(3) The Christ of History. — Concurrently with the foregoing movements has gone another, simpler indeed, and, since there are no truths which more readily gain assent or are more firmly retained than those of an historical order, more within the grasp of the popular mind, but also for that very reason more nearly touching the instincts of the popular faith — the historical and literary criticism of the Scriptures. It finds its sources and growth both within and without the ecclesiastical sphere. It is part of the general movement of science, the application of the methods of science, observation, hypothesis, and induction, to the facts of Hebrew and Christian history. It was not likely that the universal spirit of investigation and discovery should feel itself free to range over the whole field of secular history, and be restrained from operating in the departments of sacred. And so the Scrip- tures have been taken, as scholarship had already been taking the classical books of the ancient world, as a literature of many fragments and times, and of varying authority. Their commands and teaching and records, all alike have been judged according to the occasion and circumstances in which they were given forth. In other words, they have been interpreted, not absolutely, but relatively. The Bible, as to its text, structure, the authorship of its several parts, and its literary and didactic form, is read and understood like all other ancient literature. Then, too, from the theological fluctuations of the 18th and 19th centuries, special impulses entered. Religion, as Coleridge reminds us, consists of ideas and facts both ; the Christian religion blends together in- .separably the historical and tlie spiritual. The variations in religious and j)hilosophical theory in consequence closely affect the character of historical study, and in an instance sucli as that of the Christian history, where the historical substance is large, with effects of the gravest kind. Further, tlie emergence of the hypothe.sis of evolution in scientific circles in the middle of last century, and
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its rapid acceptance and application to all kinds of knowledge, created a temper of naturalism, which reacted on Biblical criticism and Christological doctrines. Especially in the forms of Positivism (Comte) and of Agnosticism (Huxley and Spencer), this temper rejects every form of theism which asserts the personality of the Divine Being and the beneficent character of His relation to the world of men and things ; and, professing itself ignorant of anything better, has lost all belief in any wisdom or love but that which springs from the brains and hearts of men. It is a theory which limits know- ledge to experience, and experience to the physical senses — the sensations produced in us by the ex- ternal world. It has its own view of history, and of Christian history, as a natural evolution. The new historical sense, combined with the new inter- pretation of Christianity, in terms of the facts of man's existence and human experience, incited to a re-reading of the Biblical records and a resetting of their material data, which has to an extraordi- nary degree stimulated the interest of the general mind, and most powerfully influenced the growth of a purely humanitarian conception of the Person of Christ. ' Historjr,' says Mommsen, ' has a nemesis for every sin.' For seventeen centuries the facts of Christ's life had been carelessly or impatiently treated : they were now to take em- phatic revenge.
The process begins with D. F. Strauss (1808-1874). Strauss runs his theory through the Gospels like a ploughshare through a field of daisies. His interest is of a purely negative character. He disintegrates the narratives and dissolves the facts in a series of writings, in which, with frankness and lucidity, he expounds what it has become common to call the point of view of modern science as to Christ's Person. His object throughout was polemical. It was to find a way out of supernaturalism. What- ever system furnished him with the means of attaining his object he eagerly embraced. In his first book he employs, on the basis of the well- known Hegelian distinction between the idea and the fact, the notional and the historical, his mythi- cal theory as a means of exit ; in his last, Darwin and natural science come to his aid.
It is by his ' mythical theory ' that Strauss is best known. 'Myth,' he says, Ms the creation of fact out of an idea.' The miraculous is a foreign element in the Gospel narratives of Christ which defies all historical treatment, and the conception of the myth is the means which we shall use in order to eliminate this element from our subject. The mythical principle is well expressed by de Wette : ' When any record relates inconceivable things in good faith, it is to be considered, not as historical, but as mythical.' Strauss lays it down as an absolute principle that miracles are impossible, so that every narrative which is in disaccordance with the laws of nature is pronounced to be mythical. The narratives connected with the birth of John the Baptist are poetical myths. That prophet having afterwards played a great part, and having been found in relation with Jesus, the Church judged it appropriate to glorify him in this way. The two genealogies of Jesus have nothing historical about them : they are the work of Judaizing Christians, who believed that the Messiah must necessarily descend from David. The history of the birth, baptism, and temptation of Jesus are myths designed to establish His supernatural origin. Jesus was a disciple of John the Baptist, whose work at the outset He undoubtedly vidshed only to continue ; but by degrees He came to believe Himself the Messiah, and hoped to found a political kingdom by supernatural means. Putting the moral laws above the Mosaic, He abolished the latter. He made missionary journeys. He did not perform miracles ; but could heal demoniacs, and on that account all sorts of marvellous facts have been attributed to Him. He did not foretell His death or resurrection. He did not institute the Lord's Supper. The disciples, convinced that the Messiah could not remain in the tomb, had visions and hallucinations which showed Him to them risen ap^ain. Life did not exist in Christ in a perfect manner ; He is not the ideal of humanity. The traditional faith is entirely without historical foundation.