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{i}
               Meditations

{ii}

{iii}
            Meditations On

    The Essence Of Christianity,

                And On

   The Religious Questions Of The Day.


              By M. Guizot.



    Translated From The French, Under The
      Superintendence Of The Author.



                  London:

     John Murray, Albemarle Street.
                   1864.


{iv}

                London:

  Bradbury And Evans, Printers, Whitefriars.

{v}

                Contents.

                                            Page

I.    Natural Problems                          1

II.   Christian Dogmas                         11

III.  The Supernatural                         84

IV.   The Limits Of Science                   109

V.    Revelation                              132

VI.   The Inspiration Of Holy Scripture       142

VII.  God According To The Bible              157

VIII. Jesus Christ According To The Gospels   230

      Note                                    299

{vi}

{vii}

                Preface.


During the last nineteen centuries, Christianity has been often
assailed, and has successfully resisted every attack. Of these
attacks, some have been more violent, but none more serious than
that of which it is, in _these_ days, the object.

For eighteen hundred years Christians were in turn persecutors
and persecuted; Christians persecuted as Christians, Christians
persecutors of every one who was not Christian--Christians
mutually persecuting each other. This persecution varied, it is
true, in degree of cruelty with the age and the country, as it
also did in the degree of inflexibility evinced and success
attained in the prosecution of its object; but whatever the
diversity of state, church, or punishment, whatever the degree of
severity or laxity in the application of the principle, this
principle was ever the same.
{viii}
After having had to endure proscription and martyrdom under the
imperial government of Paganism, the Christian religion lived, in
its turn, under the guard of the civil law, defended by the arms
of secular power.

In these days it exists in the very presence of Liberty. It has
to deal with free thought,--with free discussion. It is called
upon to defend, to guard itself, to prove incessantly and against
every comer its moral and historical veracity, to vindicate its
claims upon man's intelligence and man's soul. Roman Catholics,
Protestants, or Jews, Christians or philosophers, all, at least
in our country, are sheltered from every persecution; for no one
without incurring the risk of ridicule could characterise as
persecution the sacrifices or the inconveniences to which the
expression of his opinion may occasionally subject him. To every
man such expression of opinion is permitted, and can never lead
to the forfeiture, on the part of any single individual, of any
of his political rights or privileges.
{ix}
Religious Liberty--that is to say, the liberty of believing; of
believing differently or of disbelieving--may be but imperfectly
accepted and guaranteed as a principle in certain states; but it
still is evident that it is becoming so every day more and more,
and that it will eventually become the Common Law of the
civilised world.

One of the circumstances that render this fact pregnant with
importance is that it does not stand isolated; but holds its
place in the great Intellectual and Social Revolution, which,
after the fermentation and the preparation of centuries, has
broken out and is in course of accomplishment in our own days.
The scientific spirit, the preponderance of the democratic
principle, and that of political liberty, are the essential
characteristics and invincible tendencies of this revolution.
These new forces may fall into enormous errors and commit
enormous faults, the penalty for which they will ever dearly pay;
still they are definitively installed in modern society; the
sciences will continue to develop themselves in its bosom in the
full independence of their methods and of their results; the
democracy will establish itself in the positions which it has
conquered, and on the ground which has been opened to it;
political liberty in the midst of its storms and its
disappointments will still, sooner or later, cause itself to be
accepted as the necessary guarantee for all the acquisitions and
all the progress possible in society.
{x}
These are the grand predominant facts to which all public
institutions will now have to adapt themselves, and with which
all authority whose action is upon the mind requires to live at
peace.

Christianity also must submit to the same tests and trials. As it
has surmounted all others, so also will it surmount this; its
essence and origin would not be divine did they not permit it to
adapt itself to all the different forms of human institutions, to
serve them now as a guide, now as a support in their vicissitudes
whether of adversity or prosperity.
{xi}
It is, however, of the most serious importance for Christians not
to deceive themselves, either as to the nature of the struggle
which they will have to sustain, or as to its perils and the
legitimate arms which they may use to combat them. The attack
directed against the Christian religion is one hotly carried on,
now with a brutal fanaticism, now with a dexterous learning; at
one time with the appeal to sincere convictions, and at another
invoking the worst passions; some contest Christianity as false,
others reject it as too exacting and imposing too much restraint;
the greater part apprehend it as a tyranny. Injustice and
suffering are not so soon forgotten; nor does one readily recover
from the effect of terror. The memory of religious persecutions
still lives, and this it is that maintains, in multitudes, whose
opinions vacillate, aversion, prejudice, and a lively sentiment
of alarm. Christians on their side are loth to recognise and
accommodate themselves to the new order of society; every moment
they are shocked, irritated, terrified by the ideas and language
to which that society gives utterance.
{xii}
Men do not so readily pass from a state of privilege to one of
community of rights--from a state of dominion to one of liberty;
they do not resign themselves without a struggle to the audacious
obstinacy of contradiction, to the daily necessity of resisting
and conquering. Government according to principles of liberty is
still more influenced by passion, and entails a necessity of
still more exertion in the sphere of religion than of civil
politics: believers find it still more difficult to support
incredulity than governments to bear with oppositions; and,
nevertheless, these themselves are forced to do so, and can only
find in free discussion and in the full exercise of their
peculiar liberties the force which they require to rise above
their perilous condition, and reduce--not to silence, for that
is impossible, but to an idle warfare--their inveterate enemies.

To leave that civil society, in which the different sects of
religion are now-a-days compelled to live in peace and side by
side, and to enter religious society itself, the Christian Church
of our days:--what is its actual position with respect to these
grand questions which it has to discuss with the spirit of human
liberty and audacity?
{xiii}
Does it comprehend properly, does it suitably carry on the
warfare in which it is engaged? Does it tend in its proceedings
to a re-establishment of a real peace, and active harmonious
relations between itself and that general society in the midst of
which it is living?

I say _Christian Church_. It is, in effect, the whole Church
of Christ, and not such or such a church that is in these days
attacked, and vitally attacked. When men deny the Supernatural
World, the Inspiration of the Scriptures, and the Divinity of
Jesus Christ, they really assail the whole body of
Christians--Romanists, Protestants or Greeks: they are virtually
destroying the foundations of faith in all the belief of
Christians, what ever their particular difference of religious
opinion or forms of ecclesiastical government..
{xiv}
It is by faith that all Christian Churches live; there is no form
of government, monarchical or republican, concentrated or
diffused, that suffices to maintain a church; there is no
authority so strong, no liberty so broad, as to be able in a
religious society to dispense with the necessity of faith. For
what is it that unites in a church if it is not faith? Faith is
the bond of souls. When then the foundations of their common
faith are attacked, the differences existing between Christian
Churches upon special questions, or the diversities of their
organization or government, become secondary interests; it is
from a common peril that they have to defend themselves; or they
must reconcile themselves to see dried up the common source from
which they all derive sustenance and life.

I fear that the sentiment of this common peril is not, in all the
Christian Churches, as clear and well defined, as deep and
predominant, as their common safety requires. In presence of
similar questions everywhere varied, of identical attacks
everywhere directed against the vital facts and dogmas of
Christianity, I dread Christians of the different communions not
concentrating all their forces upon the mighty struggles in which
they are, all, to engage.
{xv}
My dread, however, is unattended by astonishment. Although the
danger is the same for all, the traditional opinions and habits,
and consequently the actual dispositions, are very different.
Many Romanists feel the persuasion that Faith would be saved were
they only delivered from liberty of thought. Many Protestants
believe that they are but employing their right of free
examination, and do not lose their title to be regarded as
Christians, when they are in effect abandoning the foundations
and withdrawing from the source of Faith. Roman Catholicism has
not sufficient reliance on its roots, and respects too much its
branches; no tree exists that does not need culture and clearing
in accordance with climate and season, if it is to be expected to
continue to bear always good fruit; but the roots should be
especially defended from every attack. Protestantism is too
forgetful that it also has roots from which it cannot be
separated without perishing, and that religion is not what an
annual is in vegetation: a plant that men cultivate and renew at
their pleasure.
{xvi}
Whilst the Romanists dread freedom of thought too much, the
Protestants on their side have too great a fear of authority.
Some believe that inasmuch as religious Faith has firm and fixed
points, movement and progress are incompatible with religious
society; others affirm that a religious society can never have
fixed points, and that religion consists in religious sentiment
and individual belief. What would have become of Christianity,
had it from its birth been condemned to the immobility which the
former recommend; and what would become of it at the present day,
were it surrendered, as the latter would have it, to the caprice
of every mind, and the wind of every day?

Happily, God permits not that, at this crisis, the true
principles and the true interests of the Christian Religion
should remain without sufficient defenders.
{xvii}
Romanists there are who understand their age and the new
constitution of society, who accept frankly its liberty,
religious and politic: it is precisely they who have most boldly
testified their attachment to the faith of Rome, who have claimed
with most ardor the essential liberties of their church, and
defended with most energy the rights of its chief. Nor are
Protestants wanting who have used with the most untiring zeal all
the liberty acquired in our days by Protestantism; they have
founded all those associations and originated all those
undertakings which have manifested the vital energy and extended
the action of the Protestant Church; they have demanded and they
continue to demand, for this church, the reestablishment of its
Synods, that is to say, its religious autonomy. Amongst these
Protestants, where men have appeared who have not found in the
Protestant Church as by law established the entire satisfaction
of their convictions, they have felt no hesitation to separate
from it and to found, with their own means alone, independent
churches.
{xviii}
It may be affirmed also of the Protestants that they have most
largely put in practice all the rights and all the liberties of
Protestantism, in the internal ordeal through which Christianity
is at present passing; it is precisely they who assert most
loudly the dogmas of the Christian Faith and maintain most
inflexibly the authoritative rights established by law in the
bosom of their church. The Liberal Romanists of the present day
are the most zealous defenders of the fundamental traditions and
institutions of Catholicism. The Protestants who have been the
most active during the last half-century in the exercise of the
liberties of Protestantism are the firmest maintainers of its
doctrines and of its vital rules.

Humanly speaking, it is upon the influence exercised and to be
exercised in their respective churches and on the public, by
these two classes of Christians, that depends the peaceable issue
of the crisis through which Christianity is in these days
passing.
{xix}
Our society is, doubtless, far from meriting the title of a
Christian one; still it cannot be characterised as
anti-Christian; considered as one vast whole, it has no hostile
or general prejudice against the Christian religion: it maintains
the habits, the instincts, I would willingly add the longings, of
Christians; it is conscious that Christian Faith and Ordinance
serve powerfully its interests with respect to order and peace;
the fanatical opponents of Christianity exercise upon it far more
disquieting than seductive influences, for it has already had
experience of their empire; and where society appears to offer a
silent acquiescence or even to pride itself upon them, still at
bottom it dreads their progress.

Such being the state of the case, and such the constitution of
society, how are we to draw men away from their apathy and their
ignorance in matters of religion? How lead them back to
Christianity? They alone can accomplish this object, who, in
their defence and propagation of the religion of Jesus, shall not
wound society itself in the ideas, sentiments, rights and
interests which have at present rooted themselves in its very
life and energies.
{xx}
Like religion, modern society has also its fixed points and its
invincible tendencies: it can never be set on terms of harmony
with the former unless by the concurring action of men who have
with each of them a genuine and deep sentiment of sympathy. Since
the Christian Religion lives in these times confronting civil
liberty, those alone can be efficient champions of religion who
at the same time profess fully the Christian Faith and accept
with sincerity the tests of Liberty.

But in pursuing their pious and salutary enterprise, let not
these liberal Christians flatter themselves with the probability
of any prompt or complete success: maintain and propagate the
Christian faith they may, but they will never be able in the
bosom of society to get rid either of incredulity or doubt; even
while combating them they must learn to endure their presence; in
institutions of freedom there is essentially an intermixture of
good and evil, of truth and error; contrary ideas and
dispositions produce and develop themselves in it simultaneously.
{xxi}
"Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not,"
said Jesus to his apostles, "to send peace, but a sword."
[Footnote 1] The sword of Jesus Christ, that is, Christianity, at
war with human error and shortcomings; a victory, still a victory
ever incomplete in an incessant struggle,--_that_ is the
condition to which those must submit with resignation who, in the
bosom of liberty, defend the truth of Christianity.

    [Footnote 1: Matthew x. 34.]

Were these valiant and intelligent champions of the faith of
Jesus not adopted and accredited as such in the churches to which
they belong; did the Church of Rome furnish ground for thinking
her essentially hostile to the fundamental principles and rights
of modern society, and that she only tolerates them as Moses
tolerated divorce amongst the Jews, "because of the hardness of
their heart"; and, on the other hand, did the rejectors of the
Supernatural, of the Inspiration of the Scriptures, and of the
Divinity of Jesus Christ, predominate in the bosom of
Protestantism; and finally, did the latter then become nought but
a hesitating system of philosophy;
{xxii}
if all these deplorable things were to be realised, I am far from
thinking that, owing to such faults, such disasters, the religion
of Christ would vanish from the world and definitively withdraw
from men its light and its support: the destinies of religion are
far above human errors; but still, beyond all doubt, for mankind
to be turned back from them, and for the light to return to their
soul and harmony to modern society, there would have again to
burst out in the human soul and in society one of those immense
troubles, one of those revolutionary whirlwinds, whose evils man
is compelled actually to undergo before he can derive benefit
from its lessons.

On the point of addressing myself to questions more profound and
of a less transitory nature, I content myself with having merely
indicated what I think of the crisis that agitates Christendom at
the present day, as also of its main cause, its perils, and the
chances, good or bad, that it holds out for the future.
{xxiii}
In the work of which the first part is now before the public, I
omit all the circumstantial facts and details as well as the
discussions that grow out of them, and it is only with the
Christian Religion as it is in itself, with its fundamental
belief and its reasonableness, that I occupy myself; it has been
my purpose to illustrate the truth of Christianity by contrasting
it with the systems and the doubts that men set in array against
it. It is my intention to avoid all direct and personal polemics;
express reference to individuals embarrasses and envenoms all
questions in controversy, and gives rise to ill-judged deference
or unjust invective, two descriptions of falsity for which alike
I feel no sympathy: let me have then for adversaries ideas alone;
and whatever these may be, I admit beforehand the possibility of
sincerity on the part of those that prefer them. Without this
admission all serious discussion is out of the question; and
neither the intellectual enormity of the error, nor its awful
practical consequences, positively precludes sincerity on the
part of him that promulgates it.
{xxiv}
The mind of man is still more easily led astray than his heart,
and is still more egotistical; after having once conceived and
expressed an idea, it attaches itself to it as to its own
offspring, takes a pride in imprisoning itself in it, as if it
were so taking possession of the pure and entire truth.

These _Meditations_ will be divided into four series. In the
first, which forms this volume, I explain and establish what
constitutes, in my opinion, the essence of the Christian
religion; that is to say, what those natural problems are, that
correspond with the fundamental dogmas that offer their solution,
the supernatural facts upon which these same dogmas
repose--Creation, Revelation, the Inspiration of the Scriptures,
God according to the Biblical account, and Jesus according to the
Gospel narrative.
{xxv}
Next to the Essence of the Christian religion comes its history;
and this will be the subject of a second series of
_Meditations_, in which I shall examine the authenticity of
the Scriptures, the primary causes of the foundation of
Christianity, Christian Faith, as it has always existed
throughout its different ages and in spite of all its
vicissitudes; the great religious crisis in the sixteenth century
which divided the Church and Europe between Roman Catholicism and
Protestantism; finally those different anti-Christian crises,
which at different epochs and in different countries have set in
question and imperilled Christianity itself, but which dangers it
has ever surmounted. The third _Meditation_ will be
consecrated to the study of the actual state of the Christian
religion, its internal and external condition: I shall retrace
the regeneration of Christianity which occurred amongst us at the
commencement of the nineteenth century, both in the Church of
Rome and in the Protestant churches; the impulse imparted to it
at the same epoch by the Spiritualistic Philosophy that then
began again to flourish, and the movement in the contrary
direction which showed itself very remarkably soon afterwards in
the resurrection of Materialism, of Pantheism, of Scepticism, and
in works of historical criticism.
{xxvi}
I shall attempt to determine the idea, and consequently, in my
opinion, the fundamental error of these different systems, the
avowed and active enemies of Christianity. Finally, in the fourth
series of these _Meditations_ I shall endeavour to
discriminate and to characterise the future destiny of the
Christian religion, and to indicate by what course it is called
upon to conquer completely and to sway morally this little corner
of the universe termed by us our earth, in which unfold
themselves the designs and power of God, just as, doubtless, they
do in an infinity of worlds unknown to us.

I have passed thirty-five years of my life in struggling, on a
bustling arena, for the establishment of political liberty and
the maintenance of order as established by law. I have learnt, in
the labours and trials of this struggle, the real worth of
Christian Faith and of Christian Liberty.
{xxvii}
God permits me, in the repose of my retreat, to consecrate to
their cause what remains to me of life and of strength. It is the
most salutary favour and the greatest honour that I can receive
from His goodness.

      Guizot.
      Val-Richer, _June_, 1864.

{xxviii}

{1}

              Meditations

            On The Essence Of

         The Christian Religion.



            First Meditation.

            Natural Problems.


From the very origin of the human race, wherever man has existed,
or still exists, certain questions have peculiarly and
irresistibly fixed his attention, and they continue to do so at
the present hour.
{2}
This arises not alone from a feeling of natural curiosity, or the
ardent thirst for knowledge, but from a deeper and more powerful
motive: the destiny of man is intimately involved in these
questions; they contain the secret not only of all that he sees
around him, but of his own being; and when he aspires to solve
them, it is not merely because he desires to understand the
spectacle of which he is a beholder, but because he feels, and is
conscious of being himself an actor in the great drama of
existence, and because he seeks to ascertain his own part there,
and comprehend his own destiny. His present conduct and his
future lot are as much at issue as the satisfaction of his
thought. These great problems are, for man, not questions of
science, but questions of life: in considering them he feels
himself compelled to say, with Hamlet, "To be or not to be, that
is the question."

Whence does the world proceed, and whence does man appear in the
midst of it? What is the origin of each, and whither does each
tend? What are their beginning and their end? Laws there are
which govern them;--is there a legislator?
{3}
Under the empire of these laws, man feels and calls himself free:
is he so in reality? How is his liberty compatible with the laws
which govern him and the world? Is he a passive instrument of
fate, or a responsible agent? What are the ties and relations
which connect him with the Legislator of the world?

The world and man himself present a strange and painful
spectacle. Good and evil, both moral and physical, order and
disorder, joy and sorrow, are here intimately blended and yet in
continual antagonism. Whence come this commingling and this
strife? Is good or is evil the condition and the law of man and
of the world? If good, how then has evil found admission?
Wherefore suffering and death? Why this moral disorder?--the
calamities which so frequently befall the good, and the
prosperity, so abhorrent to our feelings, which attends the
wicked? Is this the normal and definitive state of man and of the
world?

{4}

Man is conscious that he is at the same time great and little,
strong and feeble, powerful and impotent. He finds in himself
matter for admiration and for love, and yet he suffices not to
himself in any respect; he seeks an aid, a support, beyond and
above himself: he asks, he invokes, he prays. What mean these
inward disquietudes,--these alternate impulses of pride and
weakness? Have they, or not, a meaning and an object? Why prayer?

Such are the natural problems, now dimly felt, now clearly
defined, which in all ages and among all nations, in every form
and in every degree of civilization, by instinct or by reflexion,
have arisen, and still arise, in the human mind. I indicate only
the greatest, the most apparent: I might recall many others which
are connected with them.

Not only are these problems natural to man; they appertain to him
alone; they are his peculiar privilege. Man alone, among all
creatures known to us, perceives and states them, and feels
himself imperiously called upon to solve them.
{5}
I borrow the following admirable observations from M. de
Châteaubriand:--"Why does not the ox as I do? It can lie down
upon the grass, raise its head toward heaven, and in its lowings
call upon that unknown Being who fills this immensity of space.
But no: content with the turf on which it tramples, it
interrogates not those suns in the firmament above, which are the
grand evidence of the existence of God. Animals are not troubled
with those hopes which fill the heart of man; the spot on which
they tread yields them all the happiness of which they are
susceptible; a little grass satisfies the sheep; a little blood
gluts the tiger. The only creature that looks beyond himself, and
is not all in all to himself, is man." [Footnote 2]

    [Footnote 2: Genie du Christianisme, vol. i. p. 208, edit, of
    1831.]

From these problems, natural and peculiar to man, all religions
have sprung. The object of them all is to satisfy man's thirst
for their solution. As these problems are the source of religion,
the solutions they receive are its substance and foundation.
{6}
There prevails in our days a very general tendency to regard
religion as consisting essentially--I might say wholly--in
religious sentiment, in those lofty and vague aspirations which
are termed the poetry of the soul, beyond and above the realities
of life. Through the religious sentiment, the soul enters into
relation with the Divine order of things; and this relation, of a
wholly personal and intimate character, independent of all
positive dogma, of any organized Church, is deemed to be
all-sufficient for man, the true and needful religion.

Unquestionably the religious sentiment, the intimate and personal
relation of the soul with the Divine order, is essential and
necessary to religion; but religion is more than this--much more.
The human soul is not to be divided and restricted to certain
faculties selected and exalted, whilst the rest are condemned to
slumber. Man is not a mere sensitive and poetic being, aspiring
to rise above the present and material world by love and
imagination: he not only feels, but he thinks; he requires to
know and believe as well as love; it is not enough that his soul
should be capable of emotion and aspiration; he requires that it
should be fixed, and rest upon convictions in harmony with his
emotions.
{7}
This it is that man seeks in religion; he requires something more
than a pure and noble rapture; he requires enlightenment, as well
as sympathy. But if the moral problems that beset his thought are
not solved, what he experiences may be poetry,--it is not
religion.

I cannot contemplate unmoved the troubles of men of lofty minds,
seeking in the religious sentiment alone a refuge against doubt
and impiety. It is well to preserve, in the shipwreck of faith
and the chaos of thought, the great instincts of our nature, and
not to lose sight of the sublime requirements which remain
unsatisfied. I know not to what extent, men of eminent minds may
thus compensate, by their sincerity and fervour of sentiment, for
the void in their belief; but let them not deceive themselves;
barren aspirations and specious doubts satisfy a man as little as
to his future spiritual interests as with respect to his
condition in the present life; the natural problems to which I
have alluded will ever be the great weight pressing upon the
soul, and religious sentiment will never alone suffice to be the
religion of mankind.

{8}

Besides this apotheosis of religious sentiment, some at the
present day have essayed a different, a more serious and more
daring theory. Far from sounding the natural problems to which
religions correspond, schools of philosophy, occupying a
prominent intellectual position,--the Pantheistic School, and the
so-called Positive School,--suppress and deny them altogether. In
their view, the world has existed, of itself, from all eternity,
as have the laws also by which it is sustained and developed. In
their elementary principles, and taken altogether, all things
have ever been what they now are, and what they will ever
continue to be. There is no mystery in this universe; there exist
only facts and laws, naturally and necessarily linked together;
and these furnish the field for human science, which, although
incomplete, is yet indefinitely progressive, in its power as well
as in its operations.

{9}

According to these views, Divine Providence and human liberty,
the origin of evil, the commingling and the strife of good and
evil in the world, and in man, the imperfection of the present
order of things, and the destiny of man, the prospect of the
re-establishment of order in the future--these are all mere
dreams, freaks of man's thought: no such questions indeed exist,
inasmuch as the world is eternal, it is in its actual state
complete, normal, and definitive, though at the same time
progressive. The remedy for the moral and physical evils which
afflict mankind, must then be sought, not in any power superior
to the world, but simply in the progress of the sciences and the
advance of human enlightenment.

{10}

I shall not here discuss this system; I do not even qualify it by
its true name; I merely recapitulate its tenets. But, at the
first and simple aspect, what contempt does it manifest of the
spontaneous and universal instincts of man! What heedlessness of
the facts which fill and never cease to characterize the
universal history of the human race!

Nevertheless to this we are come: not a solution, but the
negation of the natural problems, which irresistibly occupy the
human soul, is presented to man for his full satisfaction and
repose. Let him follow the mathematical or physical sciences; let
him be a mechanician, chemist, critic, novelist, or poet; but let
him not enter upon what is termed the sphere of religious and
theological inquiry: here are no real questions to solve, nought
to investigate, nothing to do,--nothing to expect,--absolutely
nothing.

{11}

          Second Meditation.

          Christian Dogmas.


The Christian religion knows man better, and treats man better:
it has other answers to his questions; and it is between the
absolute negation of the problems of religion and the Christian
solution of these problems that the discussion lies at the
present day.

Some words there are which we now regard with distrust and alarm:
we suspect their masking illegitimate pretensions and tyranny.
Such, in our days, has been the lot of the word _dogma_. To
many this word imparts an imperious necessity to believe, at once
offending and disquieting. Singular contrast! On all sides we
seek for principles, and we take alarm at dogmas.

{12}

This sentiment, however absurd in itself, is in no way strange;
Christian dogmas have served as motive and pretext for so much
iniquity, so many acts of oppression and cruelty, that their very
name has become tainted and suspected. The word bears the penalty
of the reminiscences which it awakens: and justly. All attacks
upon the liberty of conscience, all employment of force to
extirpate or to impose religious belief, is, and ever has been,
an iniquitous and tyrannical act. All powers, all parties, all
churches, have held such acts to be not only permissible, but
enjoined by the Divine Law: all have deemed it not merely their
right, but their duty, to prevent and to punish by law and human
force, error in matters of religion. They may all allege in
excuse, the sincerity of their belief in the legitimacy of this
usurpation. The usurpation is not the less enormous and fatal,
and perhaps indeed it is, of all human usurpations, the one which
has inflicted on men the most odious torments and the grossest
errors.
{13}
It will constitute the glory of our time to have discarded this
pretension: nevertheless it yet exists, with persistency, in
certain states, in certain laws, in certain recesses of the human
soul and of Christian society; and there is, and ever will be,
need to watch and to combat it, to render its banishment
unconditional and without appeal. Subdued, however, it is: civil
freedom in matters of faith and religious life has become a
fundamental principle of civilization and of law. These
questions, affecting the relations of man to God, are no longer
discussed or adjusted in the arena and by a recourse to the hand
of political and executive power; but they are transported to the
sphere of the intellect and left to the uncontrolled working of
the mind itself.

But again, in this sphere of the intellect, these questions still
start up and call loudly for their peculiar solution--that is,
for the fundamental facts and ideas, the principles in effect
which their nature requires. The Christian religion has its own
principles, which constitute the rational basis of the faith it
inculcates and the life which it enjoins. These are termed its
dogmas.
{14}
The
Christian dogmas are the principles of the Christian religion,
and the Christian solutions of the problems of natural religion.

Let men of a serious mind, who have not entirely rejected the
Christian religion, and who still admire it, whilst denying its
fundamental dogmas, beware of this: the flowers whose perfume
captivates them will quickly fade, the fruits they delight in
will soon cease to grow when the axe shall have been applied to
the roots of the tree that bears them.

For myself, arrived at the term of a long life, one of labour, of
reflection, and of trials,--of trials in thought as well as in
action,--I am convinced that, the Christian dogmas are the
legitimate and satisfactory solutions of those religious problems
which, as I have said, nature suggests and man carries in his own
breast, and from which he cannot escape.

{15}

I beg, at the outset, Theologians, whether Catholic or
Protestant, to pardon me. I have no design to cite or to explain,
or to maintain, all the various doctrinal points, all the
articles of faith, which have been included in the term of
Christian dogmas. During eighteen centuries, Christian theology
has very often ventured to advance out of and beyond the limits
of the Christian religion: man has confounded his own labours
with the work of God. It is the natural consequence of the union
of human activity and human imperfection. This same result may be
traced throughout the history of the world, especially in the
history of the society and religion upon which God has grafted
the Christian religion.

At the time when God raised up Jesus Christ among the Jews, the
faith and the law of the Jews were no longer solely and purely
the faith and law which God had given to them by Moses: the
Pharisees, the Sadducees, and many others, had essentially
modified, enlarged, and altered both. Christianity too has had
its Pharisees and its Sadducees; in its turn it has been made to
feel the workings of human thought and the influence of human
passions on its Divine revelation.
{16}
I cannot recognize, in all the uncertain fruits of these labours,
the claim to the title of Christian dogmas. Nevertheless I have
no intention here to specify particularly and to combat such
tenets in the Church and in Christian theology, as I can neither
accept nor defend. It is not for me--and I venture to say, it is
not for any Christian--to scan critically the interior of the
Edifice, at a moment when its foundations are ardently attacked.
Far rather I prefer to rally in a common defence all who abide
within its walls. I shall here allude only to the dogmas common
to them all, which I sum up in these terms:--The Creation,
Providence, Original Sin, the Incarnation, and the Redemption.
These constitute the essence of the Christian religion, and all
who believe in these dogmas I hold to be Christians.

One leading and common characteristic in these dogmas strikes me
at the outset: they deal frankly with the religious problems
natural to and inherent in man, and offer at once the solution.
{17}
The dogma of Creation attests the existence of God, as Creator
and Legislator, and it attests also the link which unites man
with God. The dogma of Providence explains and justifies prayer,
that instinctive recourse of man to the living God, to that
supreme Power which is ever present with him in life, and which
influences his destiny. The dogma of Original Sin accounts for
the presence of evil and disorder in mankind and in the world.
The dogmas of the Incarnation and of Redemption, rescue man from
the consequences of evil, and open to him a prospect in another
life of the re-establishment of order. Unquestionably, the system
is grand, complete, well connected, and forcible: it answers to
the requirements of the human soul, removes the burden which
oppresses it, imparts the strength which it needs, and the
satisfaction to which it aspires. Has it a rightful claim to all
this power? Is its influence legitimate, as well as efficacious?

{18}

In my own mind I have borne the burthen of the objections to the
Christian system, and to each of its essential dogmas; I have
experienced the anxieties of doubt: I shall state how I have
escaped from doubt, and the ground upon which my convictions have
been founded.



            I. Creation.

The only serious opponents of the dogma of the Creation are those
who maintain that the universe, the earth, the man upon the
earth, have existed from all eternity, and, collectively, in the
state in which they now are. No one however can hold this
language, to which facts are invincibly opposed. How many ages
man has existed on the earth, is a question that has been largely
discussed, and is still under discussion. The inquiry in no way
affects the dogma of the Creation itself: it is a certain and
recognized fact, that man has not always existed on the earth,
and that the earth has for long periods undergone different
changes incompatible with man's existence. Man therefore had a
beginning: man has come upon the earth. How has he come there?

{19}

Here the opponents of the dogma of Creation are divided: some
uphold the theory of spontaneous generation; others, the
transformation of species. According to one party, matter
possesses, under certain circumstances and by the simple
development of its own proper power, the faculty of creating
animated beings. According to others, the different species of
animated beings which still exist, or have existed at various
epochs and in the different conditions of the earth, are derived
from a small number of primitive types, which have possessed,
through the lapse of millions and thousands of millions of ages,
the power of developing and perfecting themselves, so as to gain
admission, through transformation, into higher species. Hence
they conclude, with more or less hesitation, that the human race
is the result of a transformation, or a series of
transformations.

{20}

The attempt to establish the theory of spontaneous production
dates from a remote period. Science has ever baffled it: the more
its observations have been exact and profound, the more have they
refuted the hypothesis of the innate creative power of matter.
This result has been again recently established by the attentive
examination of men of eminent scientific attainments, within and
without the walls of the Academy of Sciences. But were it even
otherwise,--could the advocates of the theory of spontaneous
production refer to experiments hitherto irrefutable, these would
furnish no better explanation of the first appearance of man upon
earth, and I should retain my right to repeat here what I have
advanced elsewhere on this subject:[Footnote 3]--

    [Footnote 3: L'Eglise et la Société Chrétienne en 1861,
    p. 27.]

{21}

"Such a mode of generation cannot, nor ever could, produce any
but infant beings, in the first hour and in the first state of
incipient life. It has, I believe, never been asserted, nor will
any person ever affirm, that, by spontaneous generation, man--
that is to say, man and woman, the human couple--can have issued,
or that they have issued at any period, from matter, of full form
and stature, in possession of all their powers and faculties, as
Greek paganism represented Minerva issuing from the brain of
Jupiter. Yet it is only upon this supposition, that man,
appearing for the first time upon earth, could have lived there
to perpetuate his species and to found the human race. Let any
one picture to himself the first man, born in a state of the
earliest infancy, alive but inert, devoid of intelligence,
powerless, incapable of satisfying his own wants even for a
moment, trembling, sobbing, with no mother to listen to or feed
him! And yet we have in this a picture of the first man, as
presented by the system of spontaneous generation. It is
manifestly not thus that the human race first appeared upon
earth."

The system of the transformation of species is no less refuted by
science than by the instincts of common sense. It rests upon no
tangible fact, on no principle of scientific observation or
historic tradition.
{22}
All the facts ascertained, all the monuments collected in
different ages and different places, respecting the existence of
living species, disprove the hypothesis of their having undergone
any transformation, any notable and permanent change: we meet
with them a thousand, two thousand, three thousand years ago, the
same as they are at the present day. In the same species the
races may vary and undergo mutual changes: the species do not
change; and all attempts to transform them artificially, by
crossings with allied species, have only resulted in
modifications, which, after two or three generations, have been
struck with barrenness, as if to attest the impotence of man to
effect, by the progressive transformation of existing species, a
creation of new species. Man is not an ape transformed and
perfected by some dim imperceptible fermentation of the elements
of nature and by the operation of ages: this assumed explanation
of the origin of the human species is a mere vague hypothesis,
the fruit of an imagination ill comprehending the spectacle that
nature presents, and therefore easily seduced to form ingenious
conjectures: these their authors sow in the stream of events
unknown and of time infinite, and trust to them for the
realization of their dreams.
{23}
The principle of the fundamental diversity and the permanence of
species--firmly upheld by M. Cuvier, M. Flourens, M. Coste, M.
Quatrefages, and by all exact observers of facts--remains
dominant in science as in reality. [Footnote 4]

    [Footnote 4: Cuvier--Discours sur les Révolutions du Globe,
    pp. 117, 120, 124 (edit. 1825); Flourens--Ontologie
    Naturelle, pp. 10-87 (1861); Journal des Savants (October,
    November, and December, 1863); three articles on the work of
    Ch. Darwin, On the Origin of Species and the Laws of Progress
    among Organised Beings; Coste--Histoire Générale et
    Particulière du Développement des Corps Organisés; Discours
    Préliminaire, vol. i. p. 23; Quatrefages--Metamorphoses de
    l'Homme et des Animaux, p. 225 (1862); and his articles On
    the Unity of the Human Species, published in the "Revue des
    Deux Mondes," in 1860 and 1861, and collected in one volume
    (1861).]

{24}

Besides these vain attempts to supersede God the Creator, and to
explain by the inherent and progressive power of matter, the
origin of man and of the world, the Christian dogma of Creation
has yet other adversaries. One party, to combat it, seizes its
arms from the Bible itself, alleging the account there given of
the successive facts of the creation, of which the world and man
were the result; they cite and enumerate the difficulties of
reconciling this account with the observations and the
conclusions of science. I shall weigh the force of this class of
objections in treating of the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures,
of their real object and true meaning; but I at once raise the
dogma of Creation above this attack,--placing it at its proper
height and isolation: it is the general fact, it is the very
principle of creation which constitutes the dogma; what ever may
be the obscurities or the scientific difficulties presented by
the biblical narrative, the principle and the general fact of the
Creation remain unaffected: God the Creator does not the less
remain in possession of His work. The Christian religion, in its
essence, asserts and demands nothing more.

{25}

But lastly, the Christian dogma of Creation is met by the general
objection raised against all the facts and all the acts which are
termed supernatural: that is to say, against the existence of God
as well as the dogma of Creation, against all religions in common
with Christianity. Such a question requires to be considered, not
with reference to any particular dogma, or with a view to defend
one side only of the edifice of Christianity. This point, then, I
shall presently examine frankly and in all its bearings.


            II. Providence.

God the Creator is also God the Preserver. He lives, and is at
the same time the source of life. The union between Him and his
creature does not cease when the creature is brought into
existence. The dogma of Providence is consequent upon that of
Creation.

{26}

Prayer is more than the mere outburst of the desires or sorrows
of the soul, seeking that satisfaction, strength, or consolation
which it does not find within itself; it is the expression of a
faith, instinctive or reflective, obscure or clear, wavering or
steadfast, in the existence, the presence, the power, and the
sympathy of the Being to whom prayer is addressed. Without a
certain measure of faith and trust in God, prayer would not burst
forth, or would suddenly be dried up in the soul. If faith
everywhere resists, and everywhere outlives all the denials, all
the doubts, and all the darkness which oppress mankind, it is
that man bears within himself an imperishable consciousness of
the enduring bond which connects him with God, and God with him.

Far from destroying this sentiment, experience and the spectacle
of life explain and confirm it. In reflecting on his destiny, man
recognises in it three different sources, and divides, so to say,
into three classes the facts which make up the whole. He is
conscious of being subject to events which are the consequence of
laws, general, permanent, and independent of his will, but which
by his intelligence he observes and comprehends.
{27}
By the act of his free will he also himself creates events, of
which he knows himself to be author, and these have their own
consequences and enter too into the tissue of his life. Lastly,
he passes through events, in his view, neither the result of
those general laws from which nothing can withdraw him, nor the
act of his own liberty,--events of which he perceives neither the
cause, the reason, nor the author.

Man attributes this last class of events sometimes to a blind
cause, which he terms chance; at another, to an intelligent and
supreme intention which is in God. His mind at times revolts at
the inanity of this word _chance_, which explains and
defines nothing; and he then pictures to himself a mysterious,
impenetrable power, a merely necessary chain of unknown facts, to
which he gives the name of fatality, destiny. To account for this
obscure and accidental part of human life, which originates
neither from any general and conceivable laws, nor from the free
will of man himself, we must choose between fatality and
Providence, chance and God.

{28}

I express my meaning without hesitation. Who ever accepts as a
satisfactory explanation the theory of fatality and chance, does
not truly believe in God. Whoever believes truly in God, relies
upon Providence. God is not an expedient, invented to explain the
first link in the chain of causation, an actor called to open by
creation the drama of the world, then to relapse into a state of
inert uselessness. By the very fact of his existence, God is
present with his work, and sustains it. Providence is the natural
and necessary development of God's existence; his constant
presence and permanent action in creation. The universal and
insuperable instinct which leads man to prayer, is in harmony
with this great fact; he who believes in God cannot but have
recourse to Him and pray to Him.

{29}

Objections are raised to the name itself of God. He acts, it is
said, only by general and permanent laws: how can we implore His
interference in favour of our special and exceptional desires? He
is immutable, ever perfect, and ever the same: how is it
conceivable that He lends Himself to the fickleness of human
sentiments and wishes? The prayer which ascends to Him is
forgetful of his real nature. Men have treated the attributes of
God as furnishing an objection to his Providence.

This objection, so often repeated, never fails to astonish me.
The majority of those who urge it, assert at the same time that
God is incomprehensible, and that we cannot penetrate the secret
of his nature. What then is this but to pretend to comprehend
God? and by what right do they oppose his nature to his
providence, if his nature is, to us, an impenetrable mystery? I
refrain from reproaching them for their ambition; ambition is the
privilege and the glory of man; but in retaining it, let them not
overlook its legitimate limits. There is only this alternative:
either man must cease to believe in God, because he cannot
comprehend Him, or in effect admit his incomprehensibility, and
still at the same time believe in Him.
{30}
He cannot pass and repass incessantly from one system to the
other, now declaring God to be incomprehensible; now speaking of
Him, of his nature and his attributes, as if He were within the
province of human science. Great as is the question of
Providence, the one I have here to consider is still greater, for
it is the question of the very existence of God; and the
fundamental inquiry is to know whether He exists, or does not
exist. God is at once light and mystery: in intimate relation
with man, and yet beyond the limits of his knowledge. I shall
presently endeavour to mark the limit at which human knowledge
stops, and indicate its proper sphere; but this I at once assume
as certain: whoever, believing in God and speaking of Him as
incomprehensible, yet persists in endeavouring to define Him
scientifically, and seeks to penetrate the mystery, which he has
yet admitted, is in great risk of destroying his own belief, and
of setting God aside, which is one way of denying Him.

{31}

But I leave for a moment these two simultaneous propositions,
namely, the impossibility of comprehending God, and the necessity
of believing in Him; and I proceed at once to that objection to
the special providence of God which is drawn from the general
character of the laws of nature. This objection results from
confounding very different things, and overlooking a fundamental
one,--the fact characteristic indeed of human nature. It is true
that the providence of God presides over the order of the world
which He governs by general and permanent laws: these laws would
be more accurately designated by another name; they are the Will
of God, continually acting upon the world, for not only the laws
but the Lawgiver are there ever present. But when God created
man, He created him different from the physical world; free, and
a moral agent; and hence there is a fundamental difference
between the action of God on the physical world, and his action
on man.
{32}
I shall subsequently state my opinion as to the full meaning of
the expression, "Man is a free being," and as to the nature of
the consequences to which it leads; for the present, I assume, as
a certain and incontestable fact, this principle of human
liberty,--of the free determination of man considered as a moral
agent. Admitting this, it cannot be said that God governs mankind
at large by general and permanent laws; for what would this be
but to ignore or annul the liberty granted to man, that is to
say, to misconceive and mutilate the Work of God himself. Man
exercises a free determination, and in his own life actually
gives birth to events which are not the result of any general and
external laws. Divine Providence watches the operations of man's
volition, and records the manner in which it has been exercised.
It does not treat man as it deals with the stars in heaven and
the waves of the ocean, which have neither thought nor will; with
man it has other relations than with nature, and employs a
different mode of action.

{33}

There is little wisdom in instituting comparisons between objects
or facts not essentially analogous; and the idea of God has been
so often disfigured by representing Him in the image of man, that
I mistrust the efficacy of any analogies borrowed from humanity
to convey a conception of God. I cannot, however, overlook the
fact, that God has created man in his own image, nor can I
absolutely refrain from seeking, in nature or the life of man,
some type to shadow forth the features of God. Let us consider
the human family: the father and mother assist in directing the
active development of the child; they watch over it with
authority and tenderness; they control its liberty without
annulling it, and they listen to its little prayers--now granting
them, now refusing them, as their reason dictates, and with a
view to the child's main and future interests.
{34}
The child, without thought or design, by the spontaneous instinct
of its nature, recognizes the authority and feels the tenderness
of its parents; as it advances in age, it sometimes obeys and
sometimes resists their injunctions, using or misusing its
natural liberty; but in all the fickleness of its will, it asks,
it entreats, full of confidence--joyous and thankful when it
obtains from its parents what it desires; yet, when denied, still
ready again to ask and to entreat with the same confidence as
before.

This is what takes place in the government of the human family
when ruled according to the dictates of nature and right. An
image we have here, imperfect but still true--a shadowing-forth,
faint yet faithful--of Divine Providence. Thus it is that the
Christian religion qualifies and describes the action of God in
the life of man. It exhibits God as ever present and accessible
to man, as a father to his child; it exhorts, encourages, invites
man to implore, to confide in, to pray to God. It reserves
absolutely the answer of God to that prayer; He will grant, or He
will refuse: we cannot penetrate his motives--"The ways of God
are not our ways."
{35}
Nevertheless, to prayer, ceaseless and ever renewed, the
Christian dogma associates the firm hope that "nothing is
impossible with God." This dogma is thus in full and intimate
harmony with the nature of man; whilst recognizing his liberty,
it does homage to his dignity; in tendering to him the resource
of an appeal to God it provides for his weakness. In science, it
suppresses not the mystery which cannot be suppressed; but, in
man's life, it solves the natural problem which weighs upon the
soul.




           III. Original Sin.

The dogmas of Creation and Providence bring us into the presence
of God; it is the action of God upon the world and man that they
proclaim and affirm. The dogma of Original Sin brings us back to
man; it is the act of man towards God, which stands at the very
beginning of the history of mankind.

{36}

In what does this dogma consist? What are the elements and the
essential facts which constitute it, and upon which it is
founded?

The dogma of Original Sin implies and affirms these propositions:

1. That God, in creating man, has created him an agent, moral,
free, and fallible;

2. That the will of God is the moral law of man, and obedience to
the will of God is the duty of man, inasmuch as he is a moral and
free agent;

3. That, by an act of his own free will, man has knowingly failed
in his duty, by disobeying the law of God;

4. That the free man is a responsible being, and that
disobedience to the law of God has justly entailed on him
punishment;

5. That that responsibility and that punishment are hereditary,
and that the fault of the first man has weighed and does weigh
upon the human race.

{37}

The authority of God, the duty of obedience to the law of God,
the liberty and responsibility of man, the heritage of human
responsibility are, in their moral chronology, the principles and
the facts comprised in the dogma of Original Sin.

I turn away my attention for a moment from the dogma itself, its
source, its history, the Biblical and Christian tradition of this
first step in evil of the human race. And considering man, his
nature, and his destiny in their actual and general state, I
investigate and verify the moral facts as they manifest
themselves at the present day, to the eyes of good sense, amidst
the disputes of the learned.

Man, at his birth, is subjected to the moral authority, as well
as the physical power of the parents who, humanly speaking,
created him. Obedience is to him a duty, and at the same time a
necessity. This physical necessity and this moral obligation,
however ultimately connected with each other, are not one and
identical; and the child, in its spontaneous development,
instinctively feels the moral obligation long before it is
conscious of the physical necessity.
{38}
The instinctive feeling of the obligation is united with the
growing sentiment of affection; and the child obeys the look, the
voice of its mother, unconscious of its absolute dependence upon
her. As the sentiment of affection and the instinct of obligatory
obedience are the first dawn of moral good in the development of
the child, so the impulse to disobedience is the first symptom,
the first appearance of moral evil. It is with the voluntary
disobedience of the child to the will of its mother that the
moral infraction commences, and it is in disobedience that it
resides. It considers neither the motives nor the consequences of
its act; it is simply conscious that it disobeys, and regards its
mother with a mingled feeling of restlessness and defiance; it
tries, with hesitation, the maternal authority; it strives to be,
and especially to appear, independent of the natural and
legitimate power which rules it, and which it recognises at the
very moment when it opposes its own will to that higher law.

{39}

As the child, so is the man. As man is born free, so he lives
free; and as he is born subject, so he lives subject. Liberty
co-exists with authority and resists without annulling it.
Authority exists before liberty, and as it does not yield to it,
so neither does it supersede it. Man, inasmuch as he knows that
he disobeys, renders homage to authority by the very fact of his
disobedience. Authority, on its side, recognizes the liberty of
man, by the condemnation which it passes on him for having
misused it; for he would not be responsible for his acts were he
not free. In the co-existence of these two powers, authority and
liberty, at one time in accordance, at another in conflict, lies
the great secret of nature and of human destiny, the fundamental
principle of man and of the world.

Let it be clearly understood that I speak here of the moral
world, of the world of thought and of will. In the physical world
there is neither authority nor liberty; there are merely certain
forces, forces acting inevitably and unequally.
{40}
If the question concerned the material world, could I do better
than repeat what Pascal has admirably said: "Man is but a
reed--the weakest in nature--but he is a reed which thinks; the
universe need not rise in arms to crush him; a vapour, a drop of
water suffices to kill him. But were the universe to crush him,
man would still be nobler than the power which killed him, for he
knows that he dies; and of the advantage which the universe has
over him, the universe knows nothing." When man obeys or
disobeys, he knows just as well that authority confronts him, as
that liberty of action abides with himself. He knows what he
does, and he charges himself with the responsibility. Moral order
is here complete.

Throughout all times and in all places, in all men, as in the
first man, disobedience to legitimate authority is the principle
and foundation of moral evil, or, to call it by its religious
name, of sin.

{41}

Disobedience has various and complicated sources; it may spring
from a thirst for independence, from ambition or presumptuous
curiosity, or from giving rein to human inclinations and
temptations; but, whatever its origin, disobedience is ever the
essential characteristic of that free act which constitutes sin,
as it is also the source of the responsibility which accompanies
it.

Eminent men, eminently pious men, have combated the doctrine of
human liberty; unable to reconcile it with what they term the
divine prescience, they have denied the fundamental fact of the
nature of man, rather than fully acknowledge the mystery of the
nature of God. Others, equally eminent and sincere, have limited
themselves to raising doubts regarding human liberty, and denying
it the value of an absolute and peremptory fact. In my opinion,
they have confounded facts essentially different, although
intimately blended; they have ignored the special and simple
character of the very fact of free will. During a course of
lectures which I delivered thirty-five years ago at the Sorbonne,
on the history of civilization in France, having occasion to
examine the controversy of St. Augustine with Pelagius on free
will, predestination, and grace, I explained these subjects in
terms which I repeat here, finding no others which appear to me
more exact and more complete:--

{42}

  "The fact which lies at the foundation of the whole dispute," I
  said in 1829, "is liberty, free will, the human will. To
  comprehend this fact exactly, we must divest it of every
  foreign element, and confine it strictly to itself. It is the
  want of this precaution that has led to such frequent
  misconception of the thing itself; men have not looked simply
  at the fact of liberty, and at that alone. It has been viewed
  and described, so to speak, _péle-méle_ with other facts,
  closely connected to it, it is true, in the moral life of man,
  but which are no less essentially different. For example, human
  liberty has been said to consist in the act of deliberating
  upon and choosing between motives; that deliberation, and that
  choice and judgment consequent upon it, have been regarded as
  the essence of free will.
{43}
  Not so at all. These are acts of the intellect, not of liberty;
  it is before the intellect that the various motives of
  resolution and action, interests, passions, opinions, and such
  like, present themselves; the intellect considers, compares,
  estimates, weighs, and judges them. This is a preparatory task,
  which precedes the act of volition, but which does not in any
  way constitute it. When, after deliberation, man has taken full
  cognisance of the motives presented to him, and of their value,
  there takes place a process entirely new, and wholly different,
  that of free will; man forms a resolution--that is to say, he
  commences a series of facts having their source in himself, of
  which he regards himself as the author; and these are
  effectuated because he wills them; they would have no existence
  did he not will it, and would be different if he desired to
  produce them otherwise. Now, let us imagine all remembrance of
  this process of intellectual deliberation obliterated, the
  motives so known and appreciated, forgotten; concentrate your
  thought, and that of the man who takes a resolution, upon the
  moment when he says, 'It is my will, therefore I shall do so;
  and ask yourself, ask too the man, whether he could not will
  and act otherwise.
{44}
  Without doubt, you will reply, as he will do, 'Assuredly,' and
  this it is that reveals the fact of liberty; it consists wholly
  in the resolution which man takes after the deliberation is at
  an end; it is the resolution that is the proper act of man,
  which is through him and through him alone; a simple act,
  independent of all the facts which precede or accompany it,
  identical in the most varied circumstances, always the same,
  whatever be its motives or its results.

  "At the same time that man feels himself free, and is conscious
  of the power of commencing by his own will alone a series of
  facts, he recognises that his will is subjected to the empire
  of a certain law, which takes different names, according to the
  circumstances to which it is applied--moral law, reason, good
  sense, &c ... Man is free, but according even to man's own way
  of thinking, his will is not arbitrary; he may use it in an
  absurd, senseless, unjust, and culpable manner, and whenever he
  uses it a certain rule must govern it. The observance of this
  rule is his duty, the task assigned to his liberty."

{45}

It is that act of a will (that is to say of a will strictly
brought back to its central and essential limits) acting freely
in the intimate recesses of his being, which, in the case of
disobedience to the law of duty, constitutes in man sin, and
entails on him its responsibility.

Is this responsibility exclusively personal, and limited to the
author of the act, or communicated, so to say, by contagion, and
transmitted in a certain measure to his descendants?

I am still considering only actual appreciable acts, such as they
produce and manifest themselves in the moral life of the human
race.

We find the poetry and mythology of nearly all nations expressing
the idea of an Utopian state of existence, referred to times
remote and primitive, to which they assign different names, as
the Golden Age, the Age of the Gods, and which they picture as an
epoch when there existed no moral and physical evil in the
world,--an era of peace, bliss, and innocence.
{46}
This is the more remarkable, as it has no foundation, and finds
no pretext in any tradition of historical times, however remote;
for from the commencement of history, from the time that we can
discern any trace of facts at all precise and authentic, it is
not the Golden Age, on the contrary, it is the Iron Age which
appears--an epoch of violence and ignorance and barbarism, in
which war and force are rampant, and which has not in effect the
least resemblance to those beautiful dreams of ancient poetry.
Without now seeking to establish any relation between these
mythological dreams and the Biblical traditions; or, for the
moment, drawing from the Golden Age any argument in support of
the Garden of Eden; I merely point it out as a great fact, as
evidence of a general instinct, so to say, of the human
imagination. What is the meaning of this? Whence comes this
Utopia of innocence and bliss in the cradle of the human race?
{47}
To what does this idea of a primal time, without strife, without
sin, and without pain, correspond?

But from this cradle of man and this primitive poetry, to revert
to the present time, to real life, to the cradle of the infant,
why is it that, apart from all personal affection, we so readily
term infancy the age of innocence? How is it that we find it so
charming to give it this name, and regard it under this aspect?
Physical ill is already present, for it begins with the very
beginning of life; but moral ill has not yet appeared; life has
not yet brought to the soul its trials, nor called forth its
failings, and the idea of the soul without spot or stain has for
us an inexpressible attraction; we feel a deep joy in witnessing
innocence, or at least its image in the child, when we no longer
see it around us, nor find it within ourselves.

What means this universal instinct, which in the dreams of the
imagination, as well as in the intimate scenes of domestic life,
whether we turn in thought to the cradle of the human race or to
that of the infant, leads us to regard innocence as the primitive
and normal state of man, and makes us place in the spot where
innocence resides that which some term Paradise, and others the
Golden Age?

{48}

Manifestly between the soul without spot and the soul tainted
with evil, between the creature who is merely fallible and the
creature who has sinned, there is a very great change of state, a
distance immense, an abyss. We have a secret feeling of this
deplorable change, of the fall into this abyss; and it is without
premeditation, by the mere impulse of our nature, that we suffer
our thoughts to bear us far--far beyond that abyss, and to pause
on the rapturous contemplation of a state anterior to the fall.
Hence spring, and thus are explained, the power and the charm
which the idea of innocence has for us; absolute innocence we
have never seen, but the idea is still vouchsafed to us; and so
it appears to us in the cradle of the world, and in the cradle of
the infant, and the pleasure is infinite which we derive from the
ideal spectacle of purity which they each suggest.

{49}

Is this a pleasure foreign to all personal sentiment, to all
secret reference to ourselves, the pleasure, that is to say, of a
simple spectator? No: these impressions, which the picture of
innocence awakens in us, are connected with and carry us back to
ourselves; this change in the state of man, that mysterious Past
which has thrown him so far from innocence, leaving him,
nevertheless, the idea and the worship of it--these were not the
lot of the first man alone: the entire human race was, and
remains, subject to them. Our present evil does not proceed
solely from ourselves; we have received it as a heritage before
having brought it upon us as a penalty: we are not merely
fallible beings, we are the children of a being who has sinned.

{50}

How can we feel surprise at this inheritance of woe! Have we not
daily the example and the spectacle before our eyes? It is an
incontestable and undisputed fact, that two elements enter into
the moral life of man: on the one side, his innate dispositions,
his natural and involuntary inclinations,--on the other, his
inmost and individual will. The natural inclinations of a man do
not destroy his moral liberty nor enslave his will, but they
render its exercise more laborious and more difficult to him; it
is not a chain which he carries, it is a burden that he bears.
Equally incontestable and undisputed is it that the natural
dispositions of men are different and unequally distributed; no
one is entirely exempt from evil inclinations; every man is not
only fallible, but prone to transgress, and prone not only to
transgress, but to transgress in some particular direction or
other. Nor can the fact be disputed, although appreciable with
more difficulty, that the natural and special dispositions of the
individual descend to him in a certain measure from his origin,
and that parents transmit to their children such or such moral
propensities just as they do such or such physical temperament,
or such or such features. Hereditary transmission enters into the
moral as well as the physical order of the world.

{51}

This inheritance must take effect, it has done so from the first
days of man's existence upon earth, for man has been created
complete in his whole nature. And whilst, at the same time as
complete, he has been created fallible, I ask, who shall measure
the distance between man fallible, but still without fault, and
the first transgression? Who shall sound the depth of the fall,
and of the change which it brought into the moral condition of
its author? Who shall weigh the consequences of this change to
the state and the moral dispositions of man's descendants? To
appreciate the extent and gravity of this awful fact, of this
first appearance and this first heritage of moral evil, we have
but one test,--the instinct we still preserve of a state of
innocence, and of the immense space which this instinct
irresistibly compels us to place between native innocence and
man's first transgression; but this test is unexceptionable; it
dimly reveals to us, in this fatal transformation, the whole
infirmity and responsibility of the human race.

{52}

An objection is raised to this as an injustice: how, it is said,
can each man be responsible for a fault which he has not himself
committed--for the transgression of another man, separated from
himself by so many ages? I consider this objection weak and
frivolous. Such an objection would attach to all the inequalities
which exist among men, to the inequality of the destinies as well
as that of the nature of man, to the inequality of his moral
disposition as well as to that of his physical powers. The
objection would attach to the solidarity of successive
generations, and the controlling influence which the ideas, the
acts, the destiny of each of them exert on the ideas, the acts,
the destiny of those which follow it. The objection would attach
to the ties which unite the child with its parents, and which are
the cause of its sometimes inheriting their evil dispositions,
and sometimes suffering for their faults. It is in short the
general order of the world to which such an objection must apply;
it is the very existence of evil, and its unequal distribution in
a manner wholly independent of individual merit which assumes the
character of a monstrous iniquity.
{53}
And when we come to this point, that we no longer refer the
source of evil to the fault and the responsibility of man, placed
here on earth in a scene and period of transition and of trial,
see to what alternative we are brought. We must either regard
evil as natural, eternal, necessary, in the future as in the
past, as the normal state of man and of the world; that is to
say, we must deny God, the creation, the Divine Providence, human
morality, liberty, responsibility and hope; or, on the other
hand, it is to God Himself that we must impute evil, and whom we
must render accountable.

The dogma of Original Sin alone relieves the human mind from this
odious and unacceptable alternative: far from being in
contradiction either with the history of humanity, or with the
facts and instincts which constitute man's moral nature, this
dogma admits, illustrates, and explains them.
{54}
The fact of original sin presents nothing strange, nothing
obscure; it consists essentially in disobedience to the will of
God, which will is the moral law of man. This disobedience, the
sin of Adam, is an act committed everywhere and every day,
arising from the same causes, marked by the same characters, and
attended by the same consequences as the Christian dogma assigns
to it. At the present day, as in the Garden of Eden, this act is
occasioned by a thirst for absolute independence, the ambitious
aspirings of curiosity and pride, or weakness in the face of
temptation. At the present day, as in the Garden of Eden, it
produces an immense change in the inmost state of man, a change,
the mere idea of which seizes upon the human soul, and disturbs
it to its very depths; it transports man from the state of
innocence to the state of sin. At the present day, as in the
Garden of Eden, the act which produces this change involves and
entails the responsibility not only of its author but of his
descendants; sin is contagious in time as in space, it is
transmitted, as well as diffused.
{55}
The Christian dogma exhibits the first man created fallible, but
born innocent; innocent at the age of man, proud in the plenitude
of his faculties, not the subject of any evil and fatal heritage.
All at once, for the first time, of his own will, man disobeys
God. Here lies Original Sin, the same in its nature as sin at the
present day, for they both consist in disobedience to the law of
God, but it is the first in date in the history of man's liberty,
and the human source of that evil for which the Christian
religion, whilst pointing it out, offers to man the remedy and
the cure.



         IV. The Incarnation.

All religions have given a prominent place to the problem of
existence and the origin of evil; all have attempted its
solution.
{56}
The good and the evil genius, Ormuzd and Ahriman among the
Persians; God the Creator, God the Preserver, and God the
Destroyer--Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva--in India; the Titans
overwhelmed by the thunderbolts of Jove while scaling Olympus;
Prometheus chained to the rock for having snatched fire from
heaven; all are so many hypotheses to explain the conflict
between good and evil, between order and disorder in the world
and in man. But all these hypotheses are complicated, confused,
and encumbered with chimeras and fables; all attribute the
derivation of evil to incongruous causes, none assign any term to
the conflict, nor find a remedy for the evil. The Christian
religion alone clearly states and effectually solves the
question; it alone imputes to man himself, and to him alone, the
origin of evil; it alone represents God as intervening to raise
man from his fall, and to save him from his peril.

{57}

In the course of the sixth and fifth centuries before the
Christian era, a great fact appears in history; a breath of
reform, religious, moral and social, arises, and spreads from
east to west, among all the nations then at all progressing in
the path of civilization. Notwithstanding the uncertainties of
chronology, it may be said, according to the most recent and
accurate researches, that Confucius in China, the Buddha
Càkya-Mouni in India, Zoroaster in Persia, Pythagoras and
Socrates in Greece, are all included in the limits of this epoch;
[Footnote 5] men as dissimilar as they are celebrated, but who
have all, in different ways and in unequal degrees, undertaken a
great work of reforming both the men and the social institutions
of their times.

    [Footnote 5: These researches give the following dates:--1.
    Confucius, from 551 to 478 B.C.; 2. Zoroaster, from 564 to
    487, or from 589 to 512 B.C.; 3. Buddha Càkya-Mouni, in the
    seventh and sixth centuries B.C. (he died, according to
    Burnouf, 543 B.C.); 4. Pythagoras, from 580 to 500 B.C.; 5.
    Socrates, 470 to 400 or 399 B.C.]

{58}

Confucius was above all a practical moralist, skilled in
observation, counsel, and discipline; Buddha Càkya-Mouni, a
dreamer, and a mystical and popular preacher; Zoroaster, a
legislator, religious and political; Pythagoras and Socrates,
philosophers, bent upon instructing the distinguished bands of
disciples whom they gathered around them. There is no doubt,
notwithstanding the trials of their life, that neither power nor
glory amongst their contemporaries was wanting to them. Confucius
and Zoroaster were the favourites and counsellors of kings.
Buddha Càkya-Mouni, himself the son of a king, became the idol of
innumerable multitudes. Pythagoras and Socrates formed schools
and pupils who were an honour to the human mind. By their
personal genius and by the excellence of some of their ideas and
actions, these men have ensured themselves the admiration of all
posterity. Did they act up to their teachings, and accomplish
what they attempted? Did they really change the moral and social
condition of nations? Did they cause humanity to make any great
progress, and open to it horizons which it had not before known?
{59}
By no means. Whatever fame attaches to the names of these men,
whatever influence they may have exerted, what ever trace of
their passage may have remained, they rather appeared to have
power than really to possess it; they agitated the surface far
more than they stirred the depths; they did not draw nations out
of the beaten tracks in which they had lived. They did not
transform souls. In considering the facts at large, and
notwithstanding the political and material revolutions which they
underwent, China after Confucius, India after Buddha, Persia
after Zoroaster, Greece after Pythagoras and Socrates, followed
in the same ways, retained the same propensities, as before.
Still more, among these very different nations, stagnation was
only be succeeded by decay. Where are these nations at the
present day, more than two thousand years after the appearance of
these glorious characters in their history? What great progress,
what salutary changes, have been effected? What are they in
comparison and in contact with Christian nations?
{60}
Outside of Christianity there have been grand spectacles of
activity and force, brilliant phenomena of genius and virtue,
generous attempts at reform, learned philosophical systems, and
beautiful mythological poems; no real profound or fruitful
regeneration of humanity and of society.

A few ages only after these barren efforts among the great
nations of the world, Jesus Christ appears among a small, obscure
people, weak and despised. He Himself is weak and despised in the
midst of his people; He neither possesses nor seeks any social
power, any temporal means of action and of success; He collects
around Him only disciples weak and despised as Himself. Not only
are they weak and despised, they proclaim it themselves, and, far
from being troubled at this, they glory in it, and derive from it
confidence. St. Paul writes to the Corinthians: "And I, brethren,
when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of
wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God. For I determined
not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him
crucified.
{61}
And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much
trembling. ... Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in
reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for
Christ's sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong." [Footnote
6]

    [Footnote 6: 1 Corinthians ii. 13; 2 Corinthians xii. 10.]

And in truth, Jesus Christ, the Master of St. Paul, is strong in
his sufferings, and imparts his strength to his disciples; from
his cross, He accomplishes what erewhile, in Asia and Europe,
princes and philosophers, the powerful of the earth, and sages,
attempted without success; He changes the moral state and the
social state of the world; He pours into the souls of men new
enlightenment and new powers; for all classes, for all human
conditions, He prepares destinies before his advent unknown; He
liberates them at the same time that He lays down rules for their
guidance; He quickens them and stills them; He places the divine
law and human liberty face to face, and yet still in harmony; He
offers an effectual remedy for the evil which weighs upon
humanity; to sin He opens the path of salvation, to unhappiness
the door of hope.

{62}

Whence comes this power? What are its source and its nature? How
did those who were its witnesses and instruments think and speak
of it at the moment when it was manifested?

They all, unanimously, saw in Jesus Christ, God; most of them,
from the first moment, suddenly moved and enlightened by his
presence and his words; some, with rather more surprise and
hesitation, but soon penetrated and convinced in their turn.
"When Jesus came into the coasts of Cæsarea Philippi, he asked
his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?
And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist; some,
Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets. He saith
unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered
and said, Thou art the Christ, the son of the living God.
{63}
And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon
Barjona; for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but
my Father which is in heaven." [Footnote 7] Another day, meeting
with a similar instance of doubt, Jesus says to Thomas, "If ye
had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from
henceforth ye know him, and have seen him. Philip saith unto him,
Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us. Jesus saith unto
him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not
known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father."
[Footnote 8]

    [Footnote 7: Matthew xvi. 13-17.]

    [Footnote 8: John, xiv. 7-9.]

It has been remarked, that there are certain variations in the
language of the Apostles, and certain shades of difference in
their leading impressions; and this is indeed true: they call
Jesus Christ at one time the Son of God, at another the Son of
Man; they regard Him and represent Him now under his divine
aspect, at another under his human aspect; they do not present
exactly the same image of Him; they do not all equally dwell upon
the same traits of his nature, or the same facts of his earthly
life.
{64}
St. Matthew is more a narrator and moralist; it is he who relates
with fuller details the birth and childhood of Jesus Christ, and
who gives at the greatest length the Sermon on the Mount. St.
John is more in the habit of contemplating and depicting the
divine nature of Jesus Christ and his relation to God: "In the
beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word
was God. ... And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt amongst us,
and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the
Father, full of grace and truth. ... No man hath seen God at any
time; the only-begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father,
he hath declared him." [Footnote 9]

    [Footnote 9: John, i. 1, 14, 18.]

{65}

It is also St. John who relates the testimony of the Forerunner,
St. John the Baptist, answering to those who had said to him that
all men come to Jesus Christ: "Ye yourselves bear me witness,
that I said, I am not the Christ, but that I am sent before him.
... He that cometh from above is above all. ... He whom God hath
sent speaketh the words of God: for God giveth not the Spirit by
measure unto him. ... The Father loveth the Son, and hath given
all things into his hand" [Footnote 10] St. Paul is more
systematic, and enters more fully into the questions and
principles of the Christian doctrine, and he regards the divinity
of Jesus Christ as the first of these principles. He writes to
the Philippians: "Let this mind be in you, which was also in
Christ Jesus: who, being in the form of God, thought it no
usurpation to be equal with God: but made himself of no
reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made
in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, he
humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death
of the cross." [Footnote 11]

    [Footnote 10: John iii. 28, 31, 34, and 35.]

    [Footnote 11: Philippians ii. 5-6. I have given this verse in
    Osterwald's translation, which is also that of the Vulgate;
    but my son Guillaume, who is following out a careful course
    of study of Latin and Greek philology in sacred and profane
    literature, reminds me that the text of this passage presents
    a difficulty which furnished a field for the labours of
    Erasmus, Cameron, Grotius, Méric Casaubon, in the sixteenth
    century, as well as many others before and after them. The
    Greek word [Greek text] admits of two meanings, an active and
    a passive sense--it may designate the _action of
    ravishing, of carrying off by force,_ or the _object
    carried off_--the act of depredation, or the spoil.
    Substantives derived from verbs frequently waver between
    these two acceptations, and the word [Greek text], which is
    merely another form of [Greek text], is unquestionably a case
    in point. Æschylus, Euripides, Herodotus, have employed it in
    the first sense; Æschylus, Euripides, Thucydides, and
    Polybius in the second sense. Now, in the passage of St.
    Paul, accordingly as one or the other sense is adopted, these
    words must either be translated thus: "He did not consider it
    a usurpation to be equal to God;" or thus, "He did not
    display as a trophy his equality to God;" that is to say: He
    did not display His equality with God as the conquerors of
    the earth display the spoils and booty which they have
    amassed; He did not make use of His divinity to reign, to
    triumph, to pride himself in it; He was not the Messiah whom
    the carnal Jews expected, a visible king and victorious in
    arms; but, on the contrary, "he humbled himself, and took
    upon him the form of a servant," etc., etc. This second
    interpretation seems more probable; the reasoning on which it
    is founded is thus more connected and flowing; and at the
    same time, it leaves the doctrine of the Apostle intact; it
    changes nothing in his conception or his conclusions. In this
    passage, as in many others, St. Paul likewise affirms the
    divinity of the Saviour whom he announces to men; and it is
    from this majesty, subjected to a voluntary humiliation,
    veiled under the form of a servant, obedient unto the death
    of the cross, that He presents an august example and an
    imperative lesson for Christians of humility and mutual
    support. It is thus that this interpretation has been
    admitted and defended by two eminent men, a scholar of the
    sixteenth and a theologian of the nineteenth century, both of
    whom were strongly attached to the dogma of the divinity of
    Jesus Christ--I allude to Méric Casaubon (De Verborum Usu,
    pp. 138-146, at the end of the letters of his father), and M.
    A. Vinet (Homilétique, p. 116).]

{66}

.... It is he "who is the image of the invisible God, the
first-born of every creature: for by him were all things created,
that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible,
whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or
powers: all things were created by him, and for him: and he is
before all things, and by him all things consist." [Footnote 12]

    [Footnote 12: Colossians i. 15-17.]

{67}

St. Peter and St. John, in their Epistles, speak in the same
terms as St. Paul. St. Peter says, "We have not followed
cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power
and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his
majesty. For he received from God the Father honour and glory,
when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory,
This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him."
[Footnote 13]

    [Footnote 13: 2 Peter i. 16, 17.]

{68}

St. John writes: "Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not
the Father; but he that acknowledgeth the Son hath the Father
also." [Footnote 14] "Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: every
Spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is
of God; and every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is
come in the flesh is not of God." [Footnote 14]

    [Footnote 13: 1 John ii. 23.]

    [Footnote 14: 1 John iv. 2, 3.]

Such is the language of the Apostles; such are, at the same time,
its shades of variance and its harmony. They have all evidently
the same conception of Jesus Christ, they have all the same faith
in Him. St. Matthew, as well as St. John, St. Peter and St. Paul,
alike regard Jesus Christ as at once God and man, the
representative of God on earth, and the Mediator between God and
men--come from God, and re-ascended unto Him as the source and
centre of His being. The dogma of the Incarnation, that is to
say, of the divinity of Jesus Christ, pervades the Holy
Scriptures--the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles
of the Apostles, the writings of the first Fathers. It is the
common and fixed basis, the source and essence of the Christian
faith.

{69}

This was affirmed and declared by Jesus Christ himself. What His
disciples believed and related of Him, is what He himself told
them of himself, as well as what they themselves witnessed and
thought of Him: "All things are delivered unto me of my Father:
and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father: neither knoweth any
man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will
reveal him." [Footnote 15] --"I and my Father are one." [Footnote
16]

    [Footnote 15: Matthew xi. 27.]

    [Footnote 16: John x. 30.]

And when He approaches the term of His mission, when, after
having announced to His disciples that the hour was coming when
they would be dispersed, each going his own way, leaving Him
alone, Jesus Christ raises His thoughts to God and says, "Father,
the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify
thee: as thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should
give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.
{70}
And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true
God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. I have glorified thee
on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to
do. And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with
the glory which I had with thee before the world was. I have
manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the
world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have
kept thy word. Now they have known that all things whatsoever
thou hast given me are of thee. For I have given unto them the
words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have
known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed
that thou didst send me. I pray for them: I pray not for the
world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine.
And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in
them. And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the
world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own
name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we
are." [Footnote 17]

    [Footnote 17: John xvii. 1-11.]

{71}

I might multiply these texts; but these surely suffice to show
that the words of Jesus Christ in relation to himself, and those
of His Apostles, are in perfect unison; He speaks of himself as
they speak of Him; He qualifies himself as they qualify Him; He
calls God His "Father," as His disciples call Him "the Son of
God." He has the same faith in himself, in His nature, and in His
mission, as St. Matthew, St. John, St. Peter, and St. Paul had in
Him.

It is a great source of error, in the study of facts, not to know
how to stop at their general and essential features, and, losing
sight of these, to give prominence to partial and secondary
features. On the subject of the divinity of Jesus Christ, that
fundamental principle of the Christian religion, the precise
meaning and import of such or such a word may be disputed; such
or such an expression may be thought an interpolation, and so
eliminated in any particular Gospel, in any particular Epistle;
nevertheless there will always remain infinitely more than
sufficient evidence of the fact that those who at the present day
believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ, believe simply what the
Apostles believed and said, and that the Apostles themselves only
believed and said, nearly nineteen centuries ago, what Jesus
Christ himself said to them.

{72}

The opponents of the dogma of the Incarnation and of the divinity
of Jesus Christ disregard equally man and history, the complex
elements of human nature, and the meaning of the great facts
which mark the religious life of the human race.

What is man himself, but an incomplete and imperfect incarnation
of God? The materialists who deny the soul, and the naturalists
who deny creation, are alone consistent in rejecting the
Christian dogma. All who believe in the distinction of spirit and
matter, who do not believe that man is the result of the
fermentation of matter, or of the transformation of species, are
constrained to admit the presence in human nature of the divine
element, and they must necessarily accept these words in Genesis:
"God created man in his own image;" that is to say, they must
acknowledge the presence of God in frail and fallible humanity.

{73}

I open the histories of all religions, of all mythologies, the
most refined as well as the grossest; I find at every step the
idea and the assertion of the Divine Incarnation. Brahmanism,
Buddhism, Paganism, all faiths, all religious idolatries, abound
in incarnations of every kind and date, primitive or successive,
connected with this or that historical event, adapted to explain
this or that fact, to satisfy this or that human propensity. It
is the natural and universal instinct of men to picture to
themselves the action of God upon the human race under the form
of the incarnation of God in man.

{74}

Like all religious instincts, that of the belief in the Divine
Incarnation may engender, and has engendered, the most absurd
superstitions, the most extravagant hypotheses. In the same way
as the natural faith in God has been the source of all
idolatries, so the tendency to incarnate God in man has given
rise to, and admitted, every kind of strange imagining and
spurious tradition. Are we then to pronounce all divine
incarnation false, every tradition of it spurious? Rather let us
say that it proceeds from the infirmity of the human mind, if we
see realities and mere chimeras, truths and errors, in such close
proximity, if we find them calling one another by the same names
and unceasingly confounding one another's attributes. The
pretended incarnation of Brahma, or of Buddha, proves no more
against the divinity of Jesus Christ than the adoration of idols
proves against the existence of God. Jesus Christ, God and Man,
has characteristics which appertain to Him alone. These have
founded His power and occasioned the success of His works, a
power and a success which belong to Him alone.
{75}
It is not a human reformer, but God himself, who, through Jesus
Christ, has accomplished what no human reformer has ever
accomplished, or even conceived,--the reform of the moral and
social condition of the world, the regeneration of the human
soul, and the solution of the problems of human destiny. It is by
these signs, by these results, that the divinity of Jesus Christ
is manifested. How was the Divine Incarnation accomplished in
man? Here, as in the union of the soul and the body, as in the
creation, arises the mystery; but if we cannot fathom the reason
of it, the fact not the less exists. When this fact has taken the
form of dogma, theology has sought to explain it. In my opinion,
this was a mistake; theology has obscured the fact in developing
and commenting upon it. It is the fact itself of the Incarnation
which constitutes the Christian faith, and which rises above all
definitions and all theological controversies. To disregard this
fact--to deny the divinity of Jesus Christ--is to deny, to
overthrow the Christian religion, which would never have been
what it is, and would never have accomplished what it has, but
that the Divine Incarnation was its principle, and Jesus
Christ--God and Man--its author.

{76}


            V. The Redemption.


I enter into the sanctuary of the Christian faith.

God has done more than manifest himself in Jesus Christ. He has
done more than place upon the earth and before men His own living
image, the type of sanctity and the model of life. The Creator
has accomplished, through Jesus Christ, toward man, His creature,
an act of His beneficence and at the same time of His sovereign
power. Jesus Christ is not only God made man to spread the divine
light upon men; He is God made man to conquer and efface in man
moral evil, the fruit of the sin of man. He brings not only light
and law, but pardon and salvation.
{77}
And it is at the price of His own suffering, of His own
sacrifice, that He brings these to them. He is the type of
self-devotion at the same time as of sanctity. He has submitted
to be a victim in order to be a saviour. The Incarnation leads to
the Cross, and the Cross to the Redemption.

Here are the supreme dogma and mystery. Here are revealed plainly
the sense and the import of Christianity. By what ways did Jesus
Christ penetrate the human soul to accomplish this great work?
How did He win the human soul to the Christian faith, in order to
snatch it from evil and to save it?

When man fails in the duty of which he recognises the law,--when
he commits the wrong which he is bound to shun,--when, after sin,
repentance arises within him, and a sense of the necessity of
expiation is soon joined with this sentiment of repentance, the
moral instinct of man teaches that repentance does not suffice to
efface the fault, and that it requires to be expiated: reparation
supposes suffering.

{78}

And when the religious sentiment is joined to the moral
sentiment,--when man believes in God, and sees in Him the author
and dispenser of the moral law, he regards himself as guilty of
transgression toward God whom he has disobeyed, he feels the need
of being pardoned and of being restored to the favour of the
Sovereign Master whom he has offended.

Among all nations, in all religions, under all social forms,
these two instincts--as to the necessity of expiation to ensue
upon the fault, and the necessity of pardon to follow the
transgression--appear natural and inherent in the human soul.
They have been at all times and in all places, the source of a
multitude of beliefs and practices; some pure and touching,
others foolish and odious: these may all be briefly comprised in
the single expression, _sacrifices_. The histories of all
nations, barbarous or civilized, ancient or modern, teem with
sacrificial rites of every description, whether they be of a
nature gross or mystical, of a performance mild or bloody; rites
invented and celebrated either to expiate the sins of man, or to
appease the anger of God and regain His favour.

{79}

Nor is this all; we have here to note another moral fact, not
less real although it seems stranger to the eyes of superficial
reason. Mankind has believed that a fault might be expiated by
another than its author, that innocent victims might be
efficaciously offered up to influence God, and to save the
guilty. This belief has led to sacrifices no less absurd than
atrocious: the pretended expiation has become an additional
crime: it has at the same time been also the source of heroic
acts and sublime examples of self-devotion. Both the domestic
records of families and the public histories of nations have
furnished us with admirable instances of innocence voluntarily
offering itself as a sacrifice, taking upon itself the penalty,
the suffering, the death, to expiate the sin of others, and to
win from Divine Justice--now satisfied--the pardon of the
offender.

{80}

And are we then to regard this merely as a pious, a generous
illusion, a devotedness as vain as admirable? Yes, such is the
view that all those must adopt who believe neither in Providence
nor prayer, nor in the existence of any efficacious relation
between the actions of man and the purposes of God; no solidarity
between men, no connection between the sacrifice of him who
practises the act of self-devotion, and the destiny of him who is
its object. But those who have faith in the living God, in His
continued presence, and His never-sleeping providence, those who
believe that nothing in man, whether it be good or whether it be
evil, is in vain, that every moral act bears its fruit visible or
invisible, immediate or remote, such as these cannot fail to
feel, to have, as it were, a presentiment, that in such
self-sacrifice of the innocent for the salvation of the guilty,
there exists a mysterious virtue. The secret of this it may not
be given them to fathom, but it nevertheless gives life in their
bosom to the hope that such sublime devotion will not fail of its
object.

{81}

And now, to pass from this feeling, and from the acts of man,
whose reality no one can dispute, to the corresponding dogmas of
Christianity, let me, by the side of these acts of devotedness
and self-sacrifice of the human creature in his innocence seeking
to atone for the sins of the human creature who is guilty, place
the self-devotion and the self-sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the
Man-God, tendered to ransom from sin the race of mankind and to
open to it the way of salvation; who is not struck by this
sublime analogy? What connection and harmony between the purest,
the most generous, instincts of the human soul, and the dogma of
God's Redemption? I touch upon none of the questions, I enter
into none of the controversies which have sprung up with respect
to this dogma of Redemption; I do not weigh with a view to
compare faith and works, nor do I essay to assign the part due to
divine grace or to human virtue; I do not define or seek to
number the elect, but I pause upon the fact itself of the
Redemption by Jesus Christ, the fact upon which the dogma itself
reposes.
{82}
All that the most renowned heroes, the most glorious saints of
humanity have striven to accomplish, in order to expiate the sins
of any creature or any nation, Jesus Christ the Elect of God, the
Son of God, the God-Man, came to effect for all mankind, by means
of incomparable sorrow, humiliation, and sufferings. And, as was
affirmed by St. Paul in the first century, and by Bossuet in the
seventeenth, this very suffering, this humiliation, this
martyrdom of Jesus Christ, have constituted his victory and his
empire. And I would ask, what other spectacle than that of God
made man to constitute himself victim--made victim to become the
saviour--could have excited in the soul of mankind those
outbursts of admiration, of respect, and of love, that ardent,
invincible, and contagious faith, of which the Apostles and the
primitive Christians have left us the evidences and the example?
It was requisite that the victim and the sacrifice should be
equal to the work.
{83}
That work was the Christian religion, that incomparable system of
facts, dogmas, precepts, promises, which, in the midst of all the
doubts and all the controversies of the mind of man, have for
nineteen centuries afforded satisfaction and solution to those
aspirings of the human race, which nature prompts, whether they
assume the form of religious instincts or religious problems.

{84}

           Third Meditation.

           The Supernatural.


To a system so grand, and in such profound harmony with man's own
nature, an objection is made which is thought decisive; that
system proclaims the Supernatural, has the Supernatural for its
principle and foundation. It is objected that the Supernatural
itself has no existence.

This objection is not novel, but it has at this moment in
appearance assumed a more serious and formidable shape than ever.
It is in the name of science itself, of all the human sciences,
of the physical sciences, historical science, philosophical
science, that the pretension is made that is to reduce the
Supernatural to a nonentity, and to banish it from the world and
from man.

{85}

The reverence that I feel for science is infinite. I would have
it as free and unshackled as I would desire to see it honoured.
But I would at the same time like to see it deal somewhat more
rigorously and logically with itself. I would like to see it less
exclusively absorbed by its own peculiar labours and occupations,
its momentary successes; more careful not to forget or omit any
of the ideas or any of the facts which bear upon the subject with
which it deals, and for which in its solution it has still to
account.

In whatever quarter, at this day, the wind may be, the abolition
of the Supernatural is a difficult enterprise, for the belief in
the Supernatural is a fact natural, primitive, universal,
constant in the life and history of the human race. We may
interrogate mankind in all times and places, in all states of
society and degrees of civilization, we find it always and
everywhere spontaneously believing in facts and causes beyond the
sphere of this palpable world, of this living piece of mechanism
termed nature. In vain do we extend, explain, amplify nature
itself; the instinct of man, the instinct of human masses, has
never suffered that nature to confine it: it has always sought
and seen something beyond.

{86}

It is this belief--instinctive, and hitherto
indestructible--which is qualified as a radical error; this
universal and enduring fact in man's history it is which men seek
to abolish. They go farther; they affirm that it is already
abolished--that the _people_ no longer believe in the
Supernatural, and that any attempt to bring them back to it would
be vain. Incredible conceit of man! What, because in a corner of
the world in one day among ages brilliant progress may have been
made in natural and historical science--because in the name of
the sciences, and in brilliant books, the Supernatural has been
combated, they proclaim the Supernatural vanquished, abolished;
and we hear the judgment pronounced, not merely in the name of
the learned, but of the people! Have you then completely
forgotten, or have you never thoroughly comprehended, humanity
and the history of humanity?
{87}
Do you ignore absolutely what the people really is, and what all
those nations are that cover the surface of the earth? Have you
never then penetrated into those millions of souls in which the
belief in the Supernatural is and abides, present and active even
when the words which move their lips disown it? Are you then
unconscious of the immense distance which there is between the
depths and the surface of those souls, between the variable
breaths which only ruffle the minds of men, and the immutable
instincts which preside over their very being? True, there are,
in our days, amongst the people, many fathers, mothers, children,
who believe themselves incredulous, and mock scorn fully at
miracles; but follow them in the intimacy of their homes, amongst
the trials of their lives, how do these parents act, when their
child is ill, those farmers when their crops are threatened,
those sailors when they float upon the waters a prey to the
tempest? They elevate their eyes to heaven, they burst forth in
prayer, they invoke that Supernatural power said by you to be
abolished in their very thought. By their spontaneous and
irresistible acts they give to your words and to their own a
striking disavowal.

{88}

But to advance a step towards you, admitted that the faith in the
Supernatural is abolished; let us enter together that society and
those classes to whom this moral ruin is a triumph and a vaunt.
What then ensues? In the place of God's miracles, man's miracles
make their appearance. They are searched for, they are called
for; men are found to invent them, and to contrive them to be
recognised by thousands of beholders. It is not necessary to go
either far in time or wide in space to see the Supernatural of
Superstition raising itself in the place of the Supernatural of
Religion, and Credulity hurrying to meet Falsehood half-way.

{89}

But away with these unhealthy paroxysms of humanity; and to
return to its sober and enduring history. We will admit that the
instinctive belief in the Supernatural has been the source and
abides the foundation of all religions, of religion in the most
general sense of the word, and of essential religion. The most
serious, at the same time the most perplexed, of the thinkers who
in our days have approached the subject, M. Edmond Scherer, saw
plainly enough that that was the question at issue, and he has so
put it in the third of his "Conversations Théologiques," noble
yet sad imaging forth of the fermentation in his own ideas and
the struggles which they occasion in his soul. "The Supernatural
is not a something external to religion," says one of the two
speakers between whom M. Scherer supposes the discussion, "it is
religion itself." "No," says the other, "the Supernatural is not
the peculiar element of religion, but rather of superstition: the
Supernatural fact has no relation with the human soul, for it is
the essence of the Supernatural that it goes beyond all those
conditions which constitute credibility; its essence indeed is
the being _anti-human_."
{90}
The discussion continues and becomes animated: the contrary
nature of the perplexities experienced by the two speakers
becomes manifest. "Perhaps," says the Rationalist, "the
Supernatural was a necessary form of religion for ill cultivated
minds: but rightly or wrongly, our modern civilization rejects
miracles; without positive denial, it remains indifferent to
them. Even the preacher knows not how to deal with them; the more
he is in earnest, the more his Christian feeling has inwardness
and vitality, the more does the miracle also disappear from his
teaching. Miracles formerly constituted the great force of the
sermon, at the present day what are they but a secret source of
embarrassment? Everybody feels vaguely when confronted by the
marvellous accounts in our sacred volumes, what he feels when
confronted by the Legends of the Saints; it is impossible for
that to be religion, it is only its superfoetation." "It is
true," exclaims with sorrow the hesitating Christian, "we believe
no longer in miracles; you might have added that neither do we
any more believe in God himself; the two things go together.
{91}
We hear much now-a-days of Christian Spiritualism--of the
religion of the conscience, and you yourself seem to see that men
in giving up miracles are making progress in religion. Ah! why is
it that the intimate experience of my own heart cannot express
itself in a forcible protest against any such opinion? Whenever I
find my faith in miraculous agency vacillating within me, the
image of my God seems to be fading away from my eyes: He ceases
to be for me God the free, the living, the personal; the God with
whom the soul converses, as with a master and friend; and this
holy dialogue once interrupted, what is left us? How does life
become sad? how does it lose its illusions? Reduced to the
satisfaction of mere physical wants, to eat, to drink, to sleep,
to make money, deprived of all horizon, how puerile does our
maturity appear, how sorrowful our old age, how meaningless our
anxieties!

{92}

"No more mystery, no more innocence, no more infinity, no longer
any heaven above our heads, no more poesy. Ah! be sure: the
incredulity which rejects the miracle has a tendency to unpeople
heaven, and to disenchant the earth. The Supernatural is the
natural sphere of the soul. It is the essence of its faith, of
its hope, of its love. I know how specious criticism is, how
victorious its arguments often appear; but I know one thing
besides, and perhaps I might here even appeal to your own
testimony; in ceasing to believe in what is miraculous, the soul
finds that it has lost the secret of divine life; henceforth it
is urged downwards towards the abyss, soon it lies on the earth,
and not seldom in the dirt."

In his turn the disbeliever in the Supernatural is troubled and
saddened: "Listen," he says: "the history of humanity seems to be
sometimes moving in obedience to the following scheme. The world
begins with religion, and, referring all phenomena to a first
cause, it sees God everywhere.
{93}
Then comes philosophy, which, having discovered the connection of
secondary causes, and the laws of their operation, makes a
corresponding deduction from the direct intervention of divinity,
and then founding itself upon the idea of necessity (for it is
only necessity which falls within the domain of science, and
science is in fact but the knowledge of what is necessary);
philosophy tends in its very fundamental principle to exclude God
from the world. It does more; it finishes by denying human
liberty as it has denied God. The reason is evident: liberty is a
cause beyond the sphere of the necessary connection of causes, a
first cause, a cause which serves as cause to itself: and from
that moment philosophy, unequal to any explanation, feels itself
disposed to deny that first cause. A philosophy true to itself
will ever be fatalistic. For from that moment philosophy corrupts
and destroys itself. When it has no other God than the universe,
no other man than the chief of the mammalia, what is it but a
mere system of Zoology?
{94}
Zoology constitutes the whole science of the epoch, of the
Materialists, and to speak plainly, that is our position at the
present day. But materialism can never be the be-all and the
end-all of the human race. Corrupt and enervated, society is
passing through immense catastrophes, is falling in ruins; the
iron harrow of Revolution is breaking up mankind like the clods
of the field; in the bloody furrows germinate new races; the soul
in the agony of its distress believes once more; it resumes its
faith in virtue, it finds again the language of prayer. To the
age of the Renaissance succeeded that of the Reformation; to the
Germany of Frederick the Great, the Germany of 1812. So faith
springs up for ever and ever out of its ashes. Ah, that I must
add it, humanity rises again but to resume the march which I have
just described. But can it be said of it besides, that like this
Globe of ours it is making any movement in advance whilst it is
so turning round itself, and if it does so advance, towards what
is it gravitating?

{95}

  'Whither, whither, O Lord,
   marches the earth in the heavens?'" [Footnote 18]

    [Footnote 18: Mélange de Critique Religieuse, par Edmond
    Scherer--Conversations Théologiques, pp. 169-187.]

But it is not towards heaven that the earth would march if it
followed the path in which the adversaries of the Supernatural
are impelling it. It is this peculiarity, they say, of the
Supernatural, that being incredible, it is in its very essence
anti-human. Now it is precisely to something not anti-human but
superhuman that the human soul aspires, and there seeks to
realize these aspirations in the Supernatural. We should be never
weary of repeating it; the whole finite world in its entirety,
with all its facts and all its laws, comprising indeed man
himself, suffices not for the soul of man; it requires something
grander and more perfect for the subject of its contemplation,
the object of its love; it desires to fix its trust in something
more stable; to lean upon something less fragile.
{96}
This supreme and sublime ambition it is to which religion, in its
widest sense, gives birth and supplies nourishment; and this
supreme and sublime ambition it is also that the religion of
Christ more particularly responds to and satisfies. Let those,
therefore, who flatter themselves that although abolishing the
belief in the Supernatural, they leave Christians still
Christians, undeceive themselves; what they are abolishing,
destroying, is very religion, for their arguments assail all
religion in general, and Christianity in particular. It may be
that they do not inflict upon themselves all this evil, and that
in retaining a sincere religious sentiment they really believe
themselves nearly Christians; the soul struggles against the
errors of the thought, and a moral suicide is a rare spectacle.
But the evil even in spreading unveils more plainly its nature
and increases in intensity; besides men, in masses, draw from
error far more logical conclusions than the man ever did in whom
the error had its origin. The people are not the learned, neither
are they philosophers, and only once succeed in destroying in
them all faith in the Supernatural, and you may consider it
certain that the faith in Christ must have previously
disappeared.
{97}
Have you well weighed all this? Have you pictured to yourself
what a man, what mankind, what the soul of man, what human
society itself would become if religion were in effect abolished,
if religious faith entirely disappeared? I will not give way to
anguish of soul or sinister presentiments, but I do not hesitate
to affirm that no imagination can represent with adequate
fidelity what would take place in us and around us if the place
at present occupied by Christian belief were on a sudden to
become vacant, and its empire annihilated. No one could pronounce
to what degree of disorder and degradation humanity would be
precipitated. But awful indeed would be the result if all faith
in the Supernatural were extinct in the soul, and if man had in a
supernatural state neither trust nor hope.

It is not my design, however, to confine myself here to the
question regarded merely in its moral, practical light; I
approach the Supernatural as viewed with the eyes of free and
speculative reason.

{98}

It is condemned for its very name's sake. Nothing is or can be,
it is said, beyond and above nature. Nature is one and complete;
everything is comprised in it; in it, of necessity, all things
cohere, enchain, and develop themselves.

We are here in thorough pantheism--that is to say, in absolute
atheism. I do not hesitate to give to pantheism its real name.
Amongst the men who at the present day declare themselves the
opponents of the Supernatural, most, certainly, do not believe
that they are nor do they desire to be atheists. But let me tell
them that they are leading others whither they neither think nor
wish themselves to go. The negation of the Supernatural, and that
in the name of the unity and universality of nature, is
pantheism, and pantheism is nothing more nor less than atheism.
{99}
In the sequel of these Meditations, when I come to speak
particularly of the actual state of the Christian religion, and
of the different systems which combat it, I will in this respect
justify my assertion; at present, I have to repel direct attacks
upon the Supernatural--attacks less fundamental than those of
pantheism, but not less serious, for in truth, whether men know
it or not, and whether they mean it or not, all attacks in this
warfare reach the same object, and as soon as the Supernatural is
the aim it is religion itself that receives the shaft.

The fixity of the laws of nature is appealed to; that, say they,
is the palpable and incontestable fact established by the
experience of mankind, and upon which rests the conduct of human
life. In presence of the permanent order of nature and the
immutability of its laws, we cannot admit any partial, any
momentary infractions; we cannot believe in the Supernatural, in
miracles.

True, general and constant laws do govern nature. Are we,
therefore, to affirm that those laws are necessary, and that no
deviation from them is possible in nature? Who is there that does
not discern an essential, an absolute difference between what is
general and what is necessary?
{100}
The permanence of the actual laws of nature is a fact established
by experience, but it is not the only fact possible, the only
fact conceivable by reason; those laws might have been other
laws, they may change. Several of them have not always been what
they now are, for science itself proves that the condition of the
universe has been different from what it is at present; the
universal and permanent order of which we form part, and in which
we confide, has not always been what we now see it; it has had a
beginning; the creation of the actual system of nature and of its
laws is a fact as certain as the system itself is certain. And
what is creation but a supernatural fact, the act of a Power
superior to the actual laws of nature, and which has power to
modify them just as much as it has had power to establish them?
The first of miracles is God himself.

{101}

There is a second miracle--man. I resume what I have already
said; by his title as a moral being and free agent, man lives
beyond and above the influence of the general and permanent laws
of nature; he creates by his will effects which are not at all
the necessary consequence of any pre-existent law; and those
effects take their place in a system absolutely distinct and
independent from the visible order which governs the universe.
The moral liberty of man is a fact as certain, and natural, as
the order of nature, and it is at the same time a supernatural
fact--that is to say, essentially foreign to the order of nature
and to its laws.

God is the being moral and free _par excellence_, that is to
say, the being excellently capable of acting as first cause
beyond the influence of causation. By his title as a moral being
and free agent, man is in intimate relation with God. Who shall
define the possible contingencies, or fathom the mysteries of
this relation? Who dare to say that God cannot modify, that He
never does modify, according to his plans with respect to the
moral system and to man, the laws which He has made and which He
maintains in the material order of nature?

{102}

Some have hesitated absolutely to deny the possibility of
supernatural facts; and so their attack is indirect. If those
facts, say they, are not impossible, they are incredible, for no
particular testimony of man in favour of a miracle can give a
certitude equal to that which, on the opposite side, results from
the experience which men have of the fixity of the laws of
nature.

"It is experience only," says Hume, "which gives authority to
human testimony; and it is the same experience which assures us
of the laws of nature. When therefore these two kinds of
experience are contrary, we have nothing to do, but subtract the
one from the other, and embrace an opinion, either on one side or
the other, with that assurance which arises from the remainder.
But according to the principles here explained, this subtraction,
with regard to all popular religions, amounts to an entire
annihilation: and therefore we may establish it as a maxim, that
no human testimony can have such force as to prove a miracle, and
make it a just foundation for any such system of religion."
[Footnote 19]

    [Footnote 19: Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects, by
    David Hume; Essay on Miracles, vol. iii. p. 119-145, Bâle,
    1793. [Same work, p. 91, London, 16mo, 1860.--TRANSLATOR.]]
{103}

It is in this reasoning of Hume that the opponents of miracles
shut themselves up as in an impregnable fortress to refuse them
all credence.

What confusion of facts and ideas! What a superficial solution of
one of the grandest problems of our nature! What! a simple
operation of arithmetic, with respect to two experimental
observations, estimated in ciphers, is to decide the question
whether the universal belief of the race of man in the
Supernatural is well-founded or simply absurd; whether God only
acts upon the world and upon man by laws established once for
all, or whether He still continues to make, in the exercise of
his power, use of his liberty!
{104}
Not only does the sceptic Hume here show himself unconscious of
the grandeur of the problem; he mistakes even in the motives upon
which he founds his shallow conclusion; for it is not from human
experience alone that human testimony draws her authority: this
authority has sources more profound, and a worth anterior to
experience: it is one of the natural bonds, one of the
spontaneous sympathies which unite with one another men and the
generations of men. Is it by virtue of experience that the child
trusts to the words of its mother, that it has faith in all she
tells it? The mutual trust that men repose in what they say or
transmit to each other is an instinct, primitive, spontaneous,
which experience confirms or shakes, sets up again or sets bounds
to, but which experience does not originate.

I find in the same essay of Hume, [Footnote 20] this other
passage: "The passion of surprise and wonder, arising from
miracles, being an agreeable emotion, gives a sensible tendency
towards the belief of those events from which it is derived."

    [Footnote 20: Hume's Essay on Miracles, p. 128,
    _ubi supra_.]

{105}

Thus, if we are to credit Hume, it is merely for his pleasure,
for the diversion of the imaginative faculty, that man believes
in the Supernatural; and beneath this impression--though real,
still only of a secondary nature--which does no more than skim
the surface of the human soul, the philosopher has no glimpse at
all of the profound instincts and superior requisitions which
have sway over him.

But why an attack of this character, so indirect and little
complete? Why should Hume limit himself to the proposition that
miracles can never be historically proved, instead of at once
affirming the impossibility of miracles themselves? This is what
the opponents of the Supernatural virtually think; and it is
because they commence by regarding miracles as impossible that
they apply themselves to destroy the value of the evidences by
which they are supported.
{106}
If the evidence which surrounds the cradle of Christianity, if
the fourth, if even the tenth part of it were adduced in support
of facts of a nature extra-ordinary, unexpected, or unheard of,
but still not having a character positively supernatural, the
proof would be accepted as unexceptionable: the facts for
certain. In appearance, it is merely the proof by witnesses of
the Supernatural that is contested; whereas, in reality, the very
possibility of the thing is denied that is sought to be proved.
The question ought to be put as it really is, instead of such a
solution being offered as is a mere evasion.

Lately, however, men of logical minds and daring spirits have not
hesitated to speak more frankly and plainly. "The new dogma, they
say, the fundamental principle of criticism, is the negation of
the Supernatural. ... Those still disposed to reject this
principle have nothing to do with our books, and we, on our side,
have no cause to feel disquietude at their opposition and their
censure, for we do not write for them. And if this discussion is
altogether avoided, it is because it is impossible to enter into
it with out admitting an unacceptable proposition, viz., one
which presumes that the Supernatural can in any given case be
possible. [Footnote 21]

    [Footnote 21: Conservation, Involution, et Positivisme, par
    M. Littré, Preface, p. xxvi, and following pages--M. Havet,
    Revue des Deux Mondes, 1 Août, 1863.]

{107}

I do not reproach the disciples of the school of Hume for having
evinced greater timidity: if they attacked the Supernatural by a
side way, not as being impossible in itself, but as being merely
incapable of proof by human testimony, they did not do so
designedly and with deceitful purpose. Let us render them more
justice, and do them more honour. A prudent and an honest
instinct held them back on the declivity upon which they had
placed themselves; they felt that to deny even the possibility of
the Supernatural, was to enter at full sail into pantheism and
fatalism, that is to say, was the same thing as at once
dispensing with God and doing away with the free agency of man.
Their moral sense, their good sense, withheld them from any such
course.
{108}
The fundamental error of the adversaries of the Supernatural is
that they contest it in the name of human science, and that they
class the Supernatural amongst facts within the domain of
science, whereas the Supernatural does not fall within that
domain, and the very attempt so to treat it has led, indeed, to
its being entirely rejected.

{109}

             Fourth Meditation.

           The Limits Of Science.


An eminent moralist, who was at the same time not only a
theologian, but a philosopher well versed in the physical
sciences, I mean Dr. Chalmers, professor at the University of
Edinburgh, and corresponding member of the Institute of France,
wrote in his work on _Natural Theology_, a chapter entitled:
_On man's partial and limited knowledge of divine things._
The first pages are as follows:--

  "The true modern philosophy never makes more characteristic
  exhibition of itself, than at the limit which separates the
  known from the unknown. It is there that we behold it in a
  twofold aspect--that of the utmost deference and respect for
  all the findings of experience within this limit; that, on the
  other hand, of the utmost disinclination and distrust for all
  those fancies of ingenious or plausible speculation which have
  their place in the ideal region beyond it.
{110}
  To call in the aid of a language which far surpasses our own in
  expressive brevity, its office is '_indagare_' rather than
  '_divinare_.' The products of this philosophy are copies
  and not creations. It may discover a system of nature, but not
  devise one. It proceeds first on the observation of individual
  facts and if these facts are ever harmonised into a system,
  this is only in the exercise of a more extended observation. In
  the work of systematising, it makes no excursion beyond the
  territory of actual nature--for they are the actual phenomena
  of nature which form the first materials of this
  philosophy--and they are the actual resemblances of these
  phenomena that form, as it were, the cementing principle, to
  which the goodly fabrics of modern science owe all the solidity
  and all the endurance that belong to them.
{111}
  It is this chiefly which distinguishes the philosophy of the
  present day from that of by-gone ages. The one was mainly an
  excogitative, the other mainly a descriptive process--a
  description however extending to the likenesses as well as to
  the peculiarities of things; and, by means of these likenesses,
  these observed likenesses alone, often realising a more
  glorious and magnificent harmony than was ever pictured forth
  by all the imaginations of all the theorists.

  "In the mental characteristics of this philosophy, the strength
  of a full-grown understanding is blended with the modesty of
  childhood. The ideal is sacrificed to the actual--and, however
  splendid or fondly cherished a hypothesis may be, yet if but
  one phenomenon in the real history of nature stand in the way,
  it is forthwith and conclusively abandoned. To some the
  renunciation may be as painful as the cutting off a right hand,
  or the plucking out a right eye--yet, if true to the great
  principle of the Baconian school, it must be submitted to.
{112}
  With its hardy disciples one valid proof outweighs a thousand
  plausibilities--and the resolute firmness wherewith they bid
  away the speculations of fancy is only equalled by the
  childlike compliance wherewith they submit themselves to the
  lessons of experience.

  "It is thus that the same principle which guides to a just and
  a sound philosophy in all that lies within the circle of human
  discovery, leads also to a most unpresuming and unpronouncing
  modesty in reference to all that lies beyond it. And should
  some new light spring up on this exterior region, should the
  information of its before hidden mysteries break in upon us
  from some quarter that was before inaccessible, it will be at
  once perceived (on the supposition of its being a genuine and
  not an illusory light) that, of all other men, they are the
  followers of Bacon and Newton who should pay the most
  unqualified respect to all its revelations.
{113}
  In their case it comes upon minds which are without prejudice,
  because on that very principle, which is most characteristic of
  our modern science, upon minds without preoccupation. ... The
  strength of his confidence in all the ascertained facts of the
  _terra cognita_ is at one or in perfect harmony with the
  humility of his diffidence in regard to all the conceived
  plausibilities of the _terra incognita_.

  "And let it further be remarked of the self-denial which is
  laid upon us by Bacon's Philosophy, that, like all other
  self-denial in the cause of truth or virtue, it hath its
  reward. In giving ourselves up to its guidance, we have often
  to quit the fascinations of beautiful theory; but in exchange
  for them, we are at length regaled by the higher and
  substantial beauties of actual nature. There is a stubbornness
  in facts before which the specious imagination is compelled to
  give way; and perhaps the mind never suffers more painful
  laceration than when, after having vainly attempted to force
  nature into a compliance with her own splendid generalizations,
  she, on the appearance of some rebellious and impracticable
  phenomenon, has to practise a force upon herself--when she thus
  finds the goodly speculation superseded by the homely and
  unwelcome experience.
{114}
  It seemed at the outset a cruel sacrifice, when the world of
  speculation, with all its manageable and engaging simplicities,
  had to be abandoned; and on becoming the pupils of observation,
  we, amid the varieties of the actual world around us, felt as
  if bewildered, if not lost, among the perplexities of a chaos.
  This was a period of greatest sufferance; but it has had a
  glorious termination. In return for the assiduity wherewith the
  study of nature hath been prosecuted, she hath made a more
  abundant revelation of her charms. Order hath arisen out of
  confusion, and in the ascertained structure of the universe
  there are now found to be a state and a sublimity beyond all
  that was ever pictured by the mind in the days of her
  adventurous and unfettered imagination.
{115}
  Even viewed in the light of a noble and engaging spectacle for
  the fancy to dwell upon, who would ever think of comparing with
  the system of Newton, either that celestial machinery of Des
  Cartes, which was impelled by whirlpools of ether, or that
  still more cumbrous planetarium of cycles and epicycles which
  was the progeny of a remoter age? It is thus that at the
  commencement of the observational process there is the
  abjuration of beauty. But it soon reappears in another form,
  and brightens as we advance, and at length there arises on
  solid foundation, a fairer and goodlier system than ever
  floated in airy romance before the eye of genius. Nor is it
  difficult to perceive the reason of this. What we discover by
  observation is the product of divine imagination bodied forth
  by creative power into a stable and enduring reality. What we
  devise by our own ingenuity is but the product of human
  imagination. The one is the solid archetype of those
  conceptions which are in the mind of God: the other is the
  shadowy representation of those conceptions which are in the
  mind of man. It is just as with the labourer, who, by
  excavating the rubbish which hides and besets some noble
  architecture, does more for the gratification of our taste,
  than if by his unpractised hand he should attempt to regale us
  with plans and sketches of his own.
{116}
  And so the drudgery of experimental science, in exchange for
  that beauty whose fascinations it withstood at the outset of
  its career, has evolved a surpassing beauty from among the
  realities of truth and nature. ...

  "The views contemplated through the medium of observation, are
  found not only to have a justness in them, but to have a grace
  and a grandeur in them far beyond all the visions which are
  contemplated through the medium of fancy, or which ever regaled
  the fondest enthusiast in the enchanted walks of speculation
  and poetry. But neither the grace nor the grandeur alone would,
  without evidence, have secured acceptance for any opinion. It
  must first be made to undergo, and without ceremony, the freest
  treatment from human eyes and human hands. It is at one time
  stretched on the rack of an experiment, at another it has to
  pass through fiery trial in the bottom of a crucible.
{117}
  In another it undergoes a long questioning process among the
  fumes and the filtrations and the intense heat of a laboratory;
  and not till it has been subjected to all this inquisitorial
  torture and survived it, is it preferred to a place in the
  temple of Truth, or admitted among the laws and lessons of a
  sound philosophy."

No one certainly will contest that this is the language of a
fervent disciple of science. It is impossible to have a keener
apprehension of its beauty, and to accept more completely its
laws. What mathematician, natural philosopher, physiologist, or
chemist, could speak in terms of greater respect and submission
of the necessity of observation, and of the authority of
experience? Dr. Chalmers is not the less for that a true and
fervent Christian; his religious faith equals his scientific
exactitude: he receives Christ, and professes Christ's doctrine
with as firm a voice as he does Bacon and Bacon's method.
{118}
Not that for him religious belief is the mere result of
education, of tradition, of habit; but it, on the contrary,
springs as much from reflection and learning, as his acquirements
in natural science themselves; in each sphere he has probed the
very sources and weighed the motives of his convictions. How did
he, in each instance, reach such a haven of repose? Whence in him
this harmony between the philosopher and the Christian?

Let us again allow Dr. Chalmers to speak for himself:--

  "It is of importance here to remark that the enlargement of our
  knowledge in all the natural sciences, so far from adding to
  our presumption, should only give a profounder sense of our
  natural incapacity and ignorance in reference to the science of
  theology. It is just as if in studying the policy of some
  earthly monarch we had made the before unknown discovery of
  other empires and distant territories whereof we knew nothing
  but the existence and the name. This might complicate the study
  without making the object of it at all more comprehensible, and
  so of every new wonder which philosophy might lay open to the
  gaze of inquirers.
{119}
  It might give us a larger perspective of the creation than
  before, yet, in _fact_, cast a deeper shade of obscurity
  over the counsels and ways of the Creator. We might at once
  obtain a deeper insight into the secrets of the workmanship,
  and yet feel, and legitimately feel, to be still more deeply
  out of reach, the secret purposes of Him who worketh all in
  all. Every discovery of an addition to the greatness of his
  works may bring with it an addition to the unsearchableness of
  his ways. ....

  "That telescope which has opened our way to suns and systems
  innumerable, leaves the moral administration connected with
  them in deepest secrecy. It has made known to us the bare
  existence of other worlds; but it would require another
  instrument of discovery ere we could understand their relation
  to ourselves, as products of the same Almighty Hand, as parts
  or members of a family under the same paternal guardianship.
  This more extended survey of the Material Universe just tells
  us how little we know of the Moral or Spiritual Universe.
{120}
  It reveals nothing to us of the worlds that roll in space, but
  the bare elements of Motion, and Magnitude, and Number--and so
  leaves us at a more hopeless distance from the secret of the
  Divine administration than when we reasoned of the Earth as the
  Universe, of our species as the alone rational family of God
  that He had implicated with body, or placed in the midst of a
  corporeal system. ...

  "To know that we cannot know certain things, is in itself
  positive knowledge, and a knowledge of the most safe and
  valuable nature. ... There are few services of greater value to
  the cause of knowledge than the delineation of its boundaries."
  [Footnote 22]

  [Footnote 22: Chalmers's Works: Natural Theology, pp. 249-265;
  Glasgow.]

In holding this language, what in effect is Dr. Chalmers doing?
He is separating what is finite from what is infinite, the thing
created from the Creator, the world subject to government from
the Sovereign that governs it; and in marking this line of
demarcation, he says in his modesty to science, what God in his
power says to the ocean: "Thus far shalt thou go, and no
farther."

{121}

Doctor Chalmers was right; the limits of the finite world are
those also of human science: how far within these vast limits
science may extend her empire, who shall affirm? But what we
certainly may assert is, that she never can exceed them. The
finite world alone is within her reach, the only world that she
can fathom. It is only in the finite world that man's mind can
fully grasp the facts, observe them in all their extent, and
under all their aspects, discriminate their relations and their
laws (which constitute also a species of facts), and so verify
the system to which they should be referred. This it is that
makes what we term scientific processes and labour, and human
sciences are the results.

What need to mention that in speaking of the finite world, I do
not mean to speak of the material world alone? Moral facts there
also are which fall under observation, and enter into the domain
of science.
{122}
The study of man in his actual condition, whether considered as
an individual or as forming a member of a nation, is also a
scientific study, subject to the same method as that of the
material world: and it is its legitimate province also to detect
in the actual order of this world the laws of those particular
facts to which it addresses itself.

But if the limits of the finite world are those of human science,
they are not those of the human soul. Man contains in himself
ideas and ambitious aspirations extending far beyond and rising
far above the finite world, ideas of and aspirations towards the
Infinite, the Ideal, the Perfect, the Immutable, the Eternal.
These ideas and aspirations are themselves realities admitted by
the human mind; but even in admitting them man's mind comes to a
halt; they give him a presentiment of, or to speak with more
precision, a revelation of, an order of things different from the
facts and laws of the finite world which lies under his
observation; but whilst man has of this superior order the
instinct and the perspective, he can have of it no positive
knowledge.
{123}
It proceeds from the sublimity of his nature if he has a glimpse
of Infinity--if he aspires to it; whereas it results from the
infirmity of his actual condition if his positive knowledge is
limited by the world in which he exists.

I was born in the south, under the very sun. I have yet, for the
most part, lived in regions either of the north, or bordering
upon the north, regions so frequently immersed in mists. When
under their pale sky we look towards the horizon, a fog of
greater or less density limits the view; the vision itself might
penetrate much farther, but an external obstacle arrests it; it
does not find there the light it needs. Regard now the horizon
under the pure and brilliant sky of the south; the plains,
distant as well as near, are bathed in light; the human eye can
penetrate there as far as its organization permits. If it pierces
no farther, it is not for want of light, but because its proper
and natural force has attained its limit: the mind knows that
there are spaces beyond that which the eye traverses, but the eye
penetrates them not.
{124}
This is an image of what happens to the mind itself when
contemplating and studying the universe: it reaches a point where
its clear sight, that is to say its positive appreciation, halts,
not that it finds there the end of things themselves, but the
limit of man's scientific appreciation of them; other realities
present themselves to him; he has a glimpse of them; he believes
in them spontaneously and naturally; it is not given to him to
grasp them and to measure them; but he can neither ignore them,
nor know them, neither have positive knowledge of them, nor
refrain from having faith in them.

I cannot deny myself the pleasure of citing what I wrote thirteen
years ago upon the same subject, when philosophically examining
the real meaning of the word _faith_. "The object of every
religious belief," said I, "is in a certain, a large measure,
inaccessible to human science. Human science may establish that
object's reality; it may arrive at the boundary of this
mysterious world; and assure itself of the existence there of
facts with which man's destiny is connected; but it is not given
to it so to attain the facts themselves as to subject them to its
examination.

{125}

"Their incapacity to do so has struck more than one philosopher,
and has led them to the conclusion that no such reality exists,
that every religious belief contemplates subjects simply
chimerical. Others, shutting their eyes to their own
incompetency, have dashed daringly forwards towards the sphere of
the supernatural; and just as if they had succeeded in
penetrating into it, they have described its facts, resolved its
problems, assigned its laws. It is difficult to say who shows
more foolish arrogance, the man who maintains that that of which
he cannot have positive knowledge has no real existence, or the
man who pretends to be able to know everything that actually
exists. However this may be, mankind has never for a single day
assented to either assertion: man's instincts and his actions
have constantly disavowed both the negation of the disbeliever
and the confidence of the theologian.
{126}
In spite of the former, he has persisted in believing in the
existence of the unknown world, and in the reality of the
relations which connect him with it: and notwithstanding the
powerful influences of the latter, he has refused to admit their
having attained their object--raised the veil; and so man has
continued to agitate the same problems, to pursue the same
truths, as ardently and as laboriously as at the first day, just
as if nothing had been done at all." [Footnote 23]

    [Footnote 23: Meditations et Êtudes Morales,
    p. 170. Paris, 1851.]

I have just read again the excellent compendium given by M.
Cousin in his _General History of Philosophy from the most
Ancient Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century_. He
establishes that all the philosophical labours of the human
understanding have terminated in four great systems--sensualism,
idealism, scepticism, and mysticism--the sole actors in that
intellectual arena where, in all ages and amongst all nations,
they are in turn in the position of combatants and of sovereigns.
{127}
And, after having clearly characterised in their origin and their
development these four systems, M. Cousin adds, "As for their
intrinsic merits, habituate yourselves to this principle: they
have existed; therefore they had their reason to exist; therefore
they are true at least in part. Error is the law of our nature:
to it we are condemned; and in all our opinions and all our words
there is always a large allowance to be made for error, and too
often for absurdity. But absolute absurdity does not enter into
the mind of man; it is the excellence of man's thought, that
without some leaven of truth it admits nothing, and absolute
error is impossible. The four systems which have just been
rapidly laid before you have had each their existence; therefore
they contain truth, still without being entirely true. Partially
true, and partially false, these systems reappear at all the
great epochs. Time cannot destroy any one of them, nor can it
beget any new one, because time develops and perfects the human
mind, though without changing its nature and its fundamental
tendencies.
{128}
Time does no more than multiply and vary almost infinitely the
combinations of the four simple and elementary systems. Hence
originate those countless systems which history collects and
which it is its office to explain." [Footnote 24]

    [Footnote 24: Histoire Générale de la Philosophic depuis les
    temps les plus anciens jusqu'à la fin du XVIII Siècle, par M.
    Victor Cousin, pp. 4-31. 1863.]

M. Cousin excels in explaining these numberless philosophical
combinations, and in tracing them all back to the four great
systems which he has defined; but there is a fact still more
important than the variety of these combinations, and which calls
itself for explanation. Why did these four essential
systems--sensualism, idealism, scepticism, and mysticism, appear
from the most ancient times? why have they continued to reproduce
themselves always and everywhere, with deductions more or less
logical, with greater or less ability, but still fundamentally
always and everywhere the same? Why, upon these supreme
questions, did the human mind achieve at so early a period, what
may be termed, it is true, but essays at a solution, but which
essays in some sort have exhausted the mind rather than satisfied
it?
{129}
How is it that these different systems, invented with such
promptitude, have never been able either to come to an accord,
nor has any one been able to prevail decidedly against another
and to cause itself to be received as the truth? Why has
philosophy, or, to speak more precisely, why have metaphysics,
remained essentially stationary; great at their birth, but
destined not to grow: whereas the other sciences--those styled
natural sciences--have been essentially progressive: at first
feeble, and making in succession conquest after conquest; these
they have been able to retain, until they have formed a domain
day by day more extended and less contested?

The very fact that suggests these questions contains the answer
to them. Man has, upon the fundamental subject of metaphysics, a
primitive light, rather the heritage and dowry of human nature,
than the conquest of human science.
{130}
The metaphysician appropriates it as a torch to lighten him on
his obscure and ill-defined path. He finds in man himself a point
of departure at once profound and certain; but his aim is God;
that is to say, an aim above his reach.

Must we, then, renounce the study of the great questions which
form the subject of metaphysics as a vain labour, where the human
mind is turning indefinitely in the same circle, incapable not
only of attaining the object which it is pursuing, but of making
any advance in its pursuit?

Often, and with more ability than has been evinced by the
Positive school of the present day, has this judgment been
pronounced against metaphysics. But that judgment man's mind has
never accepted, and never will accept; the great problems which
pass beyond the finite world lie propounded before him; never
will he renounce the attempt to solve them; he is impelled to it
by an irresistible instinct, an instinct full of faith and of
hope, in spite of the repeated failure of his efforts.
{131}
As man is in the sphere of action, so is he also in that of
thought; he aspires higher than it is possible to achieve: this
is his nature and his glory; to renounce his aspirations would be
declaring his own forfeiture. But without any such abdication, it
is still necessary that he should know himself, it is necessary
that he should understand that his strength here below is
infinitely less than his ambition, and that it is not given him
to have any positive scientific knowledge of that infinite and
ideal world towards which he dashes. The facts and the problems
which he there encounters are such, that the methods and the laws
which direct the human mind in the study of the finite world are
inapplicable. The infinite is for us the object not of science
but belief, and it is alike impossible for us either to reject or
penetrate it.
{132}
Let man, then, feel a profound sentiment of that double truth:
let him, without sacrificing the ambitious aspirations of his
intelligence, recognise the limits imposed upon his achievements
in science; he will not then be long in also recognising that, in
the relations of the finite with the infinite--of himself with
God--he stands in need of superhuman assistance, and that this
does not fail him. God has given to man what man never can
conquer, and revelation opens to him that world of the infinite
over which, by its own exertions and of itself alone, man's mind
never could spread light. The light man receives from God
himself.

{133}

             Fifth Meditation.

                Revelation.


When it was objected to Leibnitz "that there is nothing in the
intelligence that has not first been in the sense," Leibnitz
replied, "if not the intelligence itself." [Footnote 25]

    [Footnote 25: Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit
    in sensu.--Nisi intellectus ipse.]

In the answer of Leibnitz I will change but a single word, and
substitute for _intelligence, soul_. _Soul_ is a term
more comprehensive and more complete than _intelligence;_ it
embraces everything in the human being that is not body and
matter; it is not the mere intelligence, a special faculty of
man; it is all the intellectual and moral man.

{134}

The soul possesses itself and carries with it into life native
faculties and an inborn light: these manifest and develop
themselves more and more as they come into relation with the
exterior world; but they had still an existence prior to those
relations, and they exercise an important influence upon what
results. The external world does not create nor essentially
change the intellectual and moral being that has just come into
life, but it opens to it a stage where that being acts in
accordance at once with its proper nature, and the conditions and
influences in the midst of which the action takes place. The
hypothesis of a statue endowed with sensibility is a
contradiction; in seeking to explain man's first growth, it loses
sight of the entire intellectual and moral being.

When, as I said before, man first entered the world, he did not
enter it, he could not enter it, as a new-born babe, with the
mere breath of life; he was created full grown, with instincts
and faculties complete in their power and capable of immediate
action.
{135}
We must either deny the creation and be driven to monstrous
hypotheses, or admit that the human being who now develops
himself slowly and laboriously, was at his first appearance
mature in body and in mind.

The creation implies then the Revelation, a revelation which
lighted man at his entrance into the world, and qualified him
from that very moment to use his faculties and his instincts. Do
we, can we, picture to ourselves the first man, the first human
couple, with a complete physical development, and yet without the
essential conditions of intellectual activity, physically strong
and morally a nonentity, the body of twenty years and the soul in
the first hour of infancy? Such a fact is self-contradictory, and
impossible of conception.

What was the positive extent of this primal revelation, the
necessary attendant upon creation, which occurred in the first
relation of God with man? No man can say. I open the book of
Genesis and there I read:

{136}

"And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of
Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the Lord God commanded the
man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not
eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt
surely die. And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man
should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. And out of
the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and
every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he
would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living
creature, that was the name thereof. And Adam gave names to all
cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the
field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him. And
the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept:
and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead
thereof; and the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made
he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
{137}
And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my
flesh. ... Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother,
and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh."
[Footnote 26]

  [Footnote 26: Genesis ii. 15-24.]

According, then, to the Bible, the primitive revelation
essentially bore upon the three points,--marriage, language, and
the duty of man's obedience to God his Creator: Adam received at
the hand of God the moral law of his liberty, the companion of
his life, and the faculty by which he was enabled to name the
creatures that were around him: in other words, the three sources
of religion, of family, and of science were immediately unclosed
to him. It is not necessary here to enter upon any of the
questions which have been raised, as to the human origin of
language, the primitive language, or the formation of families,
with their influence upon the great organisation of society: the
limits of the primitive revelation cannot be determined
scientifically; the fact of the revelation itself is certain.
{138}
This is the light which lighted the first man from his first
entrance upon life, and without which it is impossible to
conceive that he could have survived.

The primitive revelation did not abandon mankind on its
development and dispersion; it accompanied it everywhere, as a
general and permanent revelation. The light which had lighted the
first man spread amongst all nations and throughout all ages,
assuming the character of ideas, universal and uncontested; of
instincts, spontaneous and indestructible. No nation has been
without this light, none left to its own unassisted efforts to
grope its way through the darkness of life. Let not the human
understanding pride itself too much upon its works; the glory
does not belong to it alone: what it has accomplished it has
accomplished by aid of the primitive principles received from
God; in all his works and all his progress man has had for point
of departure and support that primitive revelation.
{139}
All the grand doctrines, all the mighty institutions, which have
governed the world, whatever intermixture of monstrous and fatal
errors they may have contained, have preserved a trace of the
fundamental verities which were the dowry of humanity at its
birth. God has forsaken no portion of the human race; and not
less amidst the errors into which it has fallen, than in the
noble developments which constitute its glory, we recognise signs
of the primitive teaching derived from its Divine Author.

After the revelation made to the first man, and in the midst of
the general revelation diffused over all mankind, a great event
occurs in history: a special revelation takes place, and has for
its seat the bosom of an inconsiderable nation, that had been
shut in during sixteen centuries in a little corner of the world;
and it was thence that, nineteen centuries ago, that revelation
proceeded to enlighten and to subdue, according to the
predictions of its Author, all the human race.

{140}

A man of an imagination as fertile as his knowledge is profound,
who, with an admirable candour has in his works associated
hypothesis and faith, M. Ewald, professor at the University of
Göttingen, has recently thus characterised this event:--"The
history of the old Jewish people is fundamentally the history of
the true religion, proceeding from step to step to its complete
development, rising through all kinds of struggles, until it
achieves a supreme victory, and finally manifesting itself in all
its majesty and power, in order to spread irresistibly, by its
proper virtue, so as to become the eternal possession and
blessing of all nations." [Footnote 27]

    [Footnote 27: H. Ewald, Geschichte des Volkes Israel, bis
    Christus. 2nd ed., vol. i. p. 9. Göttingen, 1851. ]

How is the great event thus characterised by M. Ewald proved? By
what marks can we distinguish the Divine origin of this special
revelation that became the Christian religion? What does it
affirm itself in support of its claim to the moral conquest of
mankind?

{141}

At the very outset, in proving her dogmas and precepts to have
come from God, the Christian revelation asserts that the
documents in which it is written are themselves of divine origin.
The divine inspiration of the sacred volume is the first basis of
the Christian Faith, the external title of Christianity to
authority over souls. What is the full import of this title? What
the signification of the inspiration of the sacred volumes?

{142}

             Sixth Meditation.

    The Inspiration Of The Scriptures.


I have read the sacred volumes over and over again, I have
perused them in very different dispositions of mind, at one time
studying them as great historical documents, at another admiring
them as sublime works of poetry. I have experienced an
extraordinary impression, quite different from either curiosity
or admiration. I have felt myself the listener of a language
other than that of the chronicler or the poet; and under the
influence of a breath issuing from other sources than human. Not
that man does not occupy a great place in the sacred volumes; he
displays himself there, on the contrary, with all his passions,
his vices, his weaknesses, his ignorance, his errors; the Hebrew
people shows itself rude, barbarous, changeable, superstitious,
accessible to all the imperfections, to all the failings, of
other nations.
{143} But the Hebrew is not the sole actor in his history; he has
an Ally, a Protector, a Master, who intervenes incessantly to
command, inspire, direct, strike, or save. God is there, always
present, acting--

  "Et ce n'est pas un Dieu comme vos dieux frivoles,
  Insensibles et sourds, impuissants, mutilés,
  De bois, de marbre, ou d'or, comme vous le voulez." [Footnote 28]

  "Not such a god as are _your_ friv'lous gods,
  Insensible and deaf, weak, mutilated,
  Of wood, or stone, or gold, as _you_ will have them."

    [Footnote 28: Corneille, Polyeucte, acte iv. sc. 3.]

It is the God One and Supreme, All Powerful, the Creator, the
Eternal. And even in their forgetfulness and their disobedience,
the Hebrews believe still in God: He is still the object at once
of their fear, of their hope, and of a faith that persists in the
midst of the infidelity of their lives. The Bible is no poem in
which man recounts and sings the adventures of his God combined
with his own; it is a real drama, a continued dialogue between
God and man personified in the Hebrews; it is, on the one side,
God's will and God's action, and, on the other, man's liberty and
man's faith, now in pious association, now at fatal variance.

{144}

The more I have perused the Scriptures, the more surprised I feel
that earnest readers should not have been impressed as I have
been, and that several should have failed to see the
characteristic of divine inspiration, so foreign to every other
book, so remarkable in this one. That men who absolutely deny all
supernatural action of God in the world, should not be more
disposed to admit it in the sources of the Bible than elsewhere,
is perfectly comprehensible; but the attack upon the divine
inspiration of the sacred books has another motive, and one more
likely to prove contagious. It is not without deep regret that I
proceed in this place to contradict ancient traditions, at once
respected and respectable, and perhaps to offend sober and
sincere convictions. But my own conviction is stronger than my
regret, and it is still more so because accompanied by another
conviction, which is, that the system that it is my intention to
contest, has occasioned, continues to occasion, and may still
occasion, an immense ill to Christianity.

{145}

Whoever reads without prejudice in the Hebrew and Greek the
original texts of the Scriptures, whether of the Old or New
Testament, meets there often in the midst of their sublime
beauties, I do not say merely faults of style, but of grammar, in
violation of those logical and natural rules of language common
to all tongues. Are we to infer that these faults have the same
origin as the doctrines with which they are intermixed, and that
they are both divinely inspired? [Footnote 29]

    [Footnote 29: I indicate, in a note placed at the end of this
    volume, some instances of these grammatical faults met with
    in the Scriptures, and to which it is impossible to assign
    the character of divine inspiration.]

And yet this is what is pretended by fervent and learned men, who
maintain that all, absolutely all, in the Scriptures is divinely
inspired--the words as well as the ideas, all the words used
upon all subjects, the material of language as well as the
doctrine which lies at its base.

{146}

In this assertion I see but deplorable confusion, leading to
profound misapprehension both of the meaning and the object of
the sacred books. It was not God's purpose to give instruction to
men in grammar, and if not in grammar, neither was it, any more
God's purpose to give instruction in geology, astronomy,
geography, or chronology. It is on their relations with their
Creator, upon duties of men towards Him and towards each other,
upon the rule of faith and of conduct in life, that God has
lighted them by light from heaven. It is to the subject of
religion and morals, and to these alone, that the inspiration of
the Scriptures is directed.

Amongst the principal arguments alleged to prove that everything
in the sacred volumes is divinely inspired, particular use has
been made of the Second Epistle of St. Paul to Timothy, where in
effect we find the passage:--

  "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is
  profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for
  instruction in righteousness:

  "That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto
  all good works." [Footnote 30]

    [Footnote 30: 2 Timothy iii. 16, 17.]

{147}

Is it possible to determine in words of greater precision the
religious and moral object of the inspiration?

Appeal is made to a consideration of a different description. If,
it is said, we at the same time admit, on the one side, the
inspiration of the sacred books, and on the other, that this
inspiration is not universal and absolute, who shall make the
selection between these two parts?--who mark the limit of the
inspiration?--who say which texts, which passages are inspired,
and which are not? So to divide the Holy Scriptures is to strip
them of their supernatural character, to destroy their
authenticity, by surrendering them to all the incertitudes, all
the disputes of men: a complete and uninterrupted inspiration
alone is capable of commanding faith.

{148}

Never-dying pretension of man's weakness! Created intelligent and
free, he proposes to use largely his intelligence and his
freedom; at the same time, conscious how feeble his means are,
how inadequate to his aspirations, he invokes a guide, a support;
and from the very moment that his hope fixes upon it, he will
have it immutable, infallible. He searches a fixed point to which
to attach himself with absolute and permanent assurance. In
creating man, God did not leave him without fixed points; the
Divine revelation, and the inspiration of the Scriptures, had
precisely for object and effect to supply these, but not on all
subjects alike and without distinction. I refer here again to
what I lately said respecting the separation of the finite and
the infinite, of the world created, and of its Creator. At the
same time that the limits of the finite world are those of human
science, it is to human study and human science that God has
surrendered the finite world; it is not there that God has set up
his divine torch; He has dictated to Moses the laws which
regulate the duties of man towards God, and of man towards man;
but He has left to Newton the discovery of the laws which preside
over the universe.
{149}
The Scriptures speak upon all subjects; circumstances connected
with the finite world are there incessantly mixed with
perspectives of infinity; but it is only to the latter, to that
future of which they permit us to snatch a view, and to the laws
which they impose upon men, that the divine inspiration addresses
itself; God only pours his light in quarters which man's eye and
man's labour cannot reach; for all that remains, the sacred books
speak the language used and understood by the generations to whom
they are addressed. God does not, even when He inspires them,
transport into future domains of science the interpreters He
uses, or the nations to whom He sends them; He takes them both as
He finds them, with their traditions, their notions, their degree
of knowledge or ignorance as respects the finite world, of its
phenomena and its laws.
{150}
It is not the condition, the scientific progress of the human
understanding; it is the condition and moral progress of the
human soul which are the object of the Divine action, and God
requires not for the exercise of his power on the human soul,
science either as a precursor or a companion; He addresses
himself to instincts and desires the most intimate and most
sublime as well as the most universal in man's nature, to
instincts and desires of which science is neither the object nor
the measure, and which require to be satisfied from other
sources. Whatever true or false science we find in the Scriptures
upon the subject of the finite world, proceeds from the writers
themselves or their contemporaries; they have spoken as they
believed, or as those believed who surrounded them when they
spoke: on the other hand, the light thrown over the infinite, the
law laid down, and the perspective opened by that same light,
these are what proceed from God, and which He has inspired in the
Scriptures. Their object is essentially and exclusively moral and
practical; they express the ideas, employ the images, and speak
the language best calculated to produce a powerful effect upon
the soul, to regenerate and to save it. I open the Gospel
according to St. Luke, and I there read the admirable parable:--

{151}

  "There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and
  fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day:

  "And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid
  at his gate, full of sores,

  "And desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the
  rich man's table: moreover the dogs came and licked his sores.

  "And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by
  the angels into Abraham's bosom: the rich man also died, and
  was buried;

  "And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth
  Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.

  "And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and
  send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water,
  and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.

  "But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime
  receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things;
  but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented.

  "And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf
  fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot;
  neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence.

  "Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou
  wouldest send him to my father's house:

{152}

  "For I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest
  they also come into this place of torment.

  "Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let
  them hear them.

  "And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them
  from the dead, they will repent.

  "And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets,
  neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead."
  [Footnote 31]

    [Footnote 31: Luke xvi. 19-31.]

Was it the intention of Jesus, and of the Evangelist who has
repeated his words, to describe, as they really are, the
condition of men after their earthly existence, their positive
local position after God's judgment, and their relations either
with each other or with the world which they have quitted?
Certainly not; the material circumstances intermixed with this
dialogue are only images borrowed from actual common life. But
what images so strike, so penetrate the soul? What more solemn
warning addressed to men in this life, to rouse them to a sense
of their duties towards God and their fellow creatures, in the
name of the mysterious future that awaits them?

{153}

Nothing is further from my thought than to see in the sacred
books mere poetical images and symbols; those books are really,
with respect to the religious problems that beset man's thoughts,
the Light and the voice of God; still, that Light only lights,
that voice only reveals revelations of God with man, duties which
God enjoins men in the course of their present life, and
prospects which He opens to them beyond the imperfect and limited
world where this life passes. As for this life itself, it is the
object of human study and science, not of the inspiration of the
sacred Scriptures. In disregarding this limit, in pretending to
attribute to the language of the Scriptures, used with reference
to the phenomena of the finite world, the character of divine
inspiration, men have fallen with respect both to thought and act
into deplorable errors. Hence proceeded the trial of Galileo, and
numerous other controversies, numerous other condemnations still
more absurd, still more to be regretted, in which Christianity
was immediately placed in opposition to human science, and
constrained to inflict or receive remarkable disavowals.
{154}
The same is the case at the present day with respect to numerous
objections made in the name of the natural sciences to
Christianity, and which from the learned circles where they have
their birth, spread over a world at once curious and frivolous,
where they cause the Christian faith itself to be regarded as
ignorant credulity. Nothing of this kind could ever occur, no
necessity of such conflict could await the Christian religion, if
on the one side the limits of human science, and on the other
those of divine inspiration, were recognised as they really are,
and respected according to their rightful claims.

I might cite in aid of the opinion I support numerous and great
authorities. I will refer to but three, appealed to by Galileo
himself in 1615 in his letters to the Grand Duchess Christina of
Lorraine" [Footnote 32]--(who could appeal to authorities more
august?)--"Many things," says St. Jerome, "are recounted in the
Scriptures according to the judgment of the times when they
happened, and not according to the truth." [Footnote 33]

  [Footnote 32: Opere Complete di Galileo-Galilei, t. ii. chap.
  ii. pp. 26-64. Florence, 1843.]

  [Footnote 33: OEuvres de St. Jérôme, Comment, in Jeremiam, ed.
  Vallars. t. ix. p. 1040.]

{155}

  "The purpose of the Holy Scriptures," says the Cardinal
  Baronius, "is to teach us how to go to heaven, and not how the
  heavens go." "This," says Kepler, "is the counsel I give to the
  man so ill informed as not to understand the science of
  astronomy, or so weak as to regard adhesion to Copernicus as
  proof of want of piety:--Let him at once leave the study of
  astronomy and the examination of the opinions of philosophers;
  instead of devoting himself to those arduous researches, let
  him remain at home, till his fields, and occupy himself with
  his proper business; and thence, raising towards the admirable
  vault of heaven his eyes, which constitute for him his sole
  mode of vision, let him pour forth his heart in thanksgivings
  and praises to God his Creator. He may rest assured that he is
  thus rendering to God a worship as perfect as that of the
  astronomer himself, to whom God has accorded the gift of seeing
  clearer with the eyes of his intelligence; but who, above all
  the worlds and all the heavens that he attains, knows and wills
  to find his God." [Footnote 34]

    [Footnote 34: Kepler, Nova Astronomia, Introductio, p. 9.
    Prague, 1609.]

{156}

I discard, then, as absolutely foreign to the grand question that
occupies me, all the difficulties suggested to the Scriptures in
the name of those sciences whose province is finite nature. I
seek and consider in these books only what is their sole
object,--the relations of God with man, and the solution of those
problems which these relations cause to weigh upon the human
soul. The deeper we go in the study of the sacred volumes,
restored to their real object, the more the divine inspiration
becomes manifest and striking. God and man are there ever both
present, both actors in the same history. Of this history it is
my present object to illustrate the grand features.

{157}

           Seventh Meditation.

       God According To The Bible.


It is far from my intention to evade the questions which concern
the authenticity of the Bible, and of the respective books which
compose it. I shall enter upon them in the second series of these
_Meditations_, when I touch upon the history of the
Christian religion. Those questions, however, have no bearing
upon the subject which occupies me at the present moment; the
Bible, whatever its antiquity, whatever the comparative antiquity
of its different parts, has been ever that witness of God in
which the Hebrews believed, and under the law of which they
lived, the great monument of the religion in the bosom of which
the Christian religion took its birth. It is this God of whom in
the Bible, and in the Bible alone, it is my purpose to seek the
peculiar and true character.

{158}

The nations of Semitic origin have been honoured for their
primitive and persistent faith in the unity of God. Under
different forms, and amidst events very dissimilar, nearly all
nations have been polytheistic; the Semitic nations alone have
believed firmly in the one God. This great moral fact has been
attributed to different and to complex causes; but the fact
itself is generally acknowledged and admitted.

In two respects in this assertion there is exaggeration. On one
side, among the nations of Semitic origin, several were
polytheistic; the descendants of Abraham, the Hebrews, and the
Arab Ishmaelites, alone remained really monotheistic; on the
other side, the idea of the unity of God was not entirely strange
even to the polytheistic nations. The greater part, like the
Hindoos and the Greeks, admitted one sole and primordial Power
anterior and superior to their gods;--idea, vague and searched
from afar, derived from the instinct of man or the reflection of
the philosopher, and which amongst those nations became neither
the basis of any religion that deserves the name, nor any
efficacious obstacle to idolatry.
{159}
The God of the Bible is no such sterile abstraction; He is the
one God at the present time as in the origin of all things, the
personal God, living, acting, and presiding efficiently over the
destinies of the world that He has created.

He has besides another characteristic, one far more striking,
which belongs to Him more exclusively than that of Unity. The
gods of the polytheistic nations have histories filled with
events, vicissitudes, transformations, adventures. The mythology
of the Egyptians, of the Hindoos, of the Greeks, of the
Scandinavians, and numerous others, is but the poetical or
symbolical recital of the varied and agitated lives of their
gods. We detect in these recitals sometimes the personification
of the fancies of nations described in accordance with their
actual phenomena, some times the reminiscences of human
personages who have struck the imagination of the people.
{160}
But whatever their origin, whatever their name, each of those
gods has his individual history more or less overladen with
incidents and acts, now heroic, now licentious, now elegantly
fantastic, now grossly eccentric. All the polytheistic religions
are collections of biographies, divine or legendary, allegorical
or completely fabulous, in which the careers and the passions,
the actions and the dreams of men, reproduce themselves under the
forms and names of deities.

The God of the Bible has no biography, neither has He any
personal adventures. Nothing occurs to Him and nothing changes in
Him; He is always and invariably the same, a Being real and
personal, absolutely distinct from the finite world and from
humanity, identical and immutable in the bosom of the universal
diversity and movement. "I Am That I Am," is the sole definition
that He vouchsafes of himself, and the constant expression of
what He is in all the course of the history of the Hebrews, to
which He is present and over which He presides without ever
receiving from it any reflex of influence.
{161}
Such is the God of the Bible, in evident and permanent contrast
with all the gods of polytheism, still more distinct and more
solitary by his nature than by his Unity.

This is, indeed, so peculiarly the proper and essential character
of the God of the Bible, that this character has passed into the
very language of the Hebrews, and has become there the very name
of God. Several words are employed in the Bible as appellations
of God. One of these _El, Eloah,_ in the plural
_Elohïm_, expresses force, _creative power_, and is
applied to the manifold gods of Paganism as well as to the one
God of the Hebrews. _El Shaddaï_ is translated by _the
all-powerful_. _Adonai_ signifies _Lord_. The word
_Yahwe_ or _Yehwe_, which becomes in Hebrew
pronunciation _Jehovah_, means simply _He is_, and
means self-existence, the Being Absolute and Eternal.
{162}
This name occurs in no other of the Semitic languages, and it is
at the epoch of Moses that it appears for the first time amongst
the Hebrews: "And God spake unto Moses, and said unto him, I am
the Eternal" (_Yahwe, Jehovah_). "And I appeared unto
Abraham, Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of the All-powerful
(_El Shaddaï_), but by my name Eternal was I not known to
them." [Footnote 35 ] _Yahwe, Jehovah_, is at once the true
God and the national God of Israel.  [Footnote 36]

    [Footnote 35: Exodus vi. 2, 3.]

    [Footnote 36: I have consulted respecting the precise sense
    and the different shades of meaning of the terms expressing
    God in Hebrew, my learned _confrère_ at the Academy of
    Inscriptions, M. Munk, who has replied to all my inquiries
    with as much clearness as courtesy.]

The history of the Hebrews is neither less significant nor less
expressive than their language; it is the history of the
relations of the God, One and Immutable with the people chosen by
Him to be the special representative of the religious principle,
and the regenerating source of religious life in the human race.
{163}
This people undergoes the destiny and trials common to all
nations; it demands, and becomes subject to, a variety of
different governments; it falls into the errors and faults usual
to nations; it frequently succumbs to the temptations of
idolatry; like the others, it has its days of virtue and of vice,
of prosperity and of reverses, of glory and of abasement. Amidst
all the vicissitudes and errors of the people of the Bible, the
God of the Bible remains invariably the same, without any
tincture of anthropomorphism, without any alteration in the idea
which the Hebrews conceive of his nature, either during their
fidelity or disobedience to his Commandments. It is always the
God who has said, "I Am That I Am," of whom his people demand no
other explanation of himself, and who, ever present and
sovereign, pursues the designs of his providence with men, who
either use or abuse the liberty of action which that God had
accorded to them at their creation. I wish to retrace, according
to the Bible, the principal phases and the principal actors in
this history.
{164}
The more I study, the more I feel that I am watching, as M. Ewald
has expressed it, "the career of the true religion, advancing
step by step to its complete development," that is to say, that I
am there observing the action of God upon the first steps and
upon the religious progress of the human race.


           I. God And Abraham.


The history of the Hebrews, temporal and spiritual, opens with
Abraham. At his first appearance in the Bible, Abraham is a nomad
chief, who has quitted Chaldæa and the town of Haran, where his
father, Terah, descended from Shem, is still living. He is
wandering with his family, his servants, and his flocks, at first
on the frontiers and afterwards in the interior of the land of
Canaan, halting wherever he finds water and pasturage, and
conducting his tents and his tribe at one time through the
mountainous districts, at another along the plains below. Why has
he left Chaldæa?
{165}
According to the Bible itself, his father was an idolater: "Your
fathers," said Joshua to the people of Israel, "dwelt on the
other side of the flood" (the Euphrates) "in old time, even
Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nachor: and they
served other gods." [Footnote 37] The book of Judith contains a
similar assertion; [Footnote 38] and the Jewish and Arabian
traditions confirm, at the same time that they amplify, the
statement: the father of Abraham, they say, was an idolatrous
fanatic, and his son Abraham, having set himself against the
practice of idolatry, was upon his charge thrown into a burning
furnace, from which a miracle alone preserved him. The historian
Josephus speaks of the insurrections which took place amongst the
Chaldæans on the occasion of their religious dissensions.

    [Footnote 37: Joshua xxiv. 2.]

    [Footnote 38: Judith v. 6-9. ]

    [USCCB: Judith v. 6-9.
    "These people are descendants of the Chaldeans. They formerly
    dwelt in Mesopotamia, for they did not wish to follow the
    gods of their forefathers who were born in the land of the
    Chaldeans. Since they abandoned the way of their ancestors,
    and acknowledged with divine worship the God of heaven, their
    forefathers expelled them from the presence of their gods. So
    they fled to Mesopotamia and dwelt there a long time. Their
    God bade them leave their abode and proceed to the land of
    Canaan. Here they settled, and grew very rich in gold,
    silver, and a great abundance of livestock."]

The Bible makes no allusion to these traditions; from the very
beginning God intervenes in the history of the father of the
Hebrews.
{166}
"The Eternal had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country,
and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land
that I will shew thee: I will make thee a great nation, and I
will bless thee, and make thy name great; ... and in thee shall
all families of the earth be blessed. ... So Abram departed, ...
and Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and all
their substance that they had gathered, and the sons that they
had gotten in Haran; and they went forth to go into the land of
Canaan; and into the land of Canaan they came." [Footnote 39]

    [Footnote 39: Genesis xii. 1-5.]

How had God spoken to Abraham? By a voice from without or by an
internal inspiration? The writer of the Biblical narrative
occupies himself in no respect with the question. God is for him,
present and an actor in the history just as much as Abraham is;
the intervention of God has in his eyes nothing but what is
perfectly simple and natural. The same faith animates Abraham; he
issues forth from Chaldæa and wanders through Palestine,
according to the word and under the direction of the Eternal.

{167}

He wanders through the midst of populations already established
upon the land of Canaan, and with these he lives in peace, but
still, not uniting with them; bringing them succour when attacked
by foreign chieftains; fighting in their behalf as a faithful
ally, sometimes, perhaps, in the character of a valiant
_condottiere_ [mercenary], but remaining isolated in his
capacity of nomad Patriarch, with his family and his tribe;
repelling even the gifts and favours which might perhaps lower
his character or affect his independence. Everywhere that he
halts, or that any incident of importance occurs to him, at
Sichem, Bethel, Beersheba, Hebron, he raises an altar to his God.
In his wandering uncertain life a famine impels him on one
occasion even as far as Egypt:--the first perhaps of those
shepherd chiefs who issued from Asia, and who were so soon to
invade that rich country. Abraham passes in Egypt several years,
well treated by the reigning Pharaoh; on excellent terms with the
Egyptian priests, imparting to them and receiving from them such
knowledge of astronomy or of natural philosophy as they mutually
possessed; but maintaining ever carefully the isolation of his
family, of his tribe, and of his religion. Of his own accord, or
at the instance of the Pharaoh, he quits Egypt, carrying with him
not only his flocks and his camels, but his Egyptian slaves, and
amongst others Hagar.
{168}
He returns to the country of Canaan, again wanders through
several of its districts, takes part in different
events--internal troubles or foreign wars, and finally settles
with his family and dependents at Hebron, near the oaks of Mamre,
amongst the tribe of the children of Heth; but still always in
his capacity as a foreigner, and always careful as such to
preserve his character and his independence. When his wife Sarah
died, the book of Genesis tells us that,

  "Abraham stood up from before his dead, and spake unto the sons
  of Heth, saying,

  "I am a stranger and a sojourner with you: give me a possession
  of a buryingplace with you, that I may bury my dead out of my
  sight.

  "And the children of Heth answered Abraham, saying unto him,

{169}

  "Hear us, my lord: thou art a mighty prince among us: in the
  choice of our sepulchres bury thy dead; none of us shall
  withhold from thee his sepulchre, but that thou mayest bury thy
  dead.

  "And Abraham stood up, and bowed himself to the people of the
  land, even to the children of Heth.

  "And he communed with them, saying, If it be your mind that I
  should bury my dead out of my sight; hear me, and entreat for
  me to Ephron the son of Zohar,

  "That he may give me the cave of Machpelah, which he hath,
  which is in the end of his field; for as much money as it is
  worth he shall give it me for a possession of a buryingplace
  amongst you.

  "And Ephron dwelt among the children of Heth: and Ephron the
  Hittite answered Abraham in the audience of the children of
  Heth, even of all that went in at the gate of his city, saying,

  "Nay, my lord, hear me: the field give I thee, and the cave
  that is therein, I give it thee; in the presence of the sons of
  my people give I it thee: bury thy dead.

  "And Abraham bowed down himself before the people of the land.

  "And he spake unto Ephron in the audience of the people of the
  land, saying, But if thou wilt give it, I pray thee, hear me: I
  will give thee money for the field; take it of me, and I will
  bury my dead there.

  "And Ephron answered Abraham, saying unto him,

  "My lord, hearken unto me: the land is worth four hundred
  shekels of silver; what is that betwixt me and thee? bury
  therefore thy dead.

{170}

  "And Abraham hearkened unto Ephron; and Abraham weighed to
  Ephron the silver, which he had named in the audience of the
  sons of Heth, four hundred shekels of silver, current money
  with the merchant.

  "And the field of Ephron, which was in Machpelah, which was
  before Mamre, the field, and the cave which was therein, and
  all the trees that were in the field, that were in all the
  borders round about, were made sure

  "Unto Abraham for a possession in the presence of the children
  of Heth, before all that went in at the gate of his city.

  "And after this, Abraham buried Sarah his wife in the cave of
  the field of Machpelah before Mamre: the same is Hebron in the
  land of Canaan.

  "And the field, and the cave that is therein, were made sure
  unto Abraham for a possession of a buryingplace by the sons of
  Heth." [Footnote 40]

    [Footnote 40: Genesis xxiii. 3-20.]

Little importance does Abraham attach to his precarious condition
as a wanderer and a stranger; he has faith in God. God commands,
and Abraham obeys. God promises, and Abraham trusts. One day,
however, with a feeling of anxious humility, Abraham makes the
following prayer to God:--
  "Lord Eternal, what wilt thou give me, seeing I go childless,
  and there is Eliezer of Damascus shall be my heir?
{171}
  And behold the word of the Lord came unto him, saying, This
  shall not be thine heir, but he that shall come forth out of
  thine own bowels shall be thine heir. I am God, the mighty,
  all-powerful; walk before my face, be thou perfect. I will
  establish my covenant between me and thee, and thy seed after
  thee, in their generation, for an everlasting possession, and I
  will be their God. But thou shalt keep my covenant therefore,
  thou and thy seed after thee, in their generations. And Abraham
  believed in the Lord; and the Eternal counted it to him for
  righteousness." [Footnote 41]

    [Footnote 41: Genesis xv. 1-6. and xvii. 1-9.]

In these days, in the bosom of Christian civilization, obedience
to God and confidence in God are the first precepts, the first
virtues of Christianity. They were also the virtues of Abraham,
and the precepts inculcated by Abraham's history in the Bible.
{172}
And the God of Abraham, the God of the Bible, is the same who is
the object of adoration to the Christian of the present day; the
same conception as that of those philosophers of the present day
who believe in God, and believe in Him as in God Absolute and
Perfect, Self-dependent, Eternal, without the possibility or
attempt to define Him otherwise. Thousands of years have changed
nothing as to the biblical notion of God in the human soul, nor
as to the essential laws regulating the relation of man with God.

Historical tradition fully confirms the moral fact here
mentioned. Abraham has not been the object of any mystical
conception, or any mythological metamorphosis; nowhere has he
been transformed into demigod or son of God; he has ever remained
the model of religious faith and submission, the type of the
pious man in intimate relation with God. Throughout all
antiquity, and in all the East, as much for the primitive
Christians as for the Jews and Arabs, as much for the Mussulmans
as for the Jews and Christians, God is the God of Abraham;
Abraham is the friend of God, the father and the prince of
believers; these are the very names that the Gospel gives him;
[Footnote 42] and the Koran, too, celebrates him in these
words:--

    [Footnote 42: St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans iv.; Galatians
    iii.; Epistle of St. James ii. 23.]

{173}

  "And when the night overshadowed him, he saw a star, and he
  said, This is my Lord; but when it set, he said, I like not
  gods which set. And when he saw the moon rising, he said, This
  is my Lord; but when he saw it set, he said, Verily, if my Lord
  direct me not, I shall become one of the people who go astray.
  And when he saw the sun rising, he said, This is my Lord, this
  is the greatest; but when it set, he said, my people, verily I
  am clear of that which ye associate with God. I direct my face
  unto him who hath created the heavens and the earth." [Footnote
  43]

    [Footnote 43: Koran vi.]

The Eternal, the God One and Immutable, is the God of Abraham;
Abraham is the servant and adorer of the true God.

{174}

           II. God And Moses.


The true idea of God, and the faith in his effectual and
continued providence, are the two great religious principles
which the name of Abraham suggests. This is the beginning of the
history of the Hebrews, and the origin of that ancient Covenant
which, in passing from the Pentateuch to the Gospel, has become
the new Covenant, the Christian Religion.

About five centuries later, we find the Hebrews settled in Egypt,
in the land of Goshen, between the lower Nile, the Red Sea, and
the Desert, in a condition very different from that in which they
had first been when attracted to the court of Pharaoh by the
prosperity of Joseph, the great-grandson of Abraham. The new
Pharaoh oppresses them cruelly; they are a prey to the miseries
of slavery, the contagion of idolatry, to all the evils, all the
perils, physical and moral, which can afflict a nation
numerically weak, fallen under the yoke of one powerful and
civilized.
{175}
The Hebrews nevertheless persist in their religious faith, cling
to their national reminiscences; they do not suffer their
nationality to be lost in and confounded with that of their
masters; they endure without offering any active resistance; they
will not deliver themselves, but they have never ceased to
believe in their God, and they await their Deliverer.

Moses has been saved from the waters of the Nile by Pharaoh's own
daughter. He has been brought up at Heliopolis, in the midst of
the pomp of the court, and instructed in the sciences of the
Egyptian priests. He has served the sovereign of Egypt; he has
commanded his troops and made war for him against the Æthiopians.
He has received an Egyptian name, Osarsiph, or Tisithen.
Everything seems to concur to make him an Egyptian. But he
remains a faithful Israelite: true to the faith and to the
fortunes of his brethren. Their oppression rouses his
indignation; he avenges one of them by killing his oppressor.
{176}
The victims of oppression, alarmed, disavow Moses, instead of
supporting him. Moses flees from Egypt and takes refuge in the
Desert, amongst a tribe of wandering Arabs, the Midianites,
sprung, like himself, from Abraham. Their chief, the sheick of
the tribe, Jethro, called also Hobab, receives him as a son, and
gives him his daughter Zipporah in marriage. The proud Israelite,
who has declined to remain an Egyptian, becomes an Arab, and
leads, several years, the nomadic life of the hospitable tribe.
It is now in the peninsula of Sinai that Moses wanders with the
servants and flocks of his father-in-law. In the centre of that
peninsula, of yore a province in the empire of the Pharaohs, but
which had fallen into the possession of the pastoral Arabs, rises
Sinai, a mount with which from time immemorial, among the
neighbouring tribes, have been connected as many sacred
traditions as have ever been assigned to Mount Ararat in Armenia,
or the Himalayas in India. In this venerable spot, before a
burning bush, Moses, with a heart full of faith, hears God
calling him and commanding him to lead his people, the children
of Israel, out of Egypt.
{177}
Moses is humble, distrustful of himself, just as Abraham before
him had been. "Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that
I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt? ...
When I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them,
The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say
to me, What is his name? What shall I say unto them? And God said
unto Moses I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto
the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you." [Footnote
44]

    [Footnote 44: Exodus iii. 11, 13, 14.]

Moses receives his mission from Jehovah, and feels no other
disquietude than arises from the desire to accomplish it.

In presence of such facts, with this association of God and man
in the same work, the opponents of the Supernatural still
clamour: "Why," ask they, "this confusion of divine action and of
human action? Has God need of man's concurrence?
{178}
Can He not, if He will, accomplish all his designs by himself,
and through the fulness of his omnipotence?" In my turn, I would
ask them if they know why God created man, and if God has put
them into the secret of his intentions towards the instrument
whom He employs for his designs? There precisely lies the
privilege of humanity: man is God's associate, subject to Him,
yet a free agent independent of Him; he intervenes by his proper
action in plans of which only an infinitely small part is
revealed to his intelligence and reserved for his execution.
Western Asia and its history are full of the name of Moses: Jews,
Christians, and Mahometans style him the First Prophet, the Great
Lawgiver, the Great Theologian; everywhere, in the scene of the
events themselves, the places retain a memory of him: the
traveller meets there the Well of Moses, the Ravine of Moses, the
Mountain of Moses, the Valley of Moses.
{179}
In other countries and other ages, this name has been given as
the most glorious that the saints could receive: St. Peter has
been styled the Moses of the Christian Church; St. Benedict, the
Moses of the Monastic Orders; Ulphilas, the Moses of the Goths.
What did Moses do to obtain a renown so great and so enduring? He
gained no battles; he conquered no territory; he founded no
cities; he governed no state; he was not even a man in whom
eloquence replaced other sources of influence and power: "And
Moses said unto the Lord, my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither
heretofore, nor since thou hast spoken unto thy servant: but I am
slow of speech, and of a slow tongue." [Footnote 45]

    [Footnote 45: Exodus iv. 10.]

There is not in this whole history a single grand human action, a
single grand event, proceeding from human agency; all, all is the
work of God; and Moses is nothing on any occasion but the
interpreter and instrument of God: to this mission he has
consecrated soul and life; it is only by virtue of this title
that he is powerful, and that he shares, as far as his capacity
as a man permits, a work infinitely grander and more enduring
than that accomplished by all the heroes and all the masters that
the world ever acknowledged.

{180}

I know no more striking spectacle than that of the unshakeable
faith and inexhaustible energy of Moses in the pursuit of a work
not his own, in which he executes what he has not conceived, in
which he obeys rather than commands. Obstacles and
disappointments meet him at each turn; he has to struggle with
weaknesses, infidelity, caprices, jealousies, and seditions, and
these not merely in his own nation, but in his own family. He has
himself his moments of sadness, of disquietude: "And Moses cried
unto the Lord, saying, What shall I do unto this people? they be
almost ready to stone me.... [Footnote 46] I beseech thee, shew
me thy glory."

    [Footnote 46: Exodus xvii. 4; xxxiii. 18-20.]

And God answers him, "I will make all my goodness pass before
thee. ... Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see
me, and live." And Moses trusts in God, and continues to triumph
whilst he obeys Him.

{181}

The work of deliverance is consummated; Moses has led the people
of Israel out of Egypt, has surmounted the first perils and the
first sufferings of the Desert. They advance through the group of
mountains in the peninsula of Sinai Passing from valley to
valley, they arrive "at the entrance of a large basin surrounded
by lofty peaks. Of these the one which commands the most
extensive view is covered with enormous blocks, as if the
mountain had been overthrown by an earthquake. A deep cleft
divides the peak into two.

"No one who has approached the Râs Sufsâfeh through that noble
plain, or who has looked down upon the plain from that majestic
height, will willingly part with the belief that these are the
two essential features of the view of the Israelitish camp. That
such a plain should exist at all in front of such a cliff is so
remarkable a coincidence with the sacred narrative, as to furnish
a strong internal argument, not merely of its identity with the
scene, but of the scene itself having been described by an
eyewitness.
{182}
The awful and lengthened approach, as to some natural sanctuary,
would have been the fittest preparation for the coming scene. The
low line of alluvial mounds at the foot of the cliff exactly
answers to the 'bounds' which were to keep the people off from
'touching the Mount.' [Footnote 47]

    [Footnote 47: Exodus xix. 12.]

The plain itself is not broken and uneven, and narrowly shut in,
like almost all others in the range, but presenting a long
retiring sweep, against which the people could remove and stand
afar off.' The cliff, rising like a huge altar in front of the
whole congregation, and visible against the sky in lonely
grandeur from end to end of the whole plain, is the very image of
the 'mount that might not be touched,' and from which 'the voice'
of God might be heard far and wide over the stillness of the
plain below, widened at that point to its utmost extent by the
confluence of all the contiguous valleys.
{183}
Here, beyond all other parts of the peninsula, is the adytum,
withdrawn, as if in the end of the world,' from all the stir and
confusion of earthly things." [Footnote 48] Such was three
thousand five hundred years ago, and such is still, the place
where Moses received from God and gave to the people of Israel
that law of the Ten Commandments which resound still through all
the Christian Churches as the first foundation of their faith and
the first moral rule of Christian nations.

    [Footnote 48: Sinai and Palestine in connection with their
    History. By Arthur Stanley, Dean of Westminster, pp. 42, 43.
    London, 1862.]

The Hebrews, at the moment when the Decalogue became their
fundamental law, were in a crisis of social transformation; they
were upon the point of passing from the pastoral nomadic
condition to that of farmers and settlers. It seems that, at such
an epoch, the political institutions of a people would, as the
basis of their government, be its most natural and most urgent
business.
{184}
The Decalogue leaves the subject entirely untouched; makes to it
not the remotest, the most indirect allusion. It is a law
exclusively religious and moral, which only busies itself about
the duties of man to God and to his fellow-creatures, and admits
by its very silence all the varying forms of government that the
external or internal state of society may seem to require.
Characteristic, grand, and original, not to be met with in the
primitive laws of any other nascent state, and an admirable and
remarkable manifestation of the Divine origin of this one! It is
to man's natural and his moral destiny that the Decalogue
addresses itself; it is to guide man's soul and his inmost will
that it lays down rules; whereas it surrenders his external, his
civil condition to all the varying chances of place and of time.

{185}

Another characteristic of this law is not less original or less
urgent: it places God, and man's duties towards God, at the head
and front of man's life and man's duties; it unites intimately
religion and morality, and regards them as inseparable. If
philosophers, in studying, discriminate between them; if they
seek in human nature the special principle or principles of
morality; if they consider the latter by itself and apart from
religion, it is the right of science to do so. But still the
result is but a scientific work--only a partial dissection of
man's soul, addressed to only one part of its faculties, and
holding no account of the entirety and the reality of the soul's
life. The Human Body, taken as one whole, is by nature at once
moral and religious; the moral law that he finds in himself needs
an author and a judge; and God is to him the source and
guarantee, the Alpha and Omega of morality.

A metaphysician may, from time to time, affirm the moral law, and
yet forget its Divine Author. A man may, now and then, admit, may
respect the principles of morality, and yet remain estranged from
religion; all this is possible, for all this we see.
{186}
So small a portion of Truth sometimes satisfies the human mind!
Man is so ready and so prone to misconceive and to mutilate
himself! His ideas are by nature so incomplete and inconsequent,
so easily dimmed or perverted by his Passions or the action of
his free will! These are but the exceptional conditions of the
human mind, mere scientific abstractions; if men admit them,
their influence is neither general nor durable. In the natural
and actual life of the human race, Morality and Religion are
necessarily united; and it is one of the divine characteristics
of the Decalogue, as it is also one of the causes of that
authority which has remained to it after the lapse of so many
centuries, that it has proclaimed and taken as its foundation
their intimate union.

This is not the place to consider the laws of Moses in civil and
penal matters, nor to refer to his ordinances respecting the
worship, or to those that regard the organization of the
priesthood of the Hebrews. In the former of these two branches of
the Mosaic code, numerous dispositions, singularly moral,
equitable, and humane, are found in connection with circumstances
indicating a state of manners gross and cruel even to barbarism.

{187}

The legislator is evidently under the empire of ideas and
sentiments infinitely superior to those of the people, to whom,
nevertheless, his strong sympathies attach him. When we consider
the Mosaic Legislation, we find that in everything which concerns
the external forms and practices of worship, the ideas of Egypt
have made great impression upon the mind of the Lawgiver, and the
frequent use that he has made of Egyptian customs and ceremonies
is not less visible. But far above these institutions and these
traditions, which seem not seldom out of place and incoherent,
soars and predominates constantly the Idea of the God of Abraham
and of Jacob, of the God One and Eternal, of the True God. The
Laws of Moses omit no occasion of inculcating the belief in that
God, and of recalling Him to the recollection of the Hebrews. And
this, not as if they were recalling a principle, an institution,
a system; but as if they propose to place a sovereign, a lawful
and living sovereign, in the presence of those whom he governs,
and to whom they owe obedience and fidelity.

{188}

Moses never speaks in his own name, or in the name of any human
power, or of any portion of the Hebrew nation. God alone speaks
and commands. God's word and his commands Moses repeats to the
people. At his first ascending Mount Sinai, when he had received
the first inspiration from the Eternal, "Moses came and called
for the elders of the people, and laid before their faces all
these words which the Lord commanded him. And all the people
answered together, and said, All that the Lord hath spoken we
will do." [Footnote 49]

    [Footnote 49: Exodus xix. 7, 8.]

When Moses, again ascending Mount Sinai, had received from God
the Decalogue, he returned, "And he took the book of the
covenant, and read in the audience of the people: and they said,
All that the Lord hath said will we do, and be obedient."
[Footnote 50]

    [Footnote 50: Exodus xxiv. 7.]

{189}

As the events develop themselves, the Hebrews are found far from
rendering a constant obedience: they forget, they infringe--and
that frequently--these laws of God which they have accepted; and
God sometimes punishes, sometimes pardons them; still it is
always God alone that is acting; it is from Him alone that all
emanates; neither the priests who preside over the ceremonies of
his worship, nor the elders of Israel whom He summons to
prostrate themselves from afar before Him, nor Moses himself--his
sole and constant interpreter--do anything by themselves, demand
anything for themselves. The Pentateuch is the history and the
picture of the personal government by God of the Israelites. "Our
legislator," says the historian Josephus, "had in his thoughts
not monarchies, nor oligarchies, nor democracies, nor any one of
those political institutions: he commanded that our government
should be (if it is permitted to make use of an expression
somewhat exaggerated) what may be styled a Theocracy." [Footnote
51]

    [Footnote 51: Joseph. contra Apionem, ii. c. 17.]

{190}

The eminent writers who have recently studied most profoundly the
Mosaic system--M. Ewald in Germany,[Footnote 52] Mr. Milman and
Mr. Arthur Stanley in England, M. Nicolas in France--have adopted
the expression of Josephus, attaching to it its real and complete
sense. "The term Theocracy," says Mr. Stanley, "has been often
employed since the time of Moses, but in the sense of a
sacerdotal government: a sense the very contrary to that in which
its first author conceived it. The theocracy of Moses was not at
all a government by priests, or opposed to kings; it was the
government by God himself, as opposed to a government by priests
or by kings." [Footnote 53]

    [Footnote 52: Geschichte des Volkes Israel, bis Christus, ii.
    188. Göttingen, 1853.]

    [Footnote 53: Lectures on the Jewish Church, p. 157]

{191}

"Mosaism," says M. Nicolas, "is a theocracy in the proper sense
of the word. It would be a complete error to understand this word
in the sense which usage has given to it in our language. There
is no question here in effect of a government exercised by a
sacerdotal caste in the name and under the inspiration, real or
pretended, of God. In the Mosaic legislation the priests are not
the ministers and instruments of the Divine Will; God reigns and
governs by himself. It is He who has given his laws to the
Hebrews. Moses has been, it is true, the medium between the
Eternal and the people, but the people has taken part in the
grand spectacle of the Revelation of the Law; of this the people,
in the exercise of its freedom, has evinced its acceptance; and
in the covenant set on foot between the Eternal and the family of
Jacob, Moses has been, if I may be allowed the expression, only
the public officer who has propounded the contract. He was
himself, besides, not within the pale of the sacerdotal caste;
and the charge of keeping, amending, and seeing to the carrying
out of the body of laws was not confided to the priests."
[Footnote 54 ]

    [Footnote 54: Études Critiques sur la Bible--Ancien
    Testament, p. 172.]

{192}

Let the learned men who thus characterise the Mosaic theocracy
pause here and measure the whole bearing of the fact which they
comprehend so well. It is a fact unique in the history of the
world. The idea of God is, amongst all nations, the source of
religions; but in every case, except that of the Hebrews,
scarcely has the source appeared before it deviates and becomes
troubled; men take the place of God; God's name is made to cover
every kind of usurpation and falsehood; sometimes sacerdotal
corporations take possession of all government, civil and
religious; sometimes secular power overrules and enslaves
Religious Faith and Religious Life. In the Mosaic Dispensation we
have nothing of the kind; its very origin and its fundamental
principles condemn and prohibit even the attempt at any such
deviations. No paramount priesthood here; no secular power
playing the part of the oppressor. God is constantly present, and
sole Master. All passes between God and the people; all, I say,
so passes through the agency of a single man whom God inspires,
and in whom the people have faith, asking no other authority than
that of the revelation which he receives.
{193}
No sign here of a fact of human origin: just as the God of the
Bible is the true God, the religion that descended, by Moses,
from Sinai upon the elect people of God is the true Religion
destined to become, when Jesus Christ ascends Calvary, the
Religion of the Human Race.


          III. God And The Kings.

Moses having brought out of Egypt the people of Israel, and
having conducted it through the Desert as far as the eastern bank
of the Jordan, in sight of Canaan, the Promised Land, his mission
terminates. "Get thee up," says the Eternal to him; "get thee up
into the top of Pisgah, and lift up thine eyes westward, and
northward, and southward, and eastward, and behold it with thine
eyes: for thou shalt not go over this Jordan. But charge Joshua,
and encourage him, and strengthen him: for he shall go over
before this people, and he shall cause them to inherit the land
which thou shalt see." [Footnote 55]

    [Footnote 55: Deuteronomy iii. 27, 28.]

{194}

Moses has been, in the name of Jehovah, the liberator and the
legislator; Joshua is the conqueror, the rough warrior, of yet
signal piety and modesty, the ardent servant of Jehovah, the
faithful disciple of Moses. After passing the Jordan, traversing
the land of Canaan in every direction, and giving battle in
succession to the greater part of the tribes that inhabit it, he
destroys, or expels, or negotiates with them, and divides their
lands among the twelve tribes of Israel. These exchange their
wandering life for that settled agricultural life of which Moses
has given them the law. The descendants of Abraham settle as
masters in the soil in which Abraham had demanded as a favour the
privilege of purchasing a tomb.

{195}

The consequences of this new situation are not long in showing
themselves. The conquest is protracted and difficult: the
violence and rapine that characterise a state of war--one of
dispossession and of extermination--replace amongst the Hebrews
the adventures and the pious emotions of the Desert. In spite of
their successes, the conquest nevertheless remains incomplete:
several of the Canaanitish tribes defend themselves
efficaciously, and cling, side by side with the new comers, to
their territory, their laws, their gods. The twelve tribes of
Israel disperse and settle, each on its own account, upon
different and distant points, some being even separated by the
Jordan. The unity of the Hebrew nation, of its faith, of its law,
of its government, and of its destiny weakens rapidly; the
tendency to idolatry, which the Hebrews had so often evinced when
wandering in the Desert, reappears and developes itself, fomented
by the vicinity of the Polytheistic tribes of Canaan. Not,
however, that we can precisely say that Polytheism prevails
against the One God; but rather that material images of Jehovah
become, in the midst of particular tribes, the object of the
idolatrous worship so strongly prohibited by the Decalogue. "And
the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and
forgat the Lord their God, and served Baalim and the groves."
[Footnote 56]

    [Footnote 56: Judges iii. 7.]

{196}

Under such influences the moral and social state of the people of
Israel undergoes profound changes; the barbarism, which had been
formerly amongst them fanatical and austere, becomes unruly and
licentious; their chiefs, their Judges, during the epoch which
bears their name, no longer possess, sometimes no longer merit,
their confidence; even the heroic acts of some amongst them--of
Gideon, of Deborah, of Samson,--present rather a strange than an
august character. The Mosaic Theocracy veils itself; the Hebrew
nation becomes disorganized; day by day, the religious and
political anarchy in Israel extends and becomes aggravated.

{197}

But where the Divine Light has once shone, it is never completely
extinguished; and when the voice of God has once spoken, the
sound is never entirely lost, even to ears that no longer listen.
It has been affirmed that after Joshua, in the lapse of time that
took place between the government of the Judges and the end of
the reign of Solomon, the recollection of Moses, of his actions
and his laws, had almost entirely disappeared--had lost all
authority in Israel. Some passages from the biblical narrative
will suffice to remove this error. I read in the Book of Judges,
with respect to the Canaanitish tribes who resisted and survived
in their countries the conquest and settlement of the Hebrew
tribes:--These nations "were to prove Israel, to know whether
they would hearken unto the commandments of the Lord, which he
commanded their fathers by the hand of Moses." [Footnote 57]

    [Footnote 57: Judges iii. 4.]

And again, in the Book of Samuel, it is the Eternal "that
advanced Moses and Aaron .... which brought forth your fathers
out of the land of Egypt, and made them dwell in this place."
[Footnote 58]
{198}
And in the Book of Kings,[Footnote 59] David, on the point of
expiring, says to his son Solomon, "Keep the charge of the Lord
thy God, to walk in his ways, to keep his statutes, and his
commandments, and his judgments, and his testimonies, as it is
written in the law of Moses."

    [Footnote 58: 1 Samuel xii. 6, 8.]

    [Footnote 59: 1 Kings ii. 3.]

And when Solomon, after the solemn dedication of his Temple, had
addressed to God his prayer of thanksgiving, "he stood, and
blessed all the congregation of Israel with a loud voice, saying,
Blessed be the Lord, that hath given rest unto his people Israel,
according to all that he promised: there hath not failed one word
of all his good promise, which he promised by the hand of Moses
his servant." [Footnote 60]

    [Footnote 60: 1 Kings viii. 55, 56.]

In the customs and lives of the Israelites these "good promises"
had not practically, it is true, preserved all their efficacy:
the worship of Jehovah and the legislation of Moses had fallen
into sad oblivion, and undergone serious changes. But, in the
national sentiment, Jehovah the Eternal was ever the One God, the
True God; and Moses his interpreter.
{199}
Moral and social disorder had invaded the Hebrew Confederation;
the Divine Law and Tradition were incessantly violated, still not
ignored: they ever continued the Divine Law and Tradition, the
objects of the faith and veneration of Israel.

When the evil of anarchy had brought with it great national
reverses,--when the Philistines on the south, the Ammonites on
the east, and the Mesopotamians on the north, had placed in
jeopardy the Hebrew settlement in Canaan,--a general cry arose;
on all sides, the tribes demanded a strong government, a single
chief, one capable of maintaining order within, and supporting
abroad the position and the honour of Israel. A great and
faithful servant of Jehovah, the last of the judges, and the
greatest of the prophets since Moses,--Samuel,--had recently
governed Israel, and strenuously struggled to arrest the progress
of popular vice and misfortune; but he had become old, and his
sons whom he had made "judges over Israel ... walked not in his
ways, but turned aside after lucre, and took bribes, and
perverted judgment.
{200}
Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together, and
came to Samuel unto Ramah, and said unto him, Behold, thou art
old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways: now make us a king to
judge us like all the nations." [Footnote 61 ]

    [Footnote 61: 1 Samuel viii. 1-5.]

The demand had in it nothing singular; even at the epoch when
God, by his servant Moses, was personally governing Israel, the
chance of the establishment of a human kingdom had been foreseen
and provided for beforehand by the Divine Law: "When thou art
come unto the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, and shalt
possess it, and shalt dwell therein, and shalt say, I will set a
king over me, like as all the nations that are about me; thou
shalt in any wise set him king over thee, whom the Lord thy God
shall choose: one from among thy brethren shalt thou set king
over thee: thou mayest not set a stranger over thee, which is not
thy brother." [Footnote 62]

    [Footnote 62: Deuteronomy xvii. 14, 15.]

{201}

Although thus provided for by the Divine Law, the demand of a
king was extremely displeasing to Samuel; "for the kingly rule
was odious to him," says the historian Josephus; "he had an
innate love of justice, and was ardently attached to the
aristocratical form of government, as to the form of polity which
rendered men happy and worthy of God." [Footnote 63]

    [Footnote 63: Josephus, Ant. Jud. vol. vi. ch. iii. 3.]

But the Eternal "said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the
people in all that they say unto thee: for they have not rejected
thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over
them ... Now therefore hearken unto their voice; howbeit yet
protest solemnly unto them, and shew them the manner of the king
that shall reign over them." [Footnote 64]

    [Footnote 64: 1 Samuel viii. 7-9.]

Samuel predicted to the Hebrews how much the kingly form of
government would cost them, all that they would have to suffer in
their families, their property, and their liberties:
"Nevertheless the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel; and
they said, Nay; but we will have a king over us; that we also may
be like all the nations; and that our king may judge us, and go
out before us, and fight our battles.
{202}
And Samuel heard all the words of the people, and he rehearsed
them in the ears of the Lord. And the Lord said to Samuel,
Hearken unto their voice, and make them a king." [Footnote 65]

    [Footnote 65: 1 Samuel viii. 19-22.]

The world's history offers no example where the merits and
defects of absolute monarchy were so rapidly developed, where
they were displayed so strikingly, as in this little Hebrew
monarchy, instituted with the view of escaping from anarchy by
the express desire of the people itself. Three kings succeed to
the throne, in origin, character, conduct, and reign absolutely
dissimilar. Saul is a warrior, chosen by Samuel for his strength,
bodily beauty, and courage; ever ready for the combat, but
without foresight, without perseverance in his military
operations; easily intoxicated with good fortune; hurried away by
brutal, capricious, or jealous passions; now engaged in furious
struggles, now appearing in a dependent position, with his patron
Samuel, his son Jonathan, his son-in-law David; a genuine
barbarian king, arrogant, changeable of humour, impatient of
control, prone to superstition, a moment serving Israel against
her enemies, but incapable of governing Israel in the name of its
God.

{203}

David, on the contrary, is the faithful and consistent
representative of religious faith and religious life in Israel;
the fervent and submissive adorer of the Eternal; he is so at all
the epochs and in the most varying aspects of his career, whether
of humility or of grandeur; at once warrior, king, prophet, poet;
as ardent to celebrate his God in his character of poet, as to
serve Him in the capacity of warrior, or to obey Him in that of
king; equally sublime in his thanksgiving to the Eternal for his
triumphs as in his invocation to Him in his distresses;
accessible to the most culpable human weaknesses, but prompt to
repent the offence once committed; and giving always to impulses
of joy or pious sadness the first place in his soul; very king of
the nation that adores the very God.
{204}
David accomplishes the work of his time: he obtains the object
for which the monarchy had been demanded and instituted: he
leaves behind him the tribes of Israel reunited at home, and
reassured against foreign enemies, proceeding too in the path of
good order and confidence. Heir to his father's work, his
father's success, Solomon comes next, and reigns forty
years--years of almost as much repose as splendour: "God gave
Solomon wisdom and understanding exceeding much, and largeness of
heart, even as the sand that is on the sea shore." [Footnote 66]
"And he had peace on all sides round about him. And Judah and
Israel dwelt safely, every man under his vine and under his fig
tree, from Dan even to Beersheba, all the days of Solomon."
[Footnote 67]

    [Footnote 66: 1 Kings iv. 29.]

    [USCCB: Footnote 66 should be: 1 Kings iv. 9.]

    [Footnote 67: Ibid. 24, 25.]

    [USCCB: Footnote 67 should be: 1 Kings iv. 4, 5.]

The kingdom and the kingly authority rose under the government of
Solomon, and throughout all Western Asia, to a degree of power
and splendour before unknown to the Hebrews. A prosperity out of
all proportion with the position of a new king and a small state,
and which reminds us of the rapid histories and the political
comets of the East.
{205}
Solomon at this point lost sight of both wisdom and virtue: the
first hereditary prince of the Hebrew monarchy terminated his
life like a voluptuous sovereign of Ecbatana or of Nineveh; the
son of the pious King David became a sceptical moralist; although
a profound observer of the nature and destiny of man, such
observation had led but to feelings of disgust. Nor did the
monarchy survive the monarch: the nation became effeminate and
corrupt, in the effeminacy and corruption of its sovereign.
Scarcely was Solomon dead, when his monarchy was divided into two
kingdoms, which, at first rivals, became soon openly hostile to
each other; sometimes a prey to tyranny, sometimes to anarchy,
and almost always to war. It was not, as formerly, merely a bad
phase of transition in the history of the Hebrew nation; it was
the commencement of national decline--decline irremediable,
hopeless.

{206}

But what, in this decline, will become of the law revealed on
Sinai to Moses? Is it destined to fall with the monarchy of
Solomon, or to languish and die out in the midst of the struggles
and disasters of Judah and of Israel? Quite the contrary: the
religious faith and law of the Hebrews will not only perpetuate
themselves, but will again shine forth at this epoch of political
ruin.

Above the fortune of states are the designs of God, to which
instruments are never wanting; the kings continue to perpetrate
acts of violence, and the people to show marks of weakness; but
amidst all, the prophets of Israel will maintain the ancient
Covenant, and prepare the coming of that new Covenant which is to
make of the God of Israel the God of mankind.


         IV. God And The Prophets.


A celebrated political writer--a freethinker belonging to the
Radical school, somewhat also to the school of Positivism--Mr.
John Stuart Mill, has recently said, in his work on Government,
"The Egyptian hierarchy, the paternal despotism of China, were
very fit instruments for carrying those nations up to the point
of civilisation which they attained.
{207}
But, having reached that point, they were brought to a permanent
halt, for want of mental liberty and individuality; requisites of
improvement which the institutions that had carried them thus
far, entirely incapacitated them from acquiring; and, as the
institutions did not break down and give place to others, further
improvement stopped. In contrast with these nations, let us
consider the example of an opposite character afforded by another
and a comparatively insignificant Oriental people--the Jews.
They, too, had an absolute monarchy and a hierarchy, and their
organised institutions were as obviously of sacerdotal origin as
those of the Hindoos. These did for them what was done for other
Oriental races by their institutions--subdued them to industry
and order, and gave them a national life. But neither their kings
nor their priests ever obtained, as in those other countries, the
exclusive moulding of their character.
{208}
Their religion, which enabled persons of genius and a high
religious tone to be regarded and to regard themselves as
inspired from Heaven, gave existence to an inestimably precious
unorganized institution--the Order (if it may be so termed) of
Prophets. Generally under the protection--it was not always
effectual--of their sacred character, the prophets were a power
in the nation, often more than a match for kings and priests, and
kept up in that little corner of the earth the antagonism of
influence, which is the only real security for continued
progress. Religion consequently was not there--what it has been
in so many other places--a consecration of all that was once
established, and a barrier against further improvement. The
remark of a distinguished Hebrew, M. Salvador, that the prophets
were, in Church and State, the equivalent to the modern liberty
of the press, gives a just but not an adequate conception of the
part fulfilled in national and universal histories by this great
element of Jewish life; by means of which, the canon of
inspiration never being complete, the persons most eminent in
genius and moral feeling could not only denounce and reprobate,
with the direct authority of the Almighty, whatever appeared to
them deserving of such treatment, but could give forth better and
higher interpretations of the national religion.
{209}
Conditions more favourable to progress could not easily exist;
accordingly the Jews, instead of being stationary like other
Asiatics, were, next to the Greeks, the most progressive people
of antiquity, and, jointly with them, have been the
starting-point and main propelling agency of modern cultivation."
[Footnote 68]

    [Footnote 68: Considerations on Representative Government. By
    John Stuart Mill, pp. 41-43. London.]

Mr. Mill is right, only he does not go far enough. Modern
civilization is in effect derived from the Jews and from the
Greeks. To the latter it is indebted for its human and
intellectual, to the former for its Divine and moral, element. Of
these two sources, we owe to the Jews, if not the more brilliant,
at all events the more sublime and dearly acquired one.
{210}
After the development of power and grandeur which took place
amongst the Jews in the reigns of David and Solomon, their
history is but a long series of misfortunes and reverses,--an
eventful, painful decline. The Hebrew state is divided into two
kingdoms, almost constantly at war with each other. And whilst
the kingdom of Israel is a prey to continual usurpations and
revolutions, making it the scene of all the violence and all the
vicissitudes of a tyranny, the kingdom of Judah has a line of
princes, in turn good or bad, who keep it unceasingly in a state
of trouble and of jeopardy. Religion falls beneath the yoke of
secular government; idolatry appears in the kingdom of Israel,
and braves audaciously the ancient national faith. The kingdom of
Judah, however, remains more faithful to Jehovah and his law, to
the traditions of Moses, and to the race of David; but its
languishing faith is no longer strong enough to arrest its march
in the path of decline.
{211}
In the two kingdoms, internal disorders are aggravated by
reverses abroad; in the meantime, around them mighty empires
spring up and succeed to each other. First Israel and then Judah
are invaded by strangers; they are subjugated in turn by the
Assyrians, the Egyptians, the Syrians, the Babylonians. The
Hebrews are not only vanquished and reduced to subjection, but
exiled, transported, led captive far from their country. A new
conqueror, Cyrus, permits them to return to Jerusalem; but not to
resume their independence; at first subjects of the Persian
kings, they soon pass from their empire to that of the Greek
generals, who have divided amongst one another the conquests of
Alexander; then to the rule of the Greeks succeeds that of the
Romans. During this succession of servitudes, scarcely are they
allowed any moments of existence as a free nation, and even this
freedom is more apparent than real. Judea, like Greece, is
subjugated, but under circumstances of greater humiliation and
distress.

{212}

And shall, then, the Hebrews oppose no efficacious resistance to
these reverses? What is to become, in this absolute ruin of the
nationality of the Jews, of their God, and their faith? Shall the
miracles of Sinai have no more virtue than the mysteries of
Eleusis, and Jehovah languish away and vanish in the routine of
sacerdotal ceremonies, or in philosophical scepticism?

By no means: in the midst of his people's decay, the God of
Israel maintains interpreters who struggle with indomitable
fidelity against public calamities and popular errors. The first
of the prophets, Moses, had spoken in the name and according to
the commandment of Jehovah. After him there never were wanting to
Israel men who inherited or pretended to the heritage of the same
Divine mission. "I will raise them up a Prophet from among their
brethren, like unto thee," said the Eternal unto Moses, "and will
put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that
I shall command him. ...
{213}
But the prophet, which shall presume to speak a word in my name,
which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in
the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die." [Footnote
69]

    [Footnote 69: Deuteronomy xviii. 18, 20.]

From Moses to Samuel, the series of the prophets is continued;
some of them are of renown, like Nathan in the reigns of David
and Solomon; but the greater number, without name in history, and
appearing scattered over a long course of years. They are called
the _Seers_, [Footnote 70] or the Inspired. [Footnote 71]

    [Footnote 70: Roêh or Chozeh, in Hebrew.]

    [Footnote 71: Nabi.]

Their speech gushes forth like a well under the breath of God.
When the government of the Judges gives place to that of the
Kings, the great actor in this drama of transition, Samuel, opens
for the prophets a new era; dedicated from his infancy to God's
service, he feels beforehand and abides the divine inspiration:
"Speak, Lord; for thy servant heareth." [Footnote 72]

    [Footnote 72: 1 Samuel iii. 9, 10.]

{214}

Not long after, his renown spreads amongst the people; he is not
pontiff, he is not even priest. [Footnote 73]

    [Footnote 73: Samuel propheta fuit, judex fuit, levita fuit,
    non pontifex, ne saoerdos quidem.--St. Jerom adv.
    Jovinianum.]

But he is pre-eminently the seer: "Is not the seer here?" Such is
the question addressed to some young maidens by the men who are
in search of Samuel. Saul meets him without knowing him, and says
to him, "I pray thee tell me where the house of the seer is." "I
am the seer," replied Samuel; and soon after, it is Samuel
himself, who, in compliance with the popular vote, approved by
God, proclaims Saul king. But at the moment when he thus changes
the theocracy in Israel into a monarchy, he foresees the vices
and perils attendant upon the new government, and opposes to them
the element of resistance drawn from their national beliefs and
traditions; he transforms the order of prophets into a permanent
institution; he founds schools of prophets, independent servants
of Jehovah, consecrated to the defence of his law and the
enunciation of his will;
{215}
constituting a sort of congregation independent of both Church
and State; leading, in fixed and appointed places,--at Rama,
Bethel, Jericho, Jerusalem,--a life in common, but with out
exclusive privileges; the sons of the prophets are brought up
near their fathers; but still the mission of prophecy is
accessible to all who have the call from God: "Go, thou seer,"
said the priest Amaziah, in his anger, to the prophet Amos, "flee
thee away into the land of Judah, and there eat bread, and
prophesy there: but prophesy not again any more at Bethel: for it
is the king's chapel, and it is the king's court. Then answered
Amos, and said to Amaziah, I was no prophet, neither was I a
prophet's son: but I was a herdman, and a gatherer of sycomore
fruit: and the Eternal took me as I followed the flock, and the
Lord said unto me, Go, prophesy unto my people Israel." [Footnote
74]

    [Footnote 74: Amos vii. 12-15.]

{216}

The prophets are neither priests nor monks: sprung from all the
classes of the Jewish nation, their vocation is essentially
independent. They belong to God alone, and await divine
inspiration to oppose, as it may happen, at one time the tyranny
of the kings, at another the passions of the populace, at another
the corruption of the priesthood: their only arms, the commands
of God and the gift of prophecy. The functions assigned to them
are as different as the places and circumstances of their life;
but they are ready to take any part and to encounter any peril:
some of them, like Elijah and Elisha, are men of action and of
combat; the others, like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos, are
narrators, moralists, prophets; some devote themselves to attacks
upon the acts of violence and impiety committed by the kings, the
others to the vices and corruption of the people; the same
spirit, however, animates them all; they are all interpreters and
labourers of Jehovah; they defend, all of them, the faith of God
against idolatry, justice and right against tyranny, the national
independence against foreign dominion.
{217}
In the name of the God of Abraham and of Jacob, they labour and
succeed in maintaining or in reanimating religious and moral life
amidst the decay and servitude of Israel. "All the time," says
St. Augustine, "from the epoch when the holy Samuel began to
prophesy, to the day when the people of Israel was led captive
into Babylonia, is the period of the prophets." [Footnote 75]

    [Footnote 75: De Civitate Dei, l. xvii. ch. 1.]

To accomplish their mission, to ensure their hard-earned
successes, they had other arms than lamentations and
exhortations, arising out of what was past and inevitable; other
expedients than pious reproaches and expressions of regret. These
defenders of the ancient faith of Moses do not shut themselves up
within the external forms and rites of their religion; they
pursue the moral object that it proposes; they insist upon the
spirit that vivifies it. "Your new moons and your appointed
feasts my soul hateth" (said the Lord, according to Isaiah):
"they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them.
{218}
And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from
you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands
are full of blood. Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of
your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do
well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless,
plead for the widow." [Footnote 76]

    [Footnote 76: Isaiah i. 14-17.]

"Wherewith shall I come before the Lord" (said the prophet
Micah), "and bow myself before the high God? shall I come before
him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the
Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of
rivers of oil? shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath shewed thee,
O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but
to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy
God?" [Footnote 77]

    [Footnote 77: Micah vi. 6-8.]

{219}

Even whilst calling the people of Israel back to the faith of
their fathers, the prophets open to them new perspectives: whilst
reproaching them with the errors that have led to their decay and
servitude, they permit them yet to see the future delivery and
regeneration. It is their divine character to live at once in the
past and in the future; to confide alike to the ordinances of the
Eternal and to his promises: they move forward, but they change
not; they believe, they hope; they are faithful to Moses whilst
they announce the Messiah.


     V. Expectation Of The Messiah.


Controversy has the mischievous power of the Homeric Jupiter: it
collects clouds amidst which the light that we seek for
disappears.

The Old and the New Testament, the history of the Jews and the
history of Jesus Christ, lie before us. Do these two monuments
form but one single edifice? That second history, is it comprised
and written beforehand in the first?
{220}
Such is the question which has for the last eighteen centuries
occupied and divided the learned. Some affirm that Jesus Christ
was foreseen and predicted among the Jews, and that the series of
prophecies continued from the very time of Moses until the advent
of Christ. Others lay stress upon the hiatus--the want of
connection and cohesion--the contradictions to be detected here
between the Old and New Testament; and thence they conclude that
the text of the Old Testament by no means contains the facts that
appear in the New Testament, and that the miraculous history of
Jesus Christ was, in the bosom of Israel, neither miraculously
foreseen nor predicted.

Why was it, and how was it possible, that two assertions so
contradictory came to be both adopted and maintained by men most
of them as sincere as learned?

{221}

They have all committed the fault of plunging into the petty
details of facts and texts, searching in all places, without
exception, for the complete demonstration of their particular
theses, and losing sight of the great fact, the general and
dominant fact to which we should refer as alone capable of
solving the question. They descend into the mazy paths which
perplex the plain below, instead of grasping from the summit of
the mountains, the whole comprehensive view, and the grand road
leading to the goal itself. Believers have insisted upon
discovering, fact by fact, in the biblical prophecies the whole
mission and all the life of Jesus. The incredulous, on the other
hand, have minutely adverted to all the discrepancies, all the
difficulties, suggested by a comparison of the texts of the Old
Testament and of the Gospel narrative; they have contrasted the
glories of the Messiah, the powerful King of Israel, so often
announced by the prophets, with the humble life, the cruel death
of Jesus, and with the ruin of Jerusalem.
{222}
In my opinion, they have on both sides lost sight of the inward
and essential characteristic of this sublime history; the special
action of God is revealed therein, but without suppressing the
action of men; miracles take their place in the midst of the
natural course of events; the ambitious aspirations of the Jews
connect themselves with the religious perspective opened to them
by the prophets; the divine and the human, the inspiration from
on high and the impulse of the national imagination, appear
together. These two elements should be disentangled: the mind
should be raised above the perplexing influences which they
exercise, and the attention directed to that heavenly beam which
pierces the vapours of this earthly atmosphere. Thus, all the
embarrassment that controversy occasioned vanishing, the history
yields to us its profound meanings, and, in spite of
complications having their origin in the wordy explanations of
man, the design of God makes itself manifest in all its majestic
simplicity.

Discarding all discussion and commentary, let us merely collect,
from epoch to epoch, the principal texts which speak of the
advent of the future Messiah. I might here multiply citations,
but I limit myself to those where the allusion is evident. It is
the Bible, and the Bible alone, that is speaking.

{223}

The first act of disobedience to God, the act of original sin,
has just been committed. The Eternal God says to the serpent that
has seduced Eve: "Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed
above all cattle, and above every beast of the field. ... And I
will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed
and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his
heel." [Footnote 78]

    [Footnote 78: Genesis iii. 14, 15.]

He that shall bruise the head of the serpent shall belong, says
the Book of Genesis, to the race of Shem, to the posterity of
Abraham and Jacob, to the kingdom of Judah. "But thou, Beth-lehem
Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet
out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be Ruler in
Israel." [Footnote 79]

    [Footnote 79: Genesis ix. 26; xii. 3; xlix. 10; Micah v. 2.]

{224}

Israel is at its apogee of splendour: David prophesies alike the
sufferings and the glory of that Saviour of the world who is to
be not merely the King of Zion, but "the Son and the Anointed of
the Eternal:" "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" is the
expression attributed to him by the prophet king. ... "All they
that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake
the head. ... They gave me also gall for my meat, and in my
thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. ... They part my garments
among them, and cast lots upon my vesture. ... He trusted on the
Lord that he would deliver him; let him deliver him, seeing he
delighted in him. ... Ye that fear the Lord, praise him; all ye
the seed of Jacob, glorify him; and fear him, all ye the seed of
Israel. ... All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn
unto the Lord: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship
before thee." [Footnote 80]

    [Footnote 80: Psalms ii. 2, 6, 7; xxii. 1, 7; lxix. 21; xxii.
    18, 8, 23, 27.]

{225}

The kingdom of David and of Solomon has begun to decay; Judah and
Israel are separating; both kingdoms have their prophets, who at
one time struggle against the crimes and evils of their
respective ages, and, at another, occupy themselves in disclosing
prospects of the future.

  "Hear ye now, O house of David. ...

  "Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a
  virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name
  Immanuel. ...

  "The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light:
  they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them
  hath the light shined. ...

  "For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the
  government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be
  called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting
  Father, The Prince of Peace. ...

  "And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and
  a Branch shall grow out of his roots:

  "And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of
  wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the
  spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord;

  "... and he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes,
  neither reprove after the hearing of his ears:

  "But with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove
  with equity, for the meek of the earth. ...

{226}

  "Listen, O isles, unto me; and hearken, ye people, from far;
  The Lord hath called me from the womb; from the bowels of my
  mother hath he made mention of my name. ...

  "And said unto me, Thou art my servant, O Israel, in whom I
  will be glorified.

  "Then I said, I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength
  for nought, and in vain: yet surely my judgment is with the
  Lord, and my work with my God.

  "And now, saith the Lord that formed me from the womb to be his
  servant, to bring Jacob again to him, Though Israel be not
  gathered, yet shall I be glorious in the eyes of the Lord, and
  my God shall be my strength.

  "And he said, It is a light thing that thou shouldest be my
  servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the
  preserved of Israel: I will also give thee for a light to the
  Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the
  earth. ...

  "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of
  Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and
  having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a
  colt the foal of an ass.

  "... For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as
  a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and
  when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire
  him.

  "He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and
  acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from
  him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

{227}

  "Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet
  we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.

  "But he was wounded for our trangressions, he was bruised for
  our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and
  with his stripes we are healed.

  "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one
  to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of
  us all.

  "He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his
  mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep
  before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.

  "He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall
  declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of
  the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken.
  ...

  "Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to
  grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he
  shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure
  of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.

  "He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be
  satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify
  many; for he shall bear their iniquities.

  "Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he
  shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured
  out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the
  transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made
  intercession for the transgressors." [Footnote 81]

    [Footnote 81:  Isaiah vii. 13-14; ix. 26; xi. 14; xlix. 1-6;
    Zechariah ix. 9; Isaiah liii.]

{228}

Whatever controversies may arise out of these texts, and many
others which I might cite, one fact subsists and rises above all
question and all controversy. Seventeen centuries passed in the
interval between the Decalogue being received by Moses upon Mount
Sinai, and the actual approach of the Messiah announced by the
prophets; and at the end of these seventeen centuries, the God,
from whom Moses received the Decalogue, He who defined himself to
be "I am that I am." Jehovah, still is, has never ceased to be
the God, the sole God of Israel. Israel has passed through all
governments, undergone all vicissitudes, fallen into all the
errors to which it is possible for a nation to succumb: the Jews
have had a hierarchy, and judges, and kings; they have been
alternately conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves; they
have had their days of power and their days of humiliation, their
temptation to idolatry and paroxysms of impiety; still they have
ever returned to the One God: to the true God; their faith has
survived all their faults and all their misfortunes; and after
those seventeen centuries, Israel is waiting at the hand of
Jehovah a Messiah, to be, according to the affirmation of its
greatest prophets, the Liberator and the Saviour, not of Israel
alone, but of all nations.
{229}
Fact without parallel in history! In vain shall men exhaust
against it all their science, and all their scepticism: there is
here more than the work of man; the fact itself is not human. But
what more shall that fact become, and what shall be our belief,
when all shall have received its consummation,--the prophecies
their accomplishment,--when Jehovah shall have given to the
world Jesus Christ?

{230}

             Eighth Meditation.

   Jesus Christ According To The Gospel.


Need I say that by the words, "the Gospel," here used, I
understand the four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the
Epistles, all the books, in fact, which compose the Canon of the
New Testament as it is received by all Christians?

These books have been variously studied: now with the design of
disproving, now of explaining the life of Jesus Christ; now with
the object of a Controversialist, now with that of a Commentator.
I approach the subject in neither character. I would wish to
study Jesus Christ in the New Testament solely to know Him well,
and to make Him well known; to place Him before the reader, and
to depict Him faithfully according to the evidence of his
history.
{231}
I propose hereafter, in a second series of these
_Meditations_, to examine its authenticity, and the degree
of credit to which it is entitled. For the moment I assume the
testimony as good and valid. Beyond all doubt, at the outset, it
is at least entitled to this respect. The powerful influence of
these books, and of the accounts which they contain, such as they
remain to us, has been put to the test and proved. They have
overcome Paganism. They have conquered Greece, Rome, and
barbarous Europe. They are actually overcoming the world. And the
sincerity of the authors is no less certain than the virtue of
the books: however possible it may be to contest the
enlightenment, the critical sagacity of the original historians
of Jesus Christ, their good faith is beyond all question: it
appears in their language; they believed what they said; they
sealed their assertions with their blood: "I believe," said
Pascal, "only those histories, the witnesses to which confirm
their attestation by submitting to death." Although not always a
sufficient reason to believe an account, it constitutes a
decisive motive to believe in the sincerity of the witness.

{232}

I have before cited from the Old Testament some of the texts
which contain the promises made to Israel of the Messiah. These
promises had evidently excited lively attention amongst the Jews;
the satisfaction felt at their accomplishment expressed itself
loudly at the birth of Jesus Christ: "And behold, there was a man
in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon ... waiting for the
consolation of Israel: and the Holy Ghost was upon him. ... Lord,
now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy
word: For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast
prepared before the face of all people; a light to lighten the
Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel." [Footnote 82]

    [Footnote 82: Luke ii. 25-32.]

{233}

Besides Simeon, a pious woman, Anna, "of about fourscore and four
years, which departed not from the temple, but served God with
fastings and prayers night and day. And she coming in that
instant gave thanks unto the Lord, and spake of him to all them
that looked for redemption in Jerusalem." [Footnote 83]

    [Footnote 83: Luke ii. 37, 38.]

But there was far more than merely the demonstrations of Simeon
and Anna,--than these impulses of joy on the part of the faithful
followers of Jehovah: "In those days came John the Baptist,
preaching in the wilderness of Judæa. ... And the same John had
his raiment of camel's hair, and a leathern girdle about his
loins; and his meat was locusts and wild honey. ... And saying,
Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. For this is he
that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias, saying, The voice of
one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight. ... I indeed baptize you with water unto
repentance. ... But there standeth one among you, whom ye know
not.
{234}
He it is who, coming after me, is preferred before me, whose
shoe's latchet I am not worthy to unloose. ... And I knew him
not: but that he should be made manifest to Israel, therefore am
I come baptizing with water. ... And I saw, and bare record that
this is the Son of God." [Footnote 84]

    [Footnote 84: Matthew iii. 1-5; Mark i. 2-11; Luke iii. 1-18;
    John i. 26-34.]

Attempts have sometimes been made, although with no very great
confidence on the part of the propounders of the theory, to
represent Jesus as the most eminent among several reformers, who,
about the same epoch, aspired to the title and character of the
Messiah predicted by the prophets and expected by Israel.
Reference has been particularly made to one of His predecessors,
Judas the Gaulonite, who, a few years after the birth of Jesus,
on the occasion of a census ordered by the Imperial Legate
Quirinius, undertook to raise Judæa in insurrection against this
measure--against the tribute that it imposed, and against the
Emperor himself--proclaiming that to God alone belonged the
appellation _Master_, and that liberty was worth more than
life. [Footnote 85]

    [Footnote 85: Joseph. Antiq. Jud. 1. xvii. ch. 6; 1. xviii.
    ch. 1. Acts of the Apostles, ch. v. 34-39.]

{235}

These comparisons--I forbear to use the word assimilations--are
entirely without foundation. These men, who, as it is pretended,
anticipated the career of Jesus, were simply men who opposed the
Roman dominion, and who stood up, like the Maccabees before them,
in the name of national independence, and in a spirit of reaction
in favor of the Mosaic government. Jesus was not so anticipated:
His mission had no relation with any previous essay; and his sole
forerunner was John the Baptist, as strange as himself to any
political view or conspiracy, and as humble before Him--before
the true, the sole Messiah--as Judas the Gaulonite and his
adherents were bold and daring towards the Emperor.

{236}

There is an interval of thirty years between the birth of Jesus
and the day when He enters actively on the performance of his
divine mission. [Footnote 86]

    [Footnote 86: The question as to the precise epoch of the
    birth of Jesus Christ, as well as of the commencement and the
    duration of His public career, has been well and concisely
    considered in the Synopsis Evangelica of M. Constantin
    Tischendorf (p. 16-19. Leipzig, 1864). The preferable
    conclusion from these researches is, that Jesus Christ was
    born in the year of Roma 750, that he commenced his divine
    mission towards the end of the year of Rome 780, and that his
    death took place in the fourth month of the year of Rome
    783.]

These thirty years, however, were not idly passed, nor were they
without their peculiar testimony to Christ and the future in
store for Him:--

  "And Joseph and his mother marvelled at those things which were
  spoken of him. ...

  "And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with
  wisdom: and the grace of God was upon him.

  "Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of
  the Passover.

  "And when he was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem
  after the custom of the feast.

  "And when they had fulfilled the days, as they returned, the
  child Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem; and Joseph and his
  mother knew not of it.

  "But they, supposing him to have been in the company, went a
  day's journey; and they sought him among their kinsfolk and
  acquaintance.

{237}

  "And when they found him not, they turned back again to
  Jerusalem, seeking him.

  "And it came to pass, that after three days they found him in
  the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing
  them, and asking them questions.

  "And all that heard him were astonished at his understanding
  and answers.

  "And when they saw him, they were amazed: and his mother said
  unto him, Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? Behold, thy
  father and I have sought thee sorrowing.

  "And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? wist ye
  not that I must be about my Father's business?

  "And they understood not the saying which he spake unto them.

  "And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was
  subject unto them: but his mother kept all these sayings in her
  heart.

  "And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with
  God and man." [Footnote 87]

    [Footnote 87: Luke ii. 33, 40-52.]

{238}

Thus begins that manifestation in the person of the child Jesus
Christ, that mixture of humanity and divinity, of natural life
and miraculous life, which is his peculiar and sublime
characteristic. In the opinion of the men who, in principle,
reject the supernatural, this mixed divine-human nature, and
consequently Jesus Christ himself, is at once incomprehensible
and inadmissible. What wonder if Christ has in these days to
encounter such adversaries? Had He not to do so when invested
with the attributes of humanity, among contemporaries, and even
in his own family? In his first days of human existence, his
mother, Mary, saw Him and understood Him not. And nevertheless
"Mary kept all these sayings in her heart." Expression, at once
profound and touching; revealing the mysterious complication of
the nature of man! Man is not content to resign himself to the
limits imposed by the actual laws of the finite world; his
aspirations tend elsewhere. And still, when called upon to rise
above the present order of nature--that order which he is able to
appreciate--he experiences a certain astonishment, a certain
hesitation; he does not know if he ought to believe in that
supernatural that he was recently invoking, and that he never
ceases to invoke; for, like Mary, he preserves the instinct in
his heart!
{239}
It is just at the present day as it was nineteen centuries ago.
Jesus has ever to encounter such contradictory moods of human
nature: He is confronted at once by the hope of, the thirsting
after, the supernatural inherent in the human soul, and by all
the objections, all the doubts that the supernatural itself
suggests to the human mind. He has to satisfy that hope, to
surmount those doubts. The Gospel opens the history of this
solemn struggle, that gave rise to Christianity, and is the
source of all those agitations which afflict Christians at the
present day.


     I. Jesus Christ And His Apostles.


On entering upon the active purposes of his mission, it is the
will of Jesus to have, and He has Disciples--Apostles. He knows
the power of an association founded upon faith and love. He knows
also that faith and love are virtues as rare as they are
efficacious. It is not numbers that He seeks. He surrounds
himself with a select band of believers, and lives with them in a
complete and enduring intimacy.

{240}

In the midst of these intimate relations, Jesus declares his
authority primitive and supreme:--"Ye have not chosen me, but I
have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring
forth fruit." [Footnote 88]

    [Footnote 88: John xv. 16.]

But the authority of the Master does not prevent Him from
evincing a tenderness full of trust, and from respecting himself
the dignity of his disciples:--"Henceforth I call you not
servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I
have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my
Father I have made known unto you." [Footnote 89]

    [Footnote 89: John xv. 15.]

{241}

He evinces on all occasions towards his apostles the trust that
He feels in them, and shows his sense of the superiority of the
position to which He has elevated them. His language sometimes
fills them with astonishment, and they are more peculiarly struck
by the numerous parables in which, whilst addressing the
assembled multitude, He clothes his precepts:--"And the disciples
came, and said unto him, Why speakest thou unto them in parables?
He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to
know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is
not given. ... But unto those that are without, all these things
are done in parables." [Footnote 90]

    [Footnote 90: Matthew xiii. 10, 11; Mark iv. 10, 11.]

The confidingness of Jesus, however, never descends to weak
compliance; when, in an impulse of vanity and ambition, one of
his apostles asks for a particular favour, Jesus rebukes him with
severity:--"James and John, the sons of Zebedee, come unto him,
saying, Master, we would that thou shouldest do for us whatsoever
we shall desire. And he said unto them, What would ye that I
should do for you? They said unto him, Grant unto us that we may
sit, one on thy right hand, and the other on thy left hand, in
thy glory. But Jesus said unto them, Ye know not what ye ask: can
ye drink of the cup that I drink of? and be baptized with the
baptism that I am baptized with?
{242}
And they said unto him, We can. And Jesus said unto them, Ye
shall indeed drink of the cup that I drink of; and with the
baptism that I am baptized withal shall ye be baptized: But to
sit on my right hand and on my left hand is not mine to give; but
it shall be given to them for whom it is prepared. ... Ye know
that they which are accounted to rule over the Gentiles exercise
lordship over them; and their great ones exercise authority upon
them. But so shall it not be among you: but whosoever will be
great among you, shall be your minister." [Footnote 91]

    [Footnote 91: Mark x. 35-43; Matthew xx. 20-26.]

Jesus having thus selected and intimately attached to Him his
apostles, commissions them to carry forth his law:--"Go not into
the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans
enter ye not: But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of
Israel. And as ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at
hand.
{243}
Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out
devils: freely ye have received, freely give. Provide neither
gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses, nor scrips for your
journey, neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves: for
the workman is worthy of his meat. ... Behold, I send ye forth as
sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents
and harmless as doves." [Footnote 92]

    [Footnote 92: Matthew x. 5-10, 16; Luke x. 1-12.]

It is, in effect, prudence side by side with absolute
self-denegation that Jesus, in his first instructions, enjoins
upon his disciples; at the very commencement of their mission He
limits its object; He recommends to them particularly "the lost
sheep of the house of Israel;" He declares his will to be that,
instead of a pertinacity with out bounds, "they should depart,
shaking off the dust from their feet, out of the city that should
not receive them nor hear their words." But He adds immediately,
as if to give to their mission all its grandeur:--"What I tell
you in darkness, that speak ye in light: and what ye hear in the
ear, that preach ye upon the house-tops. And fear not them which
kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear
him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell."
[Footnote 93]

    [Footnote 93: Matthew x. 27, 28.]

{244}

Jesus knows that his disciples will need the firmest courage,
and, far from promising them any of the goods of this world, any
temporal successes, He discloses to them unceasingly all the
perils they will incur, all the invectives they will have to
endure. "But beware of men: for they will deliver you up to the
councils, and they will scourge you in their synagogues; and ye
shall be brought before governors and kings for my sake, for a
testimony against them and the Gentiles ... And ye shall be
betrayed both by parents, and brethren, and kinsfolks and
friends; and some of you shall they cause to be put to death. And
ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake." [Footnote 94]

    [Footnote 94: Matthew x. 17-22. Luke xxi. 12-17.]

{245}

What Reformer, other than Jesus Christ, ever held to his
followers such language? Who else than God could have imparted to
their language such virtue that they would in obedience to it
sacrifice with joy not merely all the good things of this life,
but life itself? Nevertheless, one of those apostles, and the
first of them all, Peter, evinces some disquietude, if not at
their lot in this world, at least at their destinies in the
kingdom of heaven. "Then answered Peter and said unto him,
Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed thee; what shall we
have therefore? And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you,
That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son
of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit
upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And
every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or
father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's
sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting
life." [Footnote 95]

    [Footnote 95: Matthew xix. 27-29.]

{246}

But Jesus does not intend that the prospect of their lofty
inheritance should inspire in the minds of any of his apostles,
and not more in that of Peter than the rest, any proud
presumptuousness, and He immediately adds, "But many that are
first, shall be last; and the last shall be first." [Footnote 96]

    [Footnote 96: Matthew xix. 30.]

The world's history may be perused and reperused; the causes of
all the revolutions that have taken place in the world, whether
religious or political, may be probed and investigated; but we
shall nowhere be able to trace in the dealings of chiefs and
accomplices, of originators and fellow-workmen, the divine
characteristics of absolute and uncompromising sincerity that
reign throughout the actions and language of Jesus Christ in His
conduct towards His apostles. Them He has chosen and loved; to
them He has entrusted His work; but He practises with them no
arts of worldly wisdom; He withholds nothing from them; here is
no faltering encouragement, no exaggeration in the promises that
He makes or in the hope that He holds forth; He speaks to them
the language of pure truth, and it is in the name of that truth
that He gives them His commands and transfers to them His
mission. "Never did man speak like this man," [Footnote 97] nor
so deal with men.

    [Footnote 97: John vii. 46.]

{247}

   II. Jesus Christ And His Precepts.


Jesus speaks:--and it is at one time with His disciples alone, at
another surrounded by eager, astonished multitudes; now from the
mount, now on the shore of the sea of Gennesareth, from a bark;
by the road side; in the house of the Pharisee, Simon, and the
toll-gatherer, Levi; in the synagogue of Nazareth, in the Temple
of Jerusalem:--Jesus speaks, "not like the scribes," not like
the philosophers; He expounds no system; He discusses no
question; He does not pace up and down like Socrates with his
learned friends in the gardens of the Academy, nor lose himself
in the mazes of the human understanding. Jesus speaks to men, to
all men without distinction; He speaks to them of man's life,
man's soul, man's destiny, of matters that touch all alike. And
He speaks to them "as one having authority."

{248}

What does He say to them? What teach, what command, in that
speech full of authority?

He teaches them, He enjoins them, to have faith, hope, charity:
those virtues which have now borne His name nineteen centuries,
those virtues which are essentially Christian.

Is it, then, in His own name that Jesus Christ teaches and
commands? By no means: "My doctrine is not mine, but his that
sent me. If any man will do his will, he shall know of the
doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.

"He that speaketh of himself seeketh his own glory: but he that
seeketh his glory that sent him, the same is true, and no
unrighteousness is in him. ... Then cried Jesus in the Temple as
he taught, saying, Ye both know me, and ye know whence I am: I am
not come of myself, but he that sent me is true, whom ye know
not.

{249}

"But I know him: for I am from him, and he hath sent me."
[Footnote 98]

    [Footnote 98: John vii. 16-18, 28, 29.]

Whilst He refers everything to God, Jesus Christ seeks not to
define or explain Him; He affirms Him and demonstrates Him; God
is the first cause, the point from which all things spring; faith
in God is the paramount source of virtue, and of power, as well
as virtue, of hope and of resignation.

For Jesus Christ has not only a perfect faith in God, He has also
a profound knowledge of man: He knows that, unaided, man's soul
cannot, with out despair, without withering, bear the burthen
imposed by the injustice of the world and of life, of the
miseries and erroneous appreciation of mankind. To this injustice
and this wretchedness Jesus Christ never ceases to oppose God,
God's justice, God's benevolence, God's succour: He recommends to
Him all the forsaken, all the oppressed, all the wretched, all
the victims of society. He enjoins to these not resignation
alone, but Hope as the sister and companion of Faith.
{250}
Nor does He hold forth to those that suffer the realization of
earthly expectations, the restoration of worldly prosperity, as
their resource and their consolation. He has nothing to do with
remedies deceitful like these. He acts with the most perfect
truthfulness and sincerity towards mankind in general, as He also
does with His disciples: He only promises them the
re-establishment of justice, and the reward of virtue, in that
mysterious future where God alone reigns, and of which He
discloses to them the perspective without unfolding the secrets.

Nothing strikes me more in the Gospel than this double character
of austerity and of love, of severe purity and tender sympathy,
which constantly appears, which reigns in the actions and the
words of Jesus Christ in everything that touches the relation of
God and mankind.
{251}
To Jesus Christ the law of God is absolute, sacred; the violation
of the law, and sin, are odious to Him; but the sinner himself
irresistibly moves him and attracts him: "What man of you, having
an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the
ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is
lost, until he find it? And when he hath found it, he layeth it
on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he cometh home, he calleth
together his friends and neighbours, saying unto them, Rejoice
with me; for I have found my sheep which was lost. I say unto
you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that
repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which
need no repentance." [Footnote 99]

    [Footnote 99: Luke xv. 4-7.]

Jesus said unto them, "They that are whole need not a physician,
but they that are sick. ... For I am not come to call the
righteous, but sinners to repentance." [Footnote 100]

    [Footnote 100: Matthew ix. 12, 13.]

What is the signification of this sublime fact; what the meaning
in Jesus of this union, this harmony of severity and of love, of
saint-like holiness and of human sympathy? It is Heaven's
revelation of the nature of Jesus him-self, of the God-man.
{252}
God, he made himself man. God is his father, men are his
brethren. He is pure and holy like God: He is accessible and
sensible to all that man feels. Thus the vital principles of the
Christian faith, the divine and the human nature united in Jesus,
start to evidence, in his sentiments and language respecting the
relations between God and man. The dogma is the foundation of the
principles.

Another fact is not less significant. At the same time that the
divine and mysterious character of Jesus Christ appears in the
Gospel, his acts and his words have a character essentially
simple and practical. He pursues no learned object, no scientific
plan; He develops no system; his object is something infinitely
grander than the triumph of any logical abstraction: it is to
pervade the human soul, to establish himself in it--to save it.
He speaks the language--He appeals to the ideas most calculated
to ensure Him success.
{253}
Sometimes He addresses himself to the task of inspiring in men
the most poignant disquietude as to their future destiny, if they
violate the laws of God; at other times He causes to shine before
their eyes the realisation of the most magnificent hopes, if with
sincerity they persist in faith. He knows the generation that He
is addressing; He knows human nature in its universality, and
what it will be in future generations: his object is to produce
upon it an effect at once positive, general, durable; He chooses
the ideas, He employs the images suitable to his design for the
regeneration and the salvation of all. God's Ambassador is the
most penetrating and able of human moralists.

More than once, the attempt has been made to find Him at fault,
to detect in his language exaggerations, contradictions,
incoherencies irreconcilable with his divine authority. Surprise,
for instance, has been expressed, that He should have one day
said, according to St. Matthew: "He that is not with me is
against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad;"
[Footnote 101] and that He should another day, according to St.
Mark, have used the expression, "For he that is not against us is
on our part." [Footnote 102]

    [Footnote 101: Matthew xii. 30.]

    [Footnote 102: Mark ix. 40.]

{254}

These two passages have been characterised as furnishing "two
rules of proselytism entirely opposed to each other, and as
involving a contradiction growing out of some impassioned
struggle." [Footnote 103]

    [Footnote 103: Vie de Jesus, par M. Renan, p. 229.]

In my turn I observe that it astonishes me how earnest men can
fall into any such error. Jesus does not lay down in these two
passages two contradictory rules of proselytism, He merely
observes and refers in turn to two different facts: who has not
learnt, in the course of actual life, that, according to the
difference of circumstances and persons, the man who abstains
from active concurrence, who keeps himself aloof, by that very
fact may at one time give support and strength, and at another
injure and impede? These two assertions, far from being in
contradiction, may be both true, and Jesus Christ, in uttering
them, spoke as a sagacious observer, not as a moralist who is
enunciating precepts.
{255}
I have heard other critics reproachfully regard another passage
as a sort of blasphemy. According to St Luke: "There was in a
city a judge, which feared not God, neither regarded man: and
there was a widow in that city; and she came unto him, saying,
Avenge me of mine adversary. And he would not for a while: but
afterward he said within himself, Though I fear not God, nor
regard man; yet because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge
her, lest by her continual coming she weary me." [Footnote 104]

    [Footnote 104: Luke xviii. 1-5.]

Is it possible to infer from these words an intention on the part
of Jesus to liken God to an unjust judge, and to make the mere
importunate persistence in praying a claim to God's grace? He
only cited an occurrence which made noise in his time, in order
to instil a lively impression of the utility of perseverance. To
attain his end, He never makes use of out-of-the-way or impure
expedients; but He draws from the ordinary events of human life
examples and reasons to illustrate and render intelligible the
divine precepts, and to insure their acceptance. All the parables
have this meaning and object.

{256}

Next to the precepts which refer to the relations of man with God
come those which respect the relations of men with one another.
Whilst Faith and Hope regard God, Charity has man for its object.

Charity, it has often been repeated, is the great principle of
Jesus Christ, pre-eminently the Christian virtue. I know, not,
however, whether the source whence Christian charity derives its
character and grandeur has been adequately perceived or remarked.

In the different pagan religions, whether of character gross or
learned, we have deifications of the different forces of nature
or of men themselves. And even in those religions in which gods
in their turn are said to assume man's shape, it is man
particularly that is predominant, and that lives in the
incarnation of God.
{257}
Whereas in Christianity, it is not a god sprung from nature or of
human origin that becomes man, but the God self-existent,
anterior, and superior to all beings, the God, One, Eternal. The
Hebrew religion, alone of all religions, shows God essentially
and eternally distinct from the nature and the mankind that He
has created, and that He governs. The Christian Faith alone shows
God one and eternal; the God of Abraham and of Moses making
himself man, and the divine nature uniting itself to the human
nature in the person of Jesus. And in this union it is the divine
nature that shines forth, that speaks, that sets in movement. And
this incarnation is unparalleled like the God its author.

And why did God make himself man? "What is the object of this
unparalleled, this mysterious incarnation? It is God's purpose to
rescue man from the evil and the peril which have continued to
weigh upon him since the fault committed by his first progenitor.
It is God's purpose to ransom the human race from the sin of
Adam, the heritage of Adam's children, and to bring it back to
the ways of eternal life. These are the designs, loudly
proclaimed, of the divine incarnation in Jesus, and the price of
all the sufferings and agonies which He endured in its
accomplishment.

{258}

Need I say more? Who does not see how this sublime fact exalts
man's dignity at the same time that it illustrates the worth of
man's nature? By the mere fact of God having assumed his form is
man's nature glorified; and all men, so to say, have their share
of the honour done by God to humanity in uniting himself with it,
and in accepting, for a moment of time, all the conditions of
humanity. But as far as mankind is here concerned, it is far more
than a mere accession of an honour or a glorifying of his nature:
it is a striking manifestation of the value that all men have in
the eyes of God. For it is not for some of them only, for some
class or nation, or portion of humanity, it is for all humanity
that God became incarnate in Jesus Christ, and that Jesus Christ
has submitted to all human sufferings. Every human soul is the
object of this divine sacrifice, and called upon to gather the
fruit.

{259}

This is the source, this the privilege of Christian charity. The
dogma makes the force of the precept itself. Jesus crucified is
God's charity towards man. Impossible that men should not feel
themselves bound to act towards each other as God has done to
them; and towards what man is not charity a duty? Without the
divinity and sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the value of man's soul,
if I may be pardoned the expression, sinks,--neither his
salvation nor the example of his Saviour is any longer the
question,--charity becomes nothing more than human goodness; a
sentiment, however noble and useful, still limited both in
impulsive energy and in efficacy; having its source in man alone,
it can but incompletely solace the unequally distributed
sufferings of mortality. It is not suited to inspire any long
effort or great sacrifice: it is not adequate to convert the
longing desire for the moral amendment, the physical relief of
humanity, into that inextinguishable sympathy and untiring and
impassioned emotion which really constitute charity, and which
the Christian Faith, in the history of the world, has alone been
able to inspire.

{260}

Thus the essential precepts of Jesus, the virtues which He
commands as the basis and source of all the others, have an
intimate connection with his doctrine, a doctrine "which is not,"
He tells us himself, "_his_, but of him that sent him;" that
is to say, they are connected with the fundamental dogmas of the
Christian religion. No one denies the perfection, the sublimity
of the Gospel morality; men indeed seem to feel a sort of
self-complacency, a satisfaction in celebrating it, with a view
to the conclusion, more or less explicitly stated, that that
morality constitutes the whole Gospel. This is, however, not less
than absolutely to mistake the bond which unites in man thought
with sentiment, and belief with action. Man is grander and less
easy to satisfy than superficial moralists pretend; the law of
his life is for him, in the profound instinct of his soul,
necessarily connected with the secret of his destiny; and it is
only the Christian dogma that gives to Christian ethics the Royal
authority of which they stand in need to govern and to regenerate
humanity.

{261}

    III. Jesus And His Miracles.

I have called myself one of those who admit the supernatural; and
I have stated my reasons. I might stop there and enter into no
special reflection as to the Gospel Miracles. The possibility of
miracles once accorded in principle, nothing remains but to weigh
the value of the testimony in their support. In the second series
of these _Meditations_, where I treat of the authenticity of
the localities specified in the Holy Scriptures, I shall occupy
myself with this examination. It is not, however, my wish to
elude, upon the subjects that lie at the bottom of this question,
any of the difficulties that it presents: for here we find the
point of attack sought by the adversaries of the Christian faith.
The image of Christ as it results from the Gospel would be
besides singularly unfaithful, did we not range in it his
miracles by the side of his precepts.

{262}

I avow once more my belief in God, in God the Creator, the
Sovereign Master of the Universe, who orders it and governs it by
that independent and constant action of his providence and power
styled the Laws of Nature. To those who regard nature as having
existed from all eternity of itself, and governed by laws
immutable and proceeding from fate, I have nothing to say of
Jesus or his miracles; the question at issue between them and me
is more important than that which respects miracles; it involves
the very question of Pantheism or Christianity, of Fatalism or
Liberty, affecting both God and man. Upon these subjects I have
already expressed my general opinion and its grounds. I propose
to enter further upon it in the third series of these
_Meditations_, when I come to speak of the different systems
which are now in conflict throughout Christendom. But at this
moment I address myself to Deists and to men of wavering minds,
and to these alone.

{263}

One thing is beyond all doubt: the perfect sincerity of the
apostles and of the primitive Christians as to their faith in the
miracles of Jesus. Sincerity still more striking that it is
united to every sort of hesitation in the mind and weakness in
the conduct, and that it only triumphs gradually and slowly when
Jesus has quitted his disciples and has left them alone charged
with his work. Whilst He was with them, St. Peter has failed, St.
Thomas has doubted; after several miracles have been performed by
Jesus, his disciples are astonished, put questions to Him, yet
still doubt of Him and of his power. Upon several occasions Jesus
addresses them as men "of little faith," and at the moment when
He is arrested, they abandon Him, they fly from Him. No
impassioned enthusiasm, no exaggeration in their trustfulness and
their devotedness; even with them Jesus sees himself confronted
by all the vacillations and pusillanimity of humanity; He
persuades them, He wins them, He preserves them only by great
exertion, and by dint, so to say, of divine power and divine
virtue.
{264}
They only really believe in Him after having witnessed the
accomplishment of his sacrifice and his last miracle, when they
had seen his Crucifixion and his Resurrection. Only then they
believed; but from that moment their faith became absolute,
superior to all perils and all trials: full of the Holy Spirit,
and associated in a certain measure to their divine Master, they
pursue his work with unshaken confidence and firmness, without
pretending to any merit, without any impulse of personal pride.
Before "the gate of the Temple which is called Beautiful," St.
Peter has healed a lame man and made him to walk. "And as the
lame man which was healed held Peter and John, all the people ran
together unto them in the porch that is called Solomon's, greatly
wondering. And when Peter saw it, he answered unto the people, Ye
men of Israel, why marvel ye at this? or why look ye so earnestly
on us, as though by our own power or holiness we had made this
man to walk? ... Ye killed the Prince of life, whom God hath
raised from the dead; whereof we are witnesses.
{265}
And his name through faith in his name hath made this man strong,
whom ye see and know: yea, the faith which is by him hath given
him this perfect soundness in the presence of you all." [Footnote
105]

    [Footnote 105: Acts iii. 1-16.]

It was not the people only that felt astonishment, but "the
rulers and elders; the scribes, the high priest, and all those
who were of the kindred of the high priest, were gathered
together at Jerusalem, and set in their midst "Peter and John,
and after a deliberation full of anxiety, they "commanded them
not to speak at all, nor teach in the name of Jesus. But Peter
and John answered and said unto them, Whether it be right in the
sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye.
For we cannot but speak the things we have seen and heard."
[Footnote 106]

     [Footnote 106: Acts iv. 5, 6, 18-20.]

What sincerity and what firmness ever showed themselves more
strikingly than those that grew out of the faith of St. Paul?
From such faith he had been originally farther removed than the
other apostles; he had done far more than merely err like Peter
or doubt like Thomas; he had hotly persecuted the first followers
of Christ.
{266}
In his turn penetrated and subdued on the road to Damascus by the
voice of Jesus, he devotes himself to Him life and soul; he
recounts himself his miraculous conversion, [Footnote 107] and as
little doubt can be entertained of the authenticity of his
Epistles as of the sincerity that dictated them.

    [Footnote 107: 1 Corinthians xv. 8. 2 Corinthians xi. 32, 33;
    xii. 1-5. Galatians i. 1-4.]

The history of all religions abounds in miracles; but in all
religions except the Christian, the miracles recounted by their
historians are evidently either contrivances of the founder to
induce persuasion, or they spring from the play of the human
imagination, ever disposed to delight in the marvellous, ever
particularly prone to give way in the sphere of religion to its
fantastic suggestions. In the Gospel miracles, on the contrary,
we have nothing of the kind; no artifice in their Author; none of
the marvellous machinery of poetry, nor any hasty credulity in
the historians.
{267}
The miraculous agency of Christ is essentially simple, practical,
and moral: He does not go in search of miracles; neither does He
make any vain display of them: they are wrought when a pressing
emergency or a natural occasion calls for them; and when they are
demanded in faith and in trust, He then works them without
ostentation and in right of his divine mission; whilst at the
very moment He makes the doubt and the coldness with which He is
received, the subject of complaint: "Woe unto thee, Chorazin! wo
unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works, which were done in
you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented
long ago in sackcloth and ashes." [Footnote 108] Jesus has full
confidence in himself, in the miracles that He effects, in the
doctrine that He inculcates. He feels no astonishment, but merely
sorrow, that His work, the work of light and of salvation,
pursued by Him in accordance with the will of God his Father,
should not obtain a more rapid, a more general success.

    [Footnote 108: Matthew xi. 21.]

{268}

As for us, remote spectators, the astonishment must be not the
slowness or limited nature of that success, but its rapidity and
its extent. All religions that have taken place in the world's
history, have been established by moral and by material agency;
all appealed from their very commencement as much to force as to
persuasion, as much to the arm as to the tongue. Christianity
alone lived and grew during three centuries by its own single
native virtue, without any other appeal than that made to Truth,
without any other aid than that of Faith. During those three
centuries the dogmas, the precepts, and the miracles of its
Author constituted its only weapons, and weapons which have
prevailed against all other arms. Those dogmas, those precepts,
and those miracles effected the conquest of man's mind and of
human society in spite of the resistance of Greek philosophy,
Roman power, and all the poetical or mystical mythologies of
antiquity marshalled against them.
{269}
The victory has not, it is true, put an end to all struggle of
man's intelligence: neither has the light from Christ dissipated
all darkness, nor satisfied all minds; the explanation and
commentaries of man have obscured the doctrines of Christ; human
prejudices have mistaken his precepts; and legends have been
grafted upon his miracles. But the fact does not the less exist,
that the dogmas, the precepts, and the miracles of Christ,
without any aid from human sources, sufficed to found and ensure
the triumph of the Christian religion: this is a fact primitive
and supreme. And from this single result shines forth the divine
character of the Christian religion, for its triumph without the
miraculous agency of God, would be of all miracles the most
impossible to receive.



  IV. Jesus, The Jews, And The Gentiles.



Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I
am not come to destroy, but to fulfil." [Footnote 109]

    [Footnote 109: Matthew v. 17.]


{270}

"Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father: there is one
that accuseth you, even Moses, in whom ye trust. For had ye
believed Moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me.
But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my
words?" [Footnote 110]

    [Footnote 110: John v. 45-47.]

This was the language that Jesus used to the Jews. It was in the
name of their history and of their faith, in the name of the God
of Abraham and of Jacob, that He called them to Him, presenting
himself to them in the double capacity of conservative and
reformer, and appealing to the ancient law against those who,
whilst observing it outwardly, really changed its character.
"Then came to Jesus scribes and Pharisees, which were of
Jerusalem, saying, Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition
of the elders? for they wash not their hands when they eat bread.
But He answered and said unto them, "Why do ye also transgress
the commandment of God by your tradition? For God commanded,
saying, Honour thy father and mother: and, He that curseth father
or mother, let him die the death.
{271}
But ye say, Whosoever shall say to his father or his mother, It
is a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me; and
honour not his father or his mother, he shall be free. Thus ye
have made the commandment of God of none effect by your
tradition![Footnote 111] ... Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and
have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy,
and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the
other undone." [Footnote 112]

    [Footnote 111: Matthew xv. 1-6.]

    [Footnote 112: Matthew xxiii. 23.]

Jesus was incessantly warning, making appeals to the Jews; and
when He saw that they pertinaciously disavowed and rejected Him,
He cried, in an impulse of patriotic, affectionate sadness:--"O
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest
them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy
children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her
wings, and ye would not!" [Footnote 113]

    [Footnote 113: Matthew xxiii. 37. Luke xiii. 34.]

{272}

I know nothing more imposing than the apparition of a grand idea,
a divine idea rising and mounting rapidly upon the human horizon.
Such is the spectacle afforded to us in its short duration by the
history of Jesus Christ. In his first instructions to his
apostles, He said to them, "Go not to the Gentiles and enter not
into any city of the Samaritans; but go ye rather to the lost
sheep of the people of Israel." Thus he carefully avoided
offending the sentiments of the day, and only enjoined upon his
apostles what they might do with success at the very beginning of
their mission. But soon the light increases that issues from the
words and the actions of Jesus; as I advance in the books of the
Gospel, I there read: "And when Jesus was entered into Capernaum,
there came unto him a centurion, beseeching him, and saying,
Lord, my servant lieth at home sick of the palsy, grievously
tormented.
{273}
And Jesus saith unto him, I will come and heal him. The centurion
answered and said, Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come
under my roof: but speak the word only, and my servant shall be
healed. For I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me:
and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come,
and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it. When
Jesus heard it, he marvelled, and said to them that followed,
Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not
in Israel. And I say unto you, That many shall come from the east
and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob,
in the kingdom of heaven." [Footnote 114]

    [Footnote 114: Matthew viii. 5-11.]

Thus a great stride has been made; it is no longer for the sheep
of the house of Israel that Jesus has come; from the East and
from the West will men come to Him, and He will receive them all.
To continue the Gospel narrative: departing from the borders of
the lake of Gennesareth, Jesus "departed into the coasts of Tyre
and Sidon.
{274}
And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and
cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou son of
David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil. But he
answered her not a word. And his disciples came and besought him,
saying, Send her away; for she crieth after us. But he answered
and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of
Israel. Then came she and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me.
But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children's
bread, and to cast it to dogs. And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the
dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their master's table. Then
Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith: be
it unto thee even as thou wilt." [Footnote 115]

    [Footnote 115: Matthew xv. 21-28.]

{275}

Another day, near the city Sychar and the well of Jacob, Jesus
conversed with a woman of Samaria, who had come there to draw
water:--"The woman saith unto him, Sir, I perceive that thou art
a prophet. Our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and ye say,
that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship. Jesus
saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall
neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the
Father. ... But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true
worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for
the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a Spirit: and they
that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth."
[Footnote 116]

    [Footnote 116: John iv. 5-24.]

Thus disappears gradually, in the name of the God of the Jews
himself, the exclusive privilege of the Jews to the divine
revelation and to divine grace. And thus, too, the restricted
religion of Israel gives place to the grand catholicity of the
religion of Christ. The benefit of the true faith and of
salvation is no longer limited to one people, whether great or
small, ancient or modern; but is imparted to all the races of
mankind.
{276}
"Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost."
[Footnote 117] "And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world,
and preach the gospel to every creature."[Footnote 118]

    [Footnote 117: Matthew xxviii. 19.]

    [Footnote 118: Mark xvi. 15.]

These were the last words which Christ addressed to his apostles,
and the apostles execute faithfully the instructions of their
divine Master; they go forth in effect, preaching in all places
and to all nations his history, his doctrine, his precepts, and
his parables. St. Paul is the special apostle of the Gentiles.
From Jesus, says this apostle, "We have received grace and
apostleship, for obedience to the faith among all nations, for
his name." "Is he the God of the Jews only? is he not also of the
Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also." "For there is no difference
between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich
unto all that call upon him." [Footnote 119]

    [Footnote 119: Romans i. 5.; iii. 29; x. 12.]

{277}

In spite of his prejudices as a Jew, and of the differences that
took place in the infancy of the Church, St. Peter adheres to St.
Paul; the apostles and the elders assembled at Jerusalem adhere
to St. Peter and St. Paul. The God of Abraham and of Jacob is now
not merely the One God, He is the God of the whole human race; to
all men alike He prescribes the same faith, the same law, and
promises the same salvation.

Another question, more temporal in its nature, still a great, a
delicate one, is raised in the presence of Jesus Christ. He
withdraws from the Jews their exclusive privilege to the
knowledge and the grace of the true God; but what does He think
of that which touches their existence as a nation, and as a great
one? Does He direct them to rebel and to struggle against their
earthly governor and sovereign?--"Then went the Pharisees, and
took counsel how they might entangle him in his talk. And they
sent out unto him their disciples with the Herodians, saying,
Master, we know that thou art true, and teachest the way of God
in truth, neither carest thou for any man: for thou regardest not
the person of men. Tell us therefore, What thinkest thou?
{278}
Is it lawful to give tribute unto Cesar, or not? But Jesus
perceived their wickedness, and said, Why tempt ye me, ye
hypocrites? Shew me the tribute money. And they brought unto him
a penny. And he saith unto them, Whose is this image and
superscription? They say unto him, Cesar's. Then saith he unto
them, Render therefore unto Cesar the things which are Cesar's;
and unto God the things that are God's. When they had heard these
words, they marvelled, and left him, and went their way."
[Footnote 120]

    [Footnote 120: Matthew xxii. 15-22.
    Mark xii. 12-17. Luke xx. 19-25.]

{279}

In this reply of Christ there was much more matter for admiration
than the Pharisees supposed; it was in effect much more than an
adroit evasion of the snare that had been extended for Him; it
defined in principle the distinction of man's life as it regards
religion, and man's life as it concerns society; the bounds, in
fact, of Church and of State. Cæsar has no right to intervene,
with his laws and material force, between the soul of man and his
God; and on his side, the faithful worshipper of God is bound to
fulfil towards Cæsar the duties which the necessity of the
maintenance of civil order imposes. The independence of religious
faith, and at the same time its subjection to the laws of
society, are alike the sense of Christ's reply to the Pharisees,
and the divine source of the greatest progress ever made by human
society since it began to feel the troubles and agitations of
this earth.

I take again these two grand principles, these two great acts of
Jesus,--the abolition of every privilege in the relations of God
and man, and the distinction of man's religious and his civil
life: I confront with these two principles all the history, and
every state of society previous to the advent of Jesus Christ,
and I am unable to discover in those essentially Christian
principles any kindred, any human origin. Everywhere before
Christ, religions were national local religions; they were
religions which established between nations, classes,
individuals, enormous differences and inequalities.
{280} Everywhere, also, before Christ, man's civil life and his
religious life were confounded, and mutually oppressed each
other; that religion or those religions were institutions
incorporated in the state, which the state regulated or repressed
as its interest dictated. But in this catholicity of religious
faith, in this independence of religious communities, I am
constrained to recognise new and sublime principles, and to see
in them flashes from the light of heaven. It needed many
centuries before mental vision was capable of receiving that
light; and no one shall pronounce how many centuries will be
needed before it will pervade and penetrate the entire world. But
whatever difficulties and shortcomings may be reserved in the
womb of the future for the two great truths to which I have just
referred, it is clear that God caused them first to beam forth
from the life and teaching of Jesus Christ.

{281}


          V. Jesus And Women.


At the very source of all religions, as well as in their
subsequent history, women find a place to fill and a part to
perform. At one time they constitute the material and furnish the
ornament of licentious systems of mythology. At another, on the
contrary, they are, for the heroes of those religions, objects
either of pious horror or of observances at once rigorous and
austere: women are considered by them as creatures full of evil
and of peril; and they are accordingly thrust from their lives as
men thrust from them what is a temptation and an impurity.
Voluptuous pictures and adventures on the one hand, and zealous
impulses of rigid asceticism on the other, constitute the two
extremes to which religions in their ages of youth and of vigour
are alternately prone.
{282}
Sometimes--and it is more fortunate for women when it is the
case--they are described in the narrative of these religions,
such as they really are in human life, charmers and at the same
time charmed, seducers and seduced, idols and slaves; at first
votaries of the enthusiasm, the victims of the errors and the
passions which they at once inspire and feel. Whether Asiatic or
European, rude or refined, such are the striking features with
which all systems of religion, excepting Christianity, have
characterised the women whom they have introduced in their
narratives.

Neither of these characteristics, nor anything analogous, is met
with in the Gospel and in the relations of Jesus with women. They
seem irresistibly attracted towards Him, with hearts moved,
imaginations struck by his manner of life, his precepts, his
miracles, his language. He inspires them with feelings of tender
respect and confiding admiration. The Canaanitish woman comes and
addresses to Him a timid prayer for the healing of her daughter.
The woman of Samaria listens to Him with eagerness, though she
does not know Him: Mary seats herself at his feet, absorbed in
reflections suggested by his words; and Martha proffers to Him
the frank complaint that her sister assists her not, but leaves
her unaided in the performance of her domestic duties.
{283}
The sinner draws near to Him in tears, pouring upon his feet a
rare perfume, and wiping them with her hair. The adulteress,
hurried into his presence by those who wished to stone her in
accordance with the precepts of the Mosaic Law, remains
motionless in his presence, even after her accusers have
withdrawn, waiting in silence what He is about to say. Jesus
receives the homage, and listens to the prayers of all these
women, with the gentle gravity and impartial sympathy of a being
superior and strange to earthly passion. Pure and inflexible
interpreter of the Divine law, He knows and understands man's
nature, and judges it with that equitable severity which nothing
escapes, the excuse as little as the fault. Faith, sincerity,
humanity, sorrow, repentance, touch Him without biassing the
charity and the justice of his conclusions; and He expresses
blame or announces pardon with the same calm serenity of
authority, certain that his eye has read the depths of the heart
to which his words will penetrate.
{284}
In his relations with the women who approach Him, there is, in
short, not the slightest trace of man; nowhere does the Godhead
manifest itself more winningly and with greater purity. And when
there is no longer any question of these particular relations and
conversations, when Jesus has no longer before him women
suppliants and sinners, who are invoking his power or imploring
his clemency; when it is with the position and the destiny of
women in general that He is occupying himself, He affirms and
defends their claims and their dignity with a sympathy at once
penetrating and severe. He knows that the happiness of mankind,
as well as the moral position of women, depends essentially upon
the married state; He makes of the sanctity of marriage a
fundamental law of Christian religion and society; He pursues
adultery even into the recesses of the human heart, the human
thought; He forbids divorce; He says of men, "Have ye not read,
that he which made them at the beginning made them male and
female? ... For this cause shall a man leave father and mother,
and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh.
{283}
Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore
God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. They say unto
him, Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement,
and to put her away? He saith unto them, Moses because of the
hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but
from the beginning it was not so. And I say unto you, Whosoever
shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall
marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which
is put away doth commit adultery." [Footnote 121]

    [Footnote 121: Matthew xix. 4-9; v. 27, 28 Mark x. 2-12.
    Romans vii. 2, 3. 1 Corinthians vi. 16-18; vii. 1-11.]

Signal and striking testimony to the progressive action of God
upon the human race! Jesus Christ restores to the divine law of
marriage the purity and the authority that Moses had not enjoined
to the Hebrews "because of the hardness of their hearts."

{286}

    VI. Jesus Christ And Children.


The sentiments expressed by Jesus Christ towards children, and
the language that He uses towards them, as these appear in the
Gospel narrative, must strike even the most careless reader. Let
me refer to the passages themselves:--

  "And they brought young children to him, that he should touch
  them: and his disciples rebuked those that brought them. But
  when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and said unto them,
  Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them
  not: for of such is the kingdom of God. Verily I say unto you,
  Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little
  child, he shall not enter therein. And he took them up in his
  arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them." [Footnote
  122]

    [Footnote 122: Mark x. 13-16; Matthew xix. 13-15.
    Luke xviii. 15-17.]

{287}

Another day, "came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, Who is the
greatest in the kingdom of heaven? And Jesus called a little
child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, and said,
Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as
little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.
Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child,
the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven." [Footnote 123]

    [Footnote 123: Matthew xviii. 1-4; Mark ix. 33-37.]

Again another day, Jesus, deploring the coldness that his
preaching and his miracles frequently encountered, and that even
in his closest vicinity, exclaimed, here no longer addressing his
disciples, but God himself, "I thank thee, O Father, Lord of
heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the
wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes." [Footnote
124]

    [Footnote 124: Matthew xi. 25.]

What is the full meaning of these words? They are not simply the
expression of that impulse of gentle benevolence excited in all
hearts at the sight of children, and their innocent confidence in
all who come near them.
{288}
Jesus Christ no doubt experienced the influence of this feeling,
for He was strange to none of man's noble emotions; but his
thoughts passed far beyond the children whose approach he
permitted, and they merely furnished Him with the living occasion
to address to men themselves his solemn warnings.

The child, I have already mentioned in these
Meditations,[Footnote 125] is, for us, the image of innocence,
the type of the creature fallible, yet who has not yet sinned,
who knows not yet either error of understanding, or the seduction
of passion, or the blinding influence of pride, or the troubles
of doubt, or the extreme folly of sin, or the anguish of
repentance; who follows in the first impulses of infancy only the
spontaneous instincts of tender confidence in the parent to whom
he is indebted for security and for love, for the first joys and
the earliest blessings.

    [Footnote 125: Meditation II., Christian Dogmas, p. 48.]

{289}

Jesus does not pretend to bring men back to that fair condition,
to restore to them their primitive innocence: but He comes to
ransom them from sin; He brings them the hope of pardon and
salvation. Confidence in God, a confidence sincere, unpretending,
and loving, is that disposition which opens the soul of man to
the divine blessing. This is also the disposition that the child
evinces towards its parents; he calls upon them, and he hopes in
them. Hence those words of Jesus: "Suffer little children to come
unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of
heaven." The way of innocence is a far better way than that of
science to lead man up to God.

Science is a splendid thing; it is also a noble privilege of man
that God, in creating him an intelligent and a free agent, has
given him a capacity to desire and to pursue through study the
truths of science, and even to attain them in a certain measure,
and in a certain sphere.
{290}
But when science attempts to exceed that measure and to quit that
sphere; when it ignores and scorns the instincts,--natural,
universal, and permanent instincts, of the human soul; when it
essays to set up everywhere its own torch in the place of that
primitive light that lights mankind: then, and from that cause
alone, science fills itself with error; and this is the very case
which called forth those words of Jesus: "I praise thee, Father,
Lord of heaven and of earth, that thou hast hidden these things
from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes."
[Footnote 126]

    [Footnote 126: Matthew xi. 25. The words [Greek text] are
    better rendered, "from the learned and the prudent," than
    "wise and intelligent;" "sages et intelligents," as in the
    French version by Osterwald.]


     VII. Jesus Christ Himself.

I have sought to gather from the Gospels the scattered facts that
constitute the life of Jesus. I have searched for them in his
acts, his precepts, his words: in his different relations in
life. I have added nothing, exaggerated nothing; on the contrary,
the life of Jesus is infinitely grander and more sublime than I
have made it; his words are infinitely more profound and admiral
than I have described them. And I have said nothing of the seal
affixed to _his work_ and _his mission_ by his Passion;
nor have I shown Jesus at Gethsemane and upon the Cross.

{291}

According to the Bible, God is without parallel--ever the same.
Jesus is also so according to the Gospel. The most perfect, the
most constant unity reigns in Him: in his life as in his soul; in
his language as in his acts. His action is progressive, and
proportionate to the circumstances which call it forth and in the
midst of which He lives; but his progress never entails any
change of character or purpose. As He appears at the age of
twelve, in the Temple, already full of the sentiment of his
divine nature, in his reply to his mother who was searching for
Him with disquietude, "Knowest thou not that I must be about my
Father's business?" the same He remains and manifests himself in
the whole course of his active mission--in Galilee and at
Jerusalem, with his apostles and with the people, amongst the
Pharisees and the Publicans, whether they be men, or women, or
children who approach Him; alike before Caiaphas and Pilate, and
under the eyes of the crowd pressing around to listen to Him.
{292}
Everywhere and in every circumstance, the same spirit animates
Him; He diffuses the same light, proclaims the same law. Perfect
and immutable, always at once Son of God and Son of Man, He
pursues and consummates amidst all the trials and all the sorrows
of human existence his divine work for the salvation of mankind.

What need to add more? How speak in detail of Jesus himself when
one believes in Him, when one sees in Him God made man, acting as
God alone can act, and suffering all that man can suffer to
ransom mankind from sin, and save it by bringing it back to God?
How sound closely the mysteries of such a person and such a
purpose? What passed in that divine soul during that human
existence? Who shall explain those cries of agony of Jesus in the
bosom of the most absolute faith in God his father and in
himself, and those moments of horror at the approach of the
sacrifice without the slightest hesitation in the sacrifice,
without the smallest doubt as to its efficaciousness?
{293}
This sublime fact, this intimate and continual intermixture of
the divine and human finds no competent, no adequate expression
in human speech, and the more we consider it the more difficult
we find it to speak of it.

Those who have no faith in Jesus, who admit not the supernatural
character of his person, of his life, and of his work, do not
feel this difficulty. Having beforehand done away with God and
with miracles, the history of Jesus is for them nothing more than
an ordinary history, which they narrate and explain like any
other biography of man. But such historians fall into a far
different difficulty, and wreck themselves on a far different
rock. The supernatural being and power of Jesus may be disputed,
but the perfection, the sublimity of his actions and of his
precepts, of his life and of his moral law, are incontestable.
{294}
And in effect, not only are they not contested, but they are
admired and celebrated enthusiastically, and complacently, too;
it would seem as if it were desired to restore to Jesus as man,
and man alone, the superiority of which men deprive Him in
refusing to see in Him the Godhead. But then, what incoherence,
what contradictions, what falsehood, what moral impossibility in
his history, such as they make it; what a series of suppositions,
irreconcilable with fact, nevertheless admitted! The man they
make so perfect, so sublime, becomes by turns a dreamer or a
charlatan; at once dupe and deceiver: dupe of his own mystical
enthusiasm in believing in his own miracles; deceiver in
tampering with evidence in order to accredit himself. The history
of Jesus Christ is thus but a tissue of fables and falsehood. And
nevertheless the hero of this history remains perfect, sublime,
incomparable; the greatest genius, the noblest heart that the
world ever saw; the type of virtue and moral beauty, the supreme
and rightful chief of mankind.
{295}
And his disciples, in their turn justly admirable, have braved
everything, suffered everything, in order to abide faithful to
Him and to accomplish his work. And, in effect, the work has been
accomplished: the pagan world has become Christian, and the whole
world has nothing better to do than to follow the example.

What a contradictory and insolvable problem they present to us
instead of the one they are so anxious to suppress!

History reposes upon two foundations--positive written evidence
as to facts and persons, and presumptive evidence resulting from
the connection of facts and the action of persons. These two
foundations are entirely lost sight of in the history of Jesus
such as it is recounted, or rather constructed, in these days; it
is, on the one hand, in evident and shocking contradiction with
the testimony of the men who saw Jesus, or of the men who lived
nearly in the time of those who had seen Him; on the other side,
with the natural laws presiding over the actions of men and the
course of events.
{296}
This does not deserve the name of historical criticism; it is a
philosophical system and a romantic narrative substituted for the
substantial proof and the circumstantial evidence; it is a Jesus
false and impossible, made by the hand of man pretending to
dethrone the real living Jesus--the Son of God.

The choice lies between the system and the mystery; between the
romance of man and the purpose of God. Even in revealing himself
God still interposes veils, but these veils are no falsehoods.
The Gospel history of Jesus shows us God acting in ways which are
not his ways of every day. This special action of God
characterises also many other facts in the history of the
universe; amongst others, the great fact of the actual creation,
where man, at his appearance upon earth, received the first
divine revelation. The supernatural does not merely date from
Jesus Christ; and if a man from this motive rejects the history
of Jesus, he will have to deny also a far different thing.
{297}
To escape this fatal necessity, men of learning have recently
striven to curtail indefinitely the proportion of the
supernatural in the history of Jesus, and to explain by natural
means, most of the acts and circumstances of his life. A puerile
attempt, which has altogether failed in the details, still
leaving untouched the substance of the problem. No better success
will attend the new attempt that has in these days been made, and
which consists in placing the Ideal in the place of the
Supernatural, and in elevating religious sentiment upon the ruins
of the Christian faith. This is doing either too much or too
little. The human soul is not satisfied with these leavings, nor
human pride with such refusals, When one is so hardy as to
pretend, in the name of the science of man in this finite world,
to determine the limits of the power of God, one must be still
more hardy and--dethrone God himself.

{298}

{299}

                 Note.

I said (p. 145) that I would indicate some instances of
grammatical faults to be met with in the Scriptures, to which the
character of divine inspiration cannot be assigned. Upon the
subject of the books of the Old Testament I have consulted my
learned confrère, M. Munk; his reply is in the precise words
which follow:

  "The biblical authors," he writes to me, "whose style is most
  incorrect, are Ezekiel and Jeremiah. These authors, and
  particularly the first, err frequently against grammar and
  orthography; they are not merely influenced by the Aramean
  dialect, but they disclose grammatical faults capable of being
  traced to no source in any of the Semitic dialects. This remark
  has also been made by Hebrew grammarians of the middle ages,
  and Isaac Abrabanel (towards the close of the 15th century), in
  the preface to his commentary upon Ezekiel, does not hesitate
  to declare that this prophet was but superficially acquainted
  with Hebrew grammar and orthography.
{300}
  Nevertheless, neither Jeremiah nor Ezekiel, of whom both are
  distinguished by a certain originality of style, unlike that of
  any of the other Hebrew writers, is wanting in elegance,
  energy, and boldness in images, and they display in the highest
  degree their proficiency in the art of composition. The
  following are some instances of the grave faults against
  grammar to be met with in their writings:--

  _Examples of Incorrect Expressions in Ezekiel._

  [Transcriber's note: Hebrew text is indicated by "HHHHHH".
  Some Latin characters are not exact. See the html version
  for the original text.]

  HHHHHH (_mischta' hawithem_), "and they worshipped" (viii.
  16), a barbarism for HHHHHH (_mischta'hawîm_).

  HHHHHH (_we-néschaar ani_), "and I remained" (xi. 8), for
  HHHHHH (_wa-ëschaër_) or HHHHHH (_we-nischarti_).
  (There are here faults both of orthography and grammar.)

  HHHHHH (_ischôth_), "women" (xxiii. 44), for HHHHHH
  (_nesché_). HHHHHH (_schib'a_), "his seven burnt
  offerings" (xl. 26), for HHHHHH (_scheba'_). In the number
  seven the masculine is used instead of the feminine.

  HHHHHH (_bi-benôthayikh_), "in that thou buildest" (xvi.
  31), instead of HHHHHH (_bi-benotihékh_).

  HHHHHH (_be-schoubéni_), "when I returned" (xlvi. 7),
  instead of HHHHHH (_be-schoubi_).

  HHHHHH (_gabehâ_), "his height was exalted" (xxxi. 5),
  instead of HHHHHH (_gabehâ_). The last letter is
  _aleph_, for _hé_.

{301}

The Chaldean plural is used in several words, for instance:

  HHHHHH (_'hittîn_), "wheat" (iv. 9), for HHHHHH
  (_'hittîm_); HHHHHH (_ha-iyyîn_), "the isles," or "the
  isles in the sea" (xxvi. 18), instead of HHHHHH
  _(ha-iyyim_), an error in both orthography and grammar.


  _Examples of Incorrect Expressions in Jeremiah._


  HHHHHH (_ôbîdâ_), "I will destroy" (xlvi. 8), for HHHHHH
  (_aabîdâ_).

  HHHHHH (_nibbetha_), "hast thou prophesied" (xxvi. 9),
  instead of HHHHHH (_nibbetha_). The syllable _bé_ has
  a _yod_ instead of an _aleph_.

  HHHHHH (_athanou_) "we come" (iii. 22), instead of HHHHHH
  (_athinou_.).

  HHHHHH (_att_), "thee" in the feminine (terminating with
  _yod_ mute), for HHHHHH (_att_), a Syriasm very
  frequent in Jeremiah, who often forms the second person of the
  perfect fem. in HHHHHH (_t_ followed by _yod_)
  instead of HHHHHH (_t_). HHHHHH (_lô_ written with
  _waw_ quiescent), "not" very often for HHHHHH (_lô_
  without the _waw_).

  HHHHHH (_hoglath_), "shall be carried away captive" (xiii.
  19), instead of HHHHHH (_hoglethâ_). The latter Chaldaism
  we meet also in the Pentateuch (Leviticus xxv. 22), HHHHHH
  (_we'asath_), her fruits (shall) come in." for HHHHHH
  (_we'asetah_), and ibid xxvi. 34; HHHHHH
  (_we-hirzath_), "she shall enjoy," for HHHHHH
  (_we-hircethâ_).

{302}

With respect to the New Testament, I have required a similar
notice from my son William, who has made the Greek language in
general, and its deviations in the writings of the Gospel, the
object of particular and careful study. I insert, also, the note
which he has drawn up upon the subject:--

  "On first approaching the text of the New Testament, after
  having learnt the Greek language and grammar in the classical
  writers, we are struck by numerous irregularities of
  expression: amongst these, however, we must carefully
  distinguish those which constitute merely particular and
  singular modes of expression from those which are real faults.
  The former are susceptible of explanation and justification by
  different examples and different arguments; the latter are not
  capable of being reconciled with the elementary and necessary
  laws of language. Thus we may justify such or such a strange
  form of conjugation or of declension, which would be accounted
  a barbarism by a school boy, but which was nevertheless in
  actual use in some one or other of the local dialects, written
  and spoken by the Greeks.
{303}
  Again, however it may have been the rule in Greek to set the
  verb in the singular when used with a neuter substantive in the
  plural, the rule has not been invariably observed even by the
  purest classical writers, and we may justify by exceptions
  collected here and there in their compositions, several
  passages of the New Testament which, at first sight, might
  appear amenable to a charge of solecism. Thus, in short, after
  our attention having, at first sight, been arrested and our
  minds disconcerted by other passages in which the sacred writer
  has confounded the sense of two words which resemble each
  other, as [Greek text], which signifies _summon a
  witness_, and which St. Peter employs instead of [Greek
  text] which means, _give testimony_,[Footnote 127] as
  [Greek text], which signifies _to be incapable_, and which
  St. Matthew and St. Mark employ in the sense of _being
  impossible_, [Footnote 128]--as [Greek text], which
  signifies the _meridian or zenith of a star_, and which,
  on three occasions in the New Testament, is used in the sense
  of _in the middle of the air_,--or, even when we meet
  words, not merely strange to the ear, but formed without
  attention to the rules and in contradiction to analogy, as
  [Greek text] for [Greek text][Footnote 129]--we may again,
  without any departure from logical rules, by judicious or
  subtle distinctions, escape from the difficulties which the
  passages suggest, and have a perfect right to do so. But after
  having made allowances for the irregularities susceptible of
  explanation in the language of the New Testament, there still
  remain some which are real faults. The same word cannot be
  written by the same hand, at an interval of but three pages,
  both masculine and feminine, as the word [Greek text],
  _rainbow_, in the _Apocalypse_. [Footnote 130] When
  the substantive is feminine, the adjective cannot be masculine,
  as [Greek text]. [Footnote 131]

    [Footnote 127: 1 Peter i. 11.]

    [Footnote 128: Matthew xvii. 20; Luke i. 37.]

    [Footnote 129: 1 Corinthians ii 1.]

    [Footnote 130: Compare iv. 3, and x. 1.]

    [Footnote 131: Apocalypse xiv. 19.]

{304}

When the substantive is in the accusative, the adjective cannot
be in the nominative. In such an employment of words we are able
to trace in the sacred writings the hand of man, marks of human
imperfection and error; and we must not forget that these faults
become more numerous and grosser the greater the antiquity of the
MS. in which we find them, and the purer the Jewish origin of the
writer. Thus the Greek of the Apocalypse is singularly incorrect,
at the same time that the imaginative turn of the expression is
remarkably Hebraic. [Footnote 132] In the text, styled the
received text, and which was fixed in the 16th century, many of
these faults have disappeared, because it has borrowed from MSS.
of then recent date. But now that biblical philosophy has mounted
higher, we can discern how the copyists, one after the other,
actuated by pious scruples, or thinking only to correct some
error of their predecessors, have little by little effaced what
appeared to them too great a departure from rules to have been
written by an evangelist or an apostle. At the present day, these
admitted irregularities are an element indispensible to every
serious discussion respecting the nature and extent of the divine
inspiration to be met with in the sacred volume.

    [Footnote 132: Apocalypse i. 16; iii. 12; iv. 7;
    ix. 13 & 14; xiv. 12; xvi. 13; xx. 2, &c.]


               THE END.

  Bradpury And Evans, Printers, Whitefriars.

{305}

           Albemarle Street,
          _July_, 1864


            Mr. Murray's
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