental, according to the teaching of St. Paul, and according to the teaching of Jesus Himself, is faith in Jesus as the Divine Bedeemer of the world. In opposition to this faith there is a Religion of the Human Christ. If we look at the points in which the Religion of a Human Christ differs from the Christian faith
1 The Life of Principal Rainy, i. 426.
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we shall see what the Apostle means when he says that the foundation is Jesus Christ.
Tf Two rival views are claiming the allegiance of the present generation. The one finds the basis of Christianity in the teaching of a man, inspired as Moses was inspired and more inspired, Divine as Shakespeare was Divine and more Divine, but now dead in the sense in which Moses is dead and Shakespeare is dead. The other finds the basis of Christianity in the ever-living Person of God for men made Man. Such are the views which, in some form or other, confront each one of us, and between which, sooner or later, we must make our solemn choice.1
(1) In the first place, the religion of a Human Christ as it is represented, for example, in Kenan's Life of Jesus or in Robert Msmere, gives us as our leader, as the centre of our faith, as the object of our reverence, a human hero.
Tf The last movement of Buskin's mind had been away from evangelical faith ; it had coincided with his growing admiration of the great worldly, irreligious painters; his religion had become "the religion of humanity," though "full of sacred colour and melancholy shade " ; his teaching had been in such exhortations as may be based on intellectual scepticism. But while engaged on drawing Giotto's frescoes, " I discovered," he says, " the fallacy under which I had been tormented for sixteen years — the fallacy that Beligious artists were weaker than Irreligious. I found that all Giotto's 'weaknesses' (so called) were merely absences of material science. He did not know, and could not, in his day, so much of perspective as Titian — so much of the laws of light and shade, or so much of technical composition. But I found he was in the make of him, and contents, a very much stronger and greater man than Titian ; that the things I had fancied easy in his work, because they were so unpretending and simple, were never- theless entirely inimitable ; that the Eeligion in him, instead of weakening, had solemnized and developed every faculty of his heart and hand ; and finally, that his work, in all the innocence of it, was yet a human achievement and possession, quite above everything that Titian had ever done." This " discovery " affected, first, Euskin's estimate of painters ; and at Florence, presently, he set himself to write of Giotto and his works in Florence, as twenty years before, with a more reserved admiration for the master, he had written of Giotto and his Works in Padua.2
(2) In the second place, this Eeligion of a Human Christ blots
1 F. Homes Dudden. 2 E. T. Cook, The Life of RusUn, ii. 253.
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the resurrection out of the Gospel and gives us but a cross and a tomb. Let us read Robert Elsmere's speech to the working men of East London: '"He laid him in a tomb which had been hewn out of a rock ; and he rolled a stone against the door of the tomb.' The ashes of Jesus of Nazareth mingled with the earth of Palestine —
Far hence he lies
In the lone Syrian town,
And on his grave, with shining eyes, The Syrian stars look down.
" He stopped. The melancholy cadence of the verse died away. Then a gleam broke over the pale, exhausted face — a gleam of extraordinary sweetness. 'And in the days and weeks that followed, the devout and passionate fancy of a few mourning Galileans begat the exquisite fable of the Eesurrection. How natural, and amid all its falseness how true, is that naive and contradictory story! The rapidity with which it spread is a measure of many things. It is, above all, a measure of the greatness of Jesus, of the force with which he had drawn to himself the hearts and imaginations of men.' "
Tf It may be true, as Mr. Nettleship has said, that "A Death in the Desert goes no single step in the direction of proving Christ's divinity as a dogma " ; but the poem itself is void of all meaning, unless, in spite of its dramatic form, it can be regarded as setting forth the deepest conviction of the poet's own soul. Hence the verdict of the man who adds the final note is this : —
If Christ, as thou amrmest, be of men Mere man, the first and best but nothing more — Account Him, for reward of what He was, Now and for ever, wretchedest of all.1
(3) Thirdly, the Eeligion of a Human Christ offers to us a law and an example — nothing more; the religion of Christian faith offers us a Divine power.