iv. The original element in Christianity. — When we turn from these attempts to disparage the ori- ginality of Christ, and proceed to consider wherein that originality consists, we find a great variety of opinions upon the subject. Some would place all the emphasis upon the Person of Christ ; others lay weight upon His methods as a teacher ; others think to find the original element in His doctrine, selecting now its universalism, now its individual- ism, now its practical moral tendency, now its
lofty spirituality, as the characteristic feature of it ; while others, again, contend that the specifically novel feature in the teaching of Christ is His an- noimcement that the Kingdom of God is at hand, that God is aboirt to intervene and bring in the Kingdom of God with power. We shall not confine ourselves to any one of these points of \iew, but proceed to indicate what ajij^ear to us some of the more important characteristics which go to make up the originality of Christ.
1. Without doubt the fullest emphasis must be laid upon C/irLst's jKisonaUtij. This is the most strikingly original feature in Christianity. We cannot separate the doctrine from the Person of Christ. He taught by His life no less than by His words, and it is His Person as much as His doctrine that has converted the world. There could be no more iinsatisfactory method of attemjJting to esti- mate the originality of Chri>t than to single out various statements scattered throughout the Gospels which we believe to 1:>e imparalleled in any teaching that had gone before. • It is not difficult to set over against every article from the preaching of Jesus an observation which deprives it of its origin- ality. It is the Person, it is the fact of his life tliat is new and creates the new' (Harnack. Hist, of Dogma, Eng. tr. i. 73). When we approach the portrait of Christ presented in the Gospels, we at once feel that we are in the presence of One who is in the truest sense original. The moral gi'andeur of His character alone bears witness to the fact. It dwarfs the attainment of the greatest of human heroes, and leaves the ideals even of our noblest thinkers far behind. The very fact of its sinless- ness stamjjs it with an originalitv that cannot be gainsaid. The perfect harmony tliat pervades the whole life, the holy peace which no trial or danger can disturb, the sublime faith, the noble optimism, the unquenchable love, the tender sympathy, the meek humilitv, the genial, kindly spirit which di-ew men to ilim — these are a few of the features which go to make up that portrait which has pro- dxiced such an impression on the heart of the world. We feel we are standing in the presence of One who has given in His own Person the perfect revelation of the DiA"ine. One trait we may specially note as characteristic of that originality we are consider- ing, viz. the tone of authority with which He ever acts and speaks. Meek and humble as He is, there is a certain majesty about Him that shines forth all the more forcibly because of the lowliness of the service to which He stoops. He sets up His ONATi authority over against that of the Law : ' Ye have heard that it was said to them of old time . . . but I say imto you' (Mt o-^'* etc.). He speaks of Himself as a gi-eater than Jonah, a greater than Solomon (12"'-). He claims to be able to reveal the Father as no other can (11^), for He stands in a re- lation of such intimacy to the Father that He can speak of the hidden mvsteries of the Divine will as things into which He has Himself looked. Hence the ring of absolute certainty about the revelation He gives of God. Hence the tone of atithority in which He announces the Divine will. Either He was the victim of the grossest self-delusion, or He stood in such a close relationship to God, and knew Himself, as the appointed Messiah, to be endowed with such authority as justified Him in speaking in a tone which in any other would be nothing short of blasphemy. There is nothing in- compatible v\-ith this tone of authority, which marks the teaching of Christ, in the fact that much of His teaching, as we have seen, is closely related to the OT. In a sense His teaching may be said to be based ujwn the OT, in so far, viz', as in the OT He foimd the food which nourished His spiritual life. But it is out of the fulness of the spiritual life thus nourished that He draws His doctrine, and
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not directly from the OT. He speaks that He knows, and testities that He has seen (Jn 3^^) ; and what of OT teaching is reproduced in His doctrine is so transmuted and ennobled, bears so unmistak- ably the impress of His own personality, that it may be htly called original. We may apply to His relation to the OT the words of the poet, and say that He
' made nobl.y his what he did mould ; What was another's lead, became his gold.'
Closely akin to this tone of authority which Christ assumes in His preaching is another feature which contributes to the originality of His person- ality, viz. the feeling that with Him a new era has arrived in the history of the world. ' The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand' (Mk 1^^) — that is the new message of which Christ is the bearer. The hope which animated the prophets has become a reality to Him. He told His disciples that they were blessed in that their eyes had seen the things Avhich many prophets and kings had desired to see (Lk 10-^'-). His whole preaching rings with glad tidings that the long expected time has come. The jieriod of waiting is past, the new era has begun. Already the Kingdom of God is in the midst of men (Lk 17^^). Even the tragic catas- trophe to which His life is tending cannot .shake His conviction that with Him the Messianic age has come. He longs for the baptism of suffering which He has to undergo, as calculated to give a mighty impetus to the movement He has begun (12''^^). And when the hour came for Him to lay down His life, so far from seeing in His death any frustration of the gracious work to which He had dedicated His life. He taught His disciples to look upon His blood as the seal of the New Covenant which it had been His life's work to establish.