876
CHRIST IN JEWISH LITERATURE
from the letter to the spirit, from the feeling of a slave to the love of a cliild, from self-seeking to brotlierly love, from the dominion of the visible to that of the invisible ; and His death showed that He was ready and determined to offer in order to procure these benefits, not His labour only but also His life (Neumann, Jesus, c. 19). Not Divine, He is none the less not to be denied worship. The interest of the situation here created is vast. It is not only the new facts and the finer appreciation of them, but the plane in which they stand and the wide range of it. Scientihc criticism has tapped a new source. Discussion of the philo- sophical implications involved in the wider range of facts discernible will lead thought to a n&w Idealism which, analyzing the ' transcendental ' element in man more clearly, will the better and the more convincingly interpret the Divine in Christ.
In close association with the larger view of history and science in influencing religious ideas is the great democratic movement of the modern world. Our sense of growth in knowledge has reacted upon our anticipations and hopes for the social state of men. It is only natural that the relation of Christ to the social problem should have come to occupy a foremost place, and that the traditional Christian ideas should be greatly affected by it. Almost every variety of socialist aspiration has made its appeal to Christ. It is remembered that He pronounced a special Beati- tude on the poor, called to Himself the weary and heavy laden, offered a personal friendship to the publican and sinner, commanded His followers to be helpers of men's material needs ; that He was Himself of the poor, and denounced in unmistak- able terms, if not the rich and capitalism, then their closest neighbour. Mammon. The situation in itself is of the deepest interest, but its Christological import is but slight. Christ's supernatural dignity is Ignored. He is looked upon as nothing more than man, and even then as nothing more than a 'Social Reformer,' the 'people's man,' 'Jesus the demagogue,' an unmysterious human leader of the poor, claimed now for this school and now for that, according to the partial and prejudiced predilec- tions of His sponsors. To the great majority the Christ of the Creeds is an object of complete indifference, if not of dislike, while the Christ of the Churches, of worship, and of believing experi- ence, is unknown or scorned. The transcendency of the Divine Life depicted in the Gospels finds no echo in their hearts.
It remains merely to remind ourselves that these three movements of Christological concep- tion are all needful. They are not to be sepa- rated or considered antagonistic. They are com- plementary, helping each other to the new and richer belief in Christ. That belief will exhibit the ideal content of Christ's Person as the sum of all experience and all existence, seeing Him in all Nature, in all the forms of Nature, in all human life, in the whole range of life's experience, as that in which they all alike find at once their living energy and their goal, the ground and the final end of the successively emerging and de- veloping phenomena that we behold as Nature, History, Experience. It will not be like the older faith, a strange hybrid, compounded part of philosophy, part of history, part of moral effort ; it will be the apprehension of a Person behind the facts and processes of all three, reached through the study of His working in them and the sense of kinship with and nearness to Him ; who thus known will not be found to be summed up in them but rather sums them up in Himself, whose His- tory no history has yet exhausted, whose Life not all the lives of men have outgrown.
Literature. — General : Indispensable books in German dealing with the whole subject for the whole period are Pfleiderer, Meligionsphilosophie auf geschichtl. Grundlage {Philosophy of Religion on the basis of its history, 4 vols., Williams & Norgate) ; Piinjer, Gesch. der ehristl. Religions- philosophie, 2 vols. (vol. i. tr., T. & T. Clark); Dorner, Ent- wickelungsgesch. der Lehre der Person Christi (tr., 5 vols., T. & T. Clark). The best writings in English relevant to the article are Principal Fairbairn's Christ in Modern Theology, Philosophy of the Christian Religion, Stitdies in the Life of Christ. On the specific characteristics of the modern spirit there are suggestive chapters in George Brandes' Main Cur- rents in XlXth cent. Literature, vol. i. ; Royce, Spirit of Modern Philosophy ; Merz, Hist, of European Thought in XlXth century ; ef. also Ziegler, Die geistigen und socialen Stromungen des Wten Jahrhunderts, Berlin ; and F]int'9 Hist, of the Philosophy of History, vol. i.
Special : On the idealistic movement ; for Kant, Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft (tr. by Sample) ; for Schelling, Die Methode des academ. Studiums, and Philos. Unt«rsuchungen (not translated) ; for Hegel, Philosophie der Religion (tr. by Speirs and Sanderson) ; for Lamennais, Essai stir r Indifference, and Esquisse d'une Philosophie ; for Cole- ridge, Aids to Reflection, Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit ; for F. D. Maurice, Kingdom of Christ, Essays ; for T. H. Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, Tivo Sennons, etc. ; for the Cairds, Ed. Calrd, Evolution of Theology, Critical Philosophy of Kant ; John Caird, Fundamental Ideas of Religion, Philosophy of Religion. For sketch of later developments in Germany see Frank, Gesch. und Kritik der neueren Theologie.