"Perpetual" obligation is not very distinguishable from temporary in a scheme which, as reported to us, contemplated an early close of mundane affairs. And whatever account be rendered of that erroneous expectation, will carry with it, for better or worse, all injunctions manifestly contingent on that view of the world. The moral aberration is not to be measured by the standard of those whose rules are adjusted to the conditions of a permanent social state. Had the great crisis been really impending which the first Christians anticipated, there would actually have been no divine work for the human conscience, except to prepare the conditions of a theocratic future, to awaken the unready world, and form, as the centre of retreat, the nucleus of a society of saints. Relatively to the false Messianic picture, the ethical feeling involved in this class of precepts is true, and casts not the faintest shade upon the character of their propounders. The objection therefore relapses into the general difficulty occasioned by the mistaken visions which have left their traces on the gospels. If these misapprehensions are later conceptions incorrectly thrown back by the evangelical compilers into the biography of Jesus, the same critical excision which removes them from his life, removes also the precepts organically combined with them. And even those who may think this process too violent, and are unable to relieve Jesus of all share in the errors of his followers, have no reason, in conceding his fallibility, to qualify in the least their claim of perfection for his moral sentiments. For the manifestation of character, imaginary external conditions may be as good as the actual: were it otherwise, admiration and respect would lose all inward rule and measure, and must merge in the vulgar worship of success. The precept however to "sell all" was originally given upon an occasion which does not necessarily connect it with any delusive expectations, and supplies it with an independent ground of defence. It was addressed to the young man who, in merely "keeping the commandments," could not feel that he rose upon the wing towards "eternal life: " and was disappointed to be again referred, by one so holy as Christ, to the old law whose paths only crossed the flat of common habit. "Then Jesus, beholding him, loved him, and said unto him, 'One thing thou lackest; go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come, take up the cross, and follow me.' And he was sad at that saying, and went away grieved; for he had great possessions." (Mark x. 21, 22.) Surely the fact that Jesus, in first defining for this youth the conditions of " eternal life,” said nothing about "selling all," but confined himself to reciting the admitted moral law, is a direct disproof of Mr. Newman's assertion, that this special precept is announced as a part of "universal morality." It is given, on the contrary avowedly in supplement to the general sphere of human obligation, and to meet the spiritual exigences of an individual case. Is it possible to mistake the nature of those exigencies, the deep grace of soul in that young man, on noticing which Jesus, "beholding him, loved him?" Had he not manifestly caught the vision of a higher life than that of measured obedience? and was he not one of those, who, when love and aspiration have once been touched, can live in law no more; who, when a diviner image hovers above their eye, are so haunted by it, that the beauty flies from lower objects, and conscience cannot rest on them again; for whom, in short, ethical conditions provide no peace, and there is need of some free sacrifice for God? With finest adaptation to the requirements of such a nature, which can obtain its emancipation only through heroic self-surrender, Jesus bids him follow out the very impulse which has drawn him thus far,-which cannot turn back without always seeing its own shape in a shadow of sorrow, but, if it advances, forgets all in the light it pursues. Let him break away from the placid miseries of a lot that cannot fill his soul, and trust himself to work of higher enterprise that will burst the ligaments of conscience and exhaust the resources of affection. The suggestion to "sell all" simply pointed to the readiest mode of that utter self-abnegation in which alone such a spirit could find rest. It was a "counsel of perfection," not given till God had sent his call, visibly written on the sad and ten'der features. It failed of outward result, but answered its spiritual end. It instantly revealed the young man to himself; made him feel the disharmony of his being; and sent him sorrowing away, that light had come in through the bars of the commandments, while the master-key of love was missing to set him free. On this precept, stripped of its moral significance by being torn from its occasion, the Ebionitism of the early church seized, in justification of a doctrine of asceticism and voluntary poverty. Hence the appearance, in the synoptic gospels, of unreasonable stress laid on the relinquishment of property; hence the self-glorification of the apostles for their sacrifices; and the reported promise of the twelve thrones and twelve judgeships in return. When offices, judicial or other, are bespoken by rumours of royal or influential promise, the interest in which those rumours are circulated is not difficult to conjecture. And the whole tone of the passages to which we refer, betrays an age prone to magnify apostles rather than to apprehend Christ, and engaged on behalf of the Jewish "twelve" to the exclusion of the Gentile thirteenth. Mr. Newman takes it all alike as history, and apparently feels no moral incongruity in bringing the dictum about the "twelve thrones" out of the same lips that had just revealed the one thing needful to the soul in quest of eternal life. The asserted co-existence in the same mind of such mutually repellent tendencies of thought affects us as a self-evident absurdity. And if we wanted an authority for free dealing with the twelve judges, we should ask ourselves, before which of them,-from Peter to Judas-Paul would have to stand his trial? We fancy he would deny the jurisdiction and dispute the title of the court: and we do but join his protest. The mode in which the death of Christ was brought about is peculiarly conceived by our friend. After playing fast and loose as long as he could with the Messianic office, Jesus felt at last that he must either go forward and publicly assert the claim; or retract his pretensions and retire into privacy and contempt. Unable to bring himself to the honester course, he determined to advance. But as he thus assumed a character which he was conscious of inability to sustain, his only resource was to escape from the responsibilities of the claim as soon as he had made it. With this view he rushed upon death; going to Jerusalem, where danger awaited him; entering the city amid tumultuary greetings as its king; com mitting a breach of the peace in the temple; and pouring out such bitter invectives against the public authorities, as to goad their resentment to the murder-point. His excessive vehemence of speech turned even the popular feeling against him, so that Barabbas was more in favour than he. At his trial, he refused to rebut accusation, being determined to die: and with the same object, burst into an avowal of his Messiahship; and this at last secured his destruction. The treatment of historical materials in this hypothesis is something unusual: but the conception of motives and character involved in it appears to us still more extraordinary. A fanatic, we know, will rather die than relinquish a pretension he cannot vindicate; supported by the illusory consciousness of really being before God other than he seems in the eye of men. An impostor, again, will play a hazardous game and, for a great stake of dignity or power, take his chance of meeting the last failure of death. But that a man unsustained by any inward conviction, or any outward means of making good his word, should deliberately put forth a false pretension, in order to get immediately put to death, is a supposition more curious than plausible. Other pretenders to the Messiahship played for a crown ; but Jesus put on the royal mask for the sake of the cross. He had the popular feeling of a province at his back he had the ear of the temple crowds: he was the terror of the authorities, who dared not touch him openly: yet he had no desire to profit by these advantages and make a dash at the prize which he announced to be his right. He valued them, on the contrary, only as conveniences for suicide with their help, he could shock the pious and sober by raising a riot in the courts of worship; could disgust and alienate the populace by too strong a dose of abuse against the priests; to the terror of the rulers could add rage that would be sure to work, and when once brought up, he might "behave as one pleading guilty," so as to clench his doom. Was there ever a more dismal kingdom imagined as an object of ambition? It is "neither of this world; " nor of any other world. : The path moreover taken to the cross was surely needlessly circuitous. Jesus had nothing to do but to publish that assertion of his Messiahship, to which Mr.Newman says his mind was now made up, and his condemnation was secured. It was just the want of any such assertion that made the case against him incomplete, and embarrassed his judges so long; and the instant it was extorted from him, his fate was sealed and his sentence passed. And he knew its effect well enough, our friend affirms; and uttered it with an express view to its result. We naturally ask, why then did he withhold it to the very last? and Mr. Newman replies, that also he did for the same purpose, viz. to ensure his sentence of death; it was his way of "pleading guilty!" And so, whether he holds his peace or whether he declares himself aloud, it comes to the same thing with the tribunal at whose bar he stands,—be the judge High-Priest on the bench of the Sanhedrim, or Professor on the seat of Criticism. It is not our intention to vindicate again the language of terrible exposure in which Jesus spoke of the scribes and Pharisees. We abide by our conviction that it was a necessary alarum to the people's conscience: and maintain that there is a point in public degeneracy at which the forbearing calculation of consequences must cease, and the trustful spirit of indignant veracity must have way. It is no sign of weakness, but of health and strength, that a soul, stationed at that point, should feel its position, and refrain no more; should break off negociations with iniquity, send passports to its ambassadors, and proclaim a war. But however we may settle the general rules of speech or silence in relation to evil counsellors in high places, we deny that Christ's anti-pharisaic discourse, (Matt. xxiii. Mark xii. Luke xi.) can be shown to have any causal connexion with the apprehension of Jesus, or to have been intended by him to provoke such result. According to Luke, it was uttered, not during the last visit to Jerusalem at all, but at a far earlier time and at a private house in Galilee. And Mark, so far from conceiving that it alienated the people, as Mr. Newman affirms, mentions it in immediate illustration of the statement, And the multitude of the people heard him gladly.' The fact that the priests and rulers were still obliged to proceed with secrecy and circumspection, to make the seizure a deed of darkness and the trial an affair of early morning, and to strain their influence to "stir up the people," proves how |
