The Collected Works of Theodore Parker/Volume 01/Book 3/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI.
THE MORAL AND RELIGIOUS CHARACTER OF JESUS OF NAZARETH.
Reverence and Tradition have woven about Jesus such a shining veil, that with the imperfect and doubtful materials in our hands, it is not easy to determine in detail and with minuteness the character that moved and lived among his fellow-men, and commenced what may he called the Christian movement. The difficulty is twofold: to avoid traditional prejudice, and to get at the facts. Perhaps it is impossible to separate the pure fact from the legendary and mythological drapery that surrounds it. Besides, the Gospels pretend to cover but a few months of his active life. Still some conclusion may be reached. From Christianity we have separated the life and character of Jesus, that we might try the doctrine by Absolute Religion; it now remains to examine the life of the man by the standard himself has given.
I. The Negative Side, or the Limitations of Jesus.
It is apparent that Jesus shared the erroneous notions of the times respecting devils, possessions, and demonology in general; respecting the character of God, and the eternal punishment he prepares for the Devil and his angels, and for a large part of mankind. If we may credit the most trustworthy of the Gospels, he was profoundly in error on these important points, whereon absurd doctrines have still a most pernicious influence in Christendom. But it would be too much to expect a man “about thirty years of age” in Palestine, in the first century, to have outgrown what is still the doctrine of learned ministers all over the Christian world.
He was mistaken in his interpretation of the Old Testament, if we may take the word of the Gospels. But if he supposed that the writers of the Pentateuch, the Psalms, and the Prophecies, spoke of him, if he applied their poetic figures to himself, it is yet but a trifling mistake, affecting a man's head, not his heart. It is no more necessary for Jesus than for Luther to understand all ancient literature, and be familiar with criticism and antiquities; though with men who think Religion rests on his infallibility, it must be indeed a very hard case for their belief in Christianity.
Sometimes he is said to be an enthusiast,[1] who hoped to found a visible kingdom in Judea, by miraculous aid—as the prophets had distinctly foretold their “Messiah” should do, that he should be a King on earth, and his disciples also, not forgetting Judas, should sit on twelve thrones and judge the restored tribes; that he should return in the clouds. Certainly a strong case, very strong, may be made out from the Synoptics to favour this charge. But what then? Even if the fact be admitted, as I think it must be, it does not militate with his morality and religion. How many a saint has been mistaken in such matters! His honesty, zeal, self-sacrifice, heavenly purity still shine out in the whole course of his life.[2]
Another charge, sometimes brought against him, and the only one at all affecting his moral and religious character, is this; that he denounces his opponents in no measured terms; calls the Pharisees “hypocrites” and “children of the devil.” We cannot tell how far the historians have added to the fierceness of this invective, but the general fact must probably remain, that he did not use courteous speech. We must judge a man by his highest moment. His denunciation of sleek, hollow Pharisees, say some, is certainly lower than the prayer, “Father, forgive them;” not consistent with the highest thought of humanity. But if such would consider the youth of the man, it were a very venial error—to make the worst of it. The case called for vigorous treatment. Shall a man say, “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace? Sharp remedies are for inveterate and critical disease. It is not with honeyed words, neither then nor now, that great sins are to be exposed. It is a pusillanimous and most mean-spirited wisdom that demands a religious man to prophesy smooth things, lest Indolence be rudely startled from his sleep, and the delicate nerves of Sin, grown hoary and voluptuous in his hypocrisy, be smartly twitched. It seems unmanly and absurd to say a man filled with divine ideas should have no indignation at the world's wrong. Rather let it be said, No man's indignation should be like his, so deep, so uncompromising, but so holy and full of love. Let it be indignation; not personal spleen; call sin sin, sinners by their right name.
Yet in this general and righteous, though to some it might seem too vehement, indignation against men when he speaks of them as a class and representatives of an idea, there is no lack of charity, none of love, when he speaks with an individual. He does not speak harshly to that young man who went away sorrowful, his great possessions on the one hand and the Kingdom of Heaven on the other; does not call Judas a traitor, and Simon Peter a false liar as he was; says only to James and John—ambitious youths—They know not what they ask; never addresses scornful talk to a Pharisee, or long-robed doctor of the law, Herodians or Scribes, spite of their wide phylacteries, their love of uppermost seats, their devouring of widows' houses in private, their prayers and alms to be seen of men. He only states the fact, but plainly and strongly, to their very face. Even for these men his soul is full of affection. He could honour an Herodian; pray for a Scribe; love even a Pharisee. It was not hatred, personal indignation, but love of men, which lit that burning zeal, and denounced such as sat in Moses' seat, boasting themselves children of Abraham, when they were children of the Devil, and did his works daily—dutiful children of the father of lies. How he wailed like a child for the mother that bore him: “Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets and stonest them that are sent unto thee!” How he prayed like a mother for her desperate son, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Are these the words of one that could hate even the wickedest of the deceitful? Who then can love his fellow-men?
II. The Positive Side, or the Excellences of Jesus.
In estimating the character of Jesus it must be remembered that he died at an age when a man has not reached his fullest vigour. The great works of creative intellect; the maturest products of Man; all the deep and settled plans of reforming the world, come from a period, when experience gives a wider field as the basis of hope. Socrates was but an embryo sage till long after the age of Jesus. Poems and Philosophies that live, come at a later date. Now here we see a young man, but little more than thirty years old, with no advantage of position; the son and companion of rude people; born in a town whose inhabitants were wicked to a proverb; of a nation above all others distinguished for their superstition, for national pride, exaltation of themselves and contempt for all others; in an age of singular corruption, when the substance of religion had faded out from the mind of its anointed ministers, and sin had spread wide among a people turbulent, oppressed, and downtrodden; a man ridiculed for his lack of knowledge, in this nation of forms, of hypocritical priests and corrupt people, falls back on simple Morality, simple Religion, unites in himself the sublimest precepts and divinest practices, thus more than realizing the dream of prophets and sages; rises free from so many prejudices of his age, nation, or sect; gives free range to the spirit of God in his breast; sets aside the Law, sacred and time-honoured as it was, its forms, its sacrifice, its temple and its priests; puts away the Doctors of the law, subtle, learned, irrefragable, and pours out doctrines, beautiful as the light, sublime as Heaven, and true as God. The Philosophers, the Poets, the Prophets, the Rabbis,—he rises above them all. Yet Nazareth was no Athens, where Philosophy breathed in the circumambient air; it had neither Porch nor Lyceum, not even a school of the Prophets. Doubtless he had his errors, his follies, faults, and sins even; it is idle and absurd to deny it. But there was a divine manhood in the heart of this youth. Old teachers, past times, the dead letter of forms a century deceased, enslaved his fellow-men, the great, the wise; what were they to him? Let the dead bury their dead. Men had reverence for institutions so old, so deep-rooted, so venerably bearded with the moss of age. Should not he, at least, with that sweet conservatism of a pious heart, sacrifice a little to human weakness, and put his zeal, faith, piety, into the old religious form, sanctified by his early recollections, the tender prayer of his mother, and a long line of saints? New wine must be put into new bottles, says the young man, triumphing over a sentiment, natural and beautiful in its seeming; triumphant where strife is most perilous, victory rarest and most difficult. The Priest said, Keep the Law and reverence the Prophets. Jesus sums up the excellence of both, Love man and love God, leaving the chaff of Moses, and the husk of Ezekiel, with their “Thus-saith-the-Lord,” to go to their own place, where the wind might carry them.
He looked around him and saw the wicked, men who had served in the tenth legion of sin, pierced with the lances and torn with the shot; men scarred and seamed all over with wounds dishonourably got in that service; men squalid with this hideous disease, their moral sense blinded, their nature perverse, themselves fallen from the estate of Godliness for which they were made, and unable, so they fancied, to lift themselves up; men who called good evil, and evil good,—he bade them rise up and walk, waiting no longer for a fancied redeemer that would never come. He told them they also were men; children of God, and heirs of Heaven, would they but obey. So corrupt were they, there was no open vision for them: the voice of God was a forgotten sound in their bosoms. To them he said, I am the good Shepherd; follow me. At the sight of their penitence he says, Thy sins are forgiven thee: go, and sin no more. Is not penitence itself the forgiveness of sins, the dawn of reconciliation with God? He showed men their sin, the disease of the soul living false to its law; told them their salvation; bade them obey and be blessed.
He saw the oppressor, with his yoke and heavy burden for Man's neck; the iron that enters the soul; men who were the corrupters, the bane, the ruin of the land; base men with an honourable front; low men, crawling, as worms, their loathsome track in high places; deceitful hucksters of salvation, making God's house of prayer a den of thieves, fair as marble without, but all rottenness within. What wonder if Love, though the fairest of God's daughters, at sight of such baseness pours out the burning indignation of a man stung with the tyranny of the strong, ashamed at the patience of mankind; the word of a man fearless of all but to be false when Truth and Duty bid him speak? To call the Whelp of Sin a devil's child—is that a crime? Doubtless it is, in men stirred by passion; not in a soul filled to the brim and overflowing with love.
He looks on the nation, the children of pious Abraham; men for whom Moses made laws, and Samuel held the sceptre, and David prayed, and prophets admonished in vain, pouring out their blood as water; men for whom psalmist and priest and seer and kings had prayed and wept in vain,—well might he cry, “Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem.” Few heard his cries. That mightiest heart that ever beat, stirred by the Spirit of God, how it wrought in his bosom! What words of rebuke, of comfort, counsel, admonition, promise, hope, did he pour out; words that stir the soul as summer dews call up the faint and sickly grass! What profound instruction in his proverbs and discourses; what wisdom in his homely sayings, so rich with Jewish life; what deep divinity of soul in his prayers, his action, sympathy, resignation! Persecution comes; he bears it: contempt; it is nothing to him. Persecuted in one city, he flees into another. Scribes and Pharisees say, He speaketh against Moses; he replies, The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. They look back to the past, and say, We have Abraham to our father; he looks to the Comforter, and says, Call no man your Father on Earth. They say, He eats bread with unwashed hands, plucks corn and relieves disease on the holy Sabbath day, when even God rested from his labours; he says, Worship the Father in spirit and in truth. They look out to their Law, its Festivals, its Levites, its Chief Priests, the Ancient and Honourable of the earth, the Temple and the Tithe; he looks in to the Soul, Purity, Peace, Mercy, Goodness, Love, Religion. The extremes meet often in this world. Comedy and Tragedy jostle each other in every dirty lane. But here it was the Flesh and the Devil on one side, and the Holy Spirit on the other.
- ↑ See in Eusebius, Dem. Ev. Lib. III. C. 3, the noble passage defending him from the charge, often brought of old time—of seducing the people.
- ↑ On this point see, who will, the charges against Jesus in the Wolfenbüttel, Fragmente; in the Writings of Wünsch, Bahrdt, Paalzow, and Salvador. See also Hennel, ubi sup. Ch. XVI.; and, on the other hand, Reinhard's Plan of the Founder of Christianity, Andover, 1831, and Furness, ubi sup. passim, and Ullmann, Sündlosigkeit Jesu.