THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
under a dung-heap as well as under a pile of money." He asked himself on leaving, " Is it a praiseworthymatter that I have spent five golden months in providing fodder for cows and horses ?" In religion the typical transcendentalist might be a sublimated theist; he was always an idealist, and essentially a mystic. He believed in no spiritual authority except that of his own soul. He was humanitarian and optimistic. His faith had no backward look; its essence was aspiration, not contrition. He had a living and a glowing faith in the reality of spiritual insight. " All are able to detect the supernatural," wrote Orestes Brownson, " because all have the supernatural in themselves." The divine was everywhere. The '' Immanence of God " was not a doctrine; it became a reality.
"Tell me, brothers, what are we? Spirits bathing in a Sea Of Deity."
So wrote a lesser, but a fervid poet of the faith. It follows, therefore, that the transcendental believer was impressed with the glory of life, its privileges, its beauty. Very remarkable was his confidence in nature — in natural powers and capabilities, in the results of obedience to natural law, in spontaneity, impulse, unfolding, growth. His love of childhood, flowers, landscape, was proverbial. Emerson called transcendentalism " the Saturnalia, or excess of faith." But the faith was in human nature as a possible realization of the divine. It was a new and joyous birth of the spirit. No strictly " reasoned doctrine " it was rather a " spiritual ferment," a wave of mysticism, which found expression in social, intellectual, esthetic, and chiefly religious channels.
The movement, according to T. W Higginson, provided an " ardent, effusive social atmosphere. It was," he added, " a fresh, glowing, youthful, hopeful, courageous period, and those 6. Influ- who were its children must always reence of joice that they were born before it Transcen- faded away. To its immediate
dentalism. offspring it bequeathed a glow and a joy that have been of life-long permanence. The material achievements, the utilitarian philosophy of later years, may come or go, leaving their ideal, their confidence, their immortal hope unchanged. And now that much which transcendentalism sought is fulfilled, and that which was ecstasy has — as Emerson predicted — become daily bread, its reminiscences mingle with all youth's enchantment, and belong to a period when -we too ' toiled, feasted, despaired, were happy.' " Except for a few local and incidental extravagances, the influence of the movement was noble, inspiring, and beautiful, and the idealism which was the essence of it is the foundation of all spiritual belief. As one form of the great intuitive school of philosophy, it has, perhaps, seen its best days; but its elements will render vital other faiths, which will endure when it is forgotten. O. B. FROTHiNGHAMt. Rev. by P. R. Fhothingham.
Bibliography: O. B. Frothingham, Transcendentalism in New England, a History, New York, 1876; F. Tiffany, Transcendentalism: the New England Renaissance, in Unitarianism; its Origin and History, Boston, 1890, J. Cook,
Transcendentalism, ib. 1877; H. C. Goddard, Studies in New England Transcendentalism, New York, 1908.
TRANSFIGURATION, THE: The history of the transfiguration of the Savior (Mark ix. 2-10 and parallels) is under severe fire. Schmiedel's handling of it (EB, IV., 45-70) may be taken as representing a pronounced tendency in contemporary criticism. The study of the sources ends in the dissolution of literary unity. Thus Schmiedel treats the transfiguration as a part of the Petrine legend. Along with this process of literary dissolution goes the depreciation of the historical reality in the life of Christ which is seen dimly, through the dust raised by the study of the sources. The result reached is that no considerable reality adheres to the story of the transfiguration. " It can make no claim to historicity."
But this critical method, apparently objective and judicial, starts with a false bias. The Synoptic Gospels are taken apart by themselves, dissected, and reduced to separate sources. Then, to explain the assembling of the sources into a so-called " Life of Christ," the corporate messianic consciousness of the Apostolic Age is summoned into court. Strauss and the analytical literary critic join forces. The transfiguration becomes a personification and objectification of the genius of the messianic community. But, before the analysis of the sources begins, there is a fundamental fact that calls for explanation. It is, first, the existence of the messianic consciousness in question; second, it is the peculiar quality of that consciousness. Without raising the question of the supernatural, students of history may rightly insist that vast reality must be assigned to the person and work of Jesus in order to account for the corporate Christian messianism which is supposed to account for the " Life of Christ." The ultimate source of knowledge concerning Christ is the Christian consciousness which he created. That consciousness drew upon Jewish messianism for all its raw material. But an immense twofold revolution must have been carried through in order to make Christian consciousness possible. In the first place, it is the consciousness of a triumphant messianic community, a thing without real parallel in the history of Judaism. In the second place, Christian messianism was completely freed from the appeal to force which was inherent in all forms of Jewish messianism. Consequently, a sound historical method demands a prodigious spiritual and moral force and reality in the life of the founder.
One can not, therefore, enter on the study of the life of Christ with a predisposition to believe that Christian messianism accounts for the main elements in the portrait. The truth in such a position must be admitted. But, taken as a controlling principle, it invites history to stand on its head. The ordinary predisposition of the Christian is in the other direction. In approaching the account of the transfiguration, the normal Christian bias is the direct opposite of Schmiedel's. One is prepared to believe that the story may be substantially historic.
The threefold report at this point presents the same phenomena of agreement in the main joined