JESUS CHRIST
JESUS CHRIST
G47
that the facts recorded have been derived from 'eye-witnesses and ministere of the word.'
Aloni.' with this process there has been growing up a belter and fuller pliilosophy of the Incarna- tion. Tliis has been due especially to some of the contributors to Lux Mundi, and may be seen in Canon Gore's Bamplon Lectures (1801) and Disser- tatiiins (1805), in ]>r. Moberly's Lux Mundi essay, and in Mr. Illinnworth's Jiampton Lectures (1894) and Dhiiiip Immnnence (18'.t8).
To those who regard primitive ideas as com- pounded of nothing but idle imagination, ignor- ance, and superstition, the evidence in folk-lore of stories of supernatural birth (such ius are collected in .Mr. Sidney \\a.n\a.\\d'A Leijend of Perseus, vol. i., 1894) seems to discredit all accounts of such biith, even the Christian. They do not sufficiently con- sider the entire difference of the conditions under which the Christian tradition was promulgated from those which surrounded the creations of mythopoeic fancy. The Christian tradition be- longs to the .sphere, not of myth but of history. It is enshrined in documents near in date to the fact.s. and in which the line of connexion between the record and the fact is still traceable.
But, apart from this, if we believe that the course of human ideas, however mixed in their character — as all human things are mixed — is yet part of a single development, and that development presided over by a Providence which at once im- parts to it unity and prescribes its goal, — those who believe this may well .see in the fantastic out- growth of myth and legend something not wholly undesigned or wholly unconnected with the Great Event which was to be, but rather a dim unc^on- scious preparation for that Event, a groping towards it of the liuman spirit, a prophetic in- stinct gradually moulding the forms of thought in which it was to find expression.
And it we a.sk further what it all means, — why the Son of Man was destined to have this excep- tional kind of birth, the answer is, becaiLse His appearance upon earth — His Incarnation, as we call it — Wius to be in its innermost nature exceptional ; He was to live and move amongst men, and was to be made in all points like His brethren, with the one difference that He was to be^ — unlike tliem — without sin. But how was a sinless human nature possible ? To speak of a sinless human nature is to speak of something essentially outside the con- tiiniity of the species. The growth of self-conscious experience, expressed at its finest and best in the formuhe of .advancing science, has emphasized the strength of lieredily. Each generation is bound to the last by indissoluble ties. To sever the bond, in any one of it.s colligated strands, involves a break in descent. It involves the introduction of a new factor, to which the taint of sin does not attach. If like produces like, the element of uidikencss miust come from that to which it has it.self affinity. Our names for the process do but largely cover our ignorance, but we may be sure that there is essential truth contained in the sirli)tural ])hra.se, "The Holy (ihost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee; wherefore also that which is to bi- b'pni shall be calleil holy, the Son of God.'
[The most important literature has been men- tioned in the course of this .section.]
IV. CoNCUI:DINO Sl'KVKY: TlIK VEUDICT OK HlSTOUV.
A. Christ I.y UlsroitY. — So far we have been Involved in the .study of the details of the XAie of Christ, mainly on the basis of the (Jospels. Hut the Gospels alone, though the fragments which they have ]>reserved for us of that Eife are beyond all price, would yet convey an incomplete idea of the total impression left by it even upon contem-
poraries, still less of all that it has been in the history of the world. Especially would this be the ca.se if, as some would have us do, we were to follow the linst three Go.spels only, to the exclusion of the fourth. To that point we shall return for a moment presently. But the time has now come to enlarge our view, to look back upon our subject from the vantage-ground which we occupy at the end of the l!»lli cent., and to endeavour to see it no longer as an episode affecting a small portion of an 'unimportant branch of the Semitic peojiles,' but as it enters into the course of the great world- movement of the centuries.
If we wouhl appreciate this, we must once more go back to the Origins, not now so much In search of details, as in order, if possible, to catch rather more of the total impression. We cannot, of course, attempt to interrogate the whole of history. For our present purpose it may be enough to consider (1.) the net result, if we may so speak, of the portraiture of Christ in the Gospels; (ii.) the im- Ijression left by a similar reading of other parts of the New Testament, especially the Epistles ; (iii.) the testimony borne by the Early Church, both formulated and informal ; (iv.) the ap))eal that may be made to the religious experience of Christians.