that which life is likely sooner or later to diminish, and if we curb it, we do so that it may not exhaust itself by its own vivacity. But in manhood work is not assigned to us by others who are interested in our welfare, but by a ruthless and tyrannous necessity which takes small account of our powers or our happiness. And the source of the happiness of manhood, a family, doubles its anxieties. Hence middle life tends continually to routine, to the mechanic tracing of a contracted circle. A man finds or fancies that the care of his own excuses himself from most of his duties to family is as much as he can undertake, and humanity. In many cases, owing to the natural probably the nearest to our Lord's. It is true that there is an enthusiasm of the kind which our author certainly means to indicate which depends entirely on the great sustaining power of thoughts that are in us, but not of us, to which we trust, as a swimmer trusts himself to the sustaining sea; but then it is of the essence of this enthusiasm to know that the source from which it enters the mind is a perennial source, not capable of running dry. And the attitude of mind in which the greatest and most victorious of working philanthropists stand towards such sustaining convic-difficulty of obtaining a livelihood in a particular tions is often far from one of elation, which country, or to remediable social abuses, such a is generally supposed to be part of enthusi- man's conduct is justified by necessity, but in asm, but one of mere humble, tranquil trust. many more it arises from the blindness of The having a great faith to lean upon may think that he has done enough for his family natural affection, making it difficult for him to often, perhaps most often, be the one in- while it is possible for him to do more. Christ fluence which extinguishes the outward bids us look to it that we be not weighed down appearance of enthusiasm. When first the by these worldly cares, which indeed, if not spirit catches sight of the new wave of power, resisted, must evidently undo all that Christino doubt a thrill, properly described as one anity has done and throw men back into the of enthusiasm, runs through it. But after clannish_condition out of which it redeemed once resting upon it and testing its full them. How many a man who at twenty was full of zeal, high-minded designs and plans of strength, the flush fades away, and what we a life devoted to humanity, after the cares of feel is no longer enthusiasm, but quiet trust middle life have come upon him and one or in a great agency distinct from ourselves, two schemes contrived with the inexperience and which uses us for its greater ends. And of youth have failed, retains nothing of the this is the true aspect in which to present Enthusiasm with which he set out but a willthe purposes of Christ to working men,- -asingness to relieve distress whenever it crosses a revelation of eternal strength ever at work behind the veil of visible phenomena,-of which we may avail ourselves, if we will,which will avail itself of us whether we will or not, but which is ever carrying out the great aims and laws of Christ,-though sometimes men in their blindness may fall on it and are broken, and sometimes, when they set themselves consciously against it, it may fall on them and "grind them to powder." We may illustrate what we mean in this respect by the fine passage in which our author speaks of Christ's anxiety to guard His disciples against the devouring "cares of this world" (μepчuvai ẞuτikai), a danger felt by none, except the mercantile class, more keenly than by the class which is always living on the very edge of want, and sometimes has the greatest possible difficulty in realizing that "the life is more than meat," or "the body than raiment ": his path, and perhaps a habit of devoting an annual sum of money to charitable purposes! To protect the lives of men from sinking into a routine of narrow-minded drudgery, the Christian Church has introduced the invaluable institution of the Sunday." Christ's cure for these gnawing claims on our thought and attention was to open a field of trust and contemplation behind the veil, which should enable even the most restless spirit, once realizing it, to lean for all that it cannot control on One who can. In other words, his cure is strictly theological, the revelation of a rest for the intellect and a rest for the will, in a power within man, but above man. Our author-who insists, not too much indeed, on the practical side of Christ's teaching, but too much on the zeal which he wished to inspire as distinct from the faith which nourished that zeal-is perhaps too much disposed to turn the Sunday into a day of maturing plans of action, instead of a day for falling back on the rest of trust: "The most formidable temptation of manhood is that which Christ described in a phrase "The enthusiasm should not be suffered to hardly translatable as μεριμναὶ βιωτικαί. To die out in any one for want of the occupation boys and youths work is assigned by their best calculated to keep it alive. Those who parents or tutors. The judicious parent takes meet within the church walls on Sunday should care not to assign so much work as to make not meet as strangers who find themselves tohis son a slave. We cherish as much as pos-gether in the same lecture-hall, but as co-operasible the freedom, the discursiveness of thought tors in a public work the object of which all and feeling natural to youth. We cherish it as understand, and to his own department of which The for enjoying the ends of life, out of the time now devoted to manipulating its means, is the great problem of modern society, though we should probably differ from him very much as to what those ends are. contemplation of the life of God, as it is seen shining here and there through the revolving constellations of secular phenomena, seems to us the highest and most re each man habitually applies his mind and contriving power. Thus meeting, with the esprit de corps strong among them, and with a clear perception of the purpose of their union and their meeting, they would not desire that the exhortation of the preacher should be, what in the nature of things it seldom can be, eloquent. It might cease then to be either a despairing and overwrought appeal to feelings which grow more callous the oftener they are thus excited to no definite purpose, or a childish discussion of some deep point in morality or divinity bet-freshing of these ends, which no one needs ter left to philosophers. It might then become weighty with business, and impressive as an officer's address to his troops before a battle. For it would be addressed by a soldier to soldiers in the presence of an enemy whose character they understood and in the war with whom they had given and received telling blows." But the attraction which takes the working class away from Christian sermons to hear Professor Huxley telling them of the grandeur of "natural knowledge" in his lay-sermon, and Dr. Carpenter discussing the bearing of physiological discovery on the antiquity of man, should teach us that the day of rest from "the cares of the world" is really wanted for a return of the mind to the contemplation of wider and sublimer fields of thought than even the marching orders for a philanthropic campaign. What disgusts working men with ordinary sermons is the appearance of mere didacticism about them, of hackneyed sentiments that do not seem to have any root in the larger order of the universe, while their minds are thirsting for a wider and a deeper insight into the springs of life. Science, though it only satisfies the intellect, does satisfy this yearning for intellectual space and sublimity. It does not rest the spirit or the will, but it lulls for a time by its grandeur "the cares of the world" to sleep. And unless the Christian Churches can effect the same, and much more than the same; unless they can draw "living water" for the intellect, will, and spirit of careworn men on the Sunday, the men of physical science will keep the secularists still,-not because they speak of matters which bear immediately on the utilities and comforts of life, but, on the other hand, because they speak of matters which feed the spiritual imagination so much more effectually than the commonplaces of a half-realized system of morality and religion. Mr. Matthew Arnold has recently assured us, with his usual imperious beauty of diction, that the problem of the age is to find a life more natural, more rational, with more love of the things of the mind, more love of beautiful things, for the toiling classes. Assuredly we believe with him that to save more opportunity more than the noblest practical philanthropists, whose life would be ever in danger of being grated down into a mere powder of small purposes and petty arrangements without this slaking of their highest thirst. None feel this thirst, we believe, more deeply than the secularists. Science does not satisfy it, except for the intellect, but rather presents an order too pitiless and undeviating for the education of free beings,-a silent order, which prostrates the mind, like the stillness of those gigantic idols before whose mock serenity and lifeless steadfastness of gaze Oriental worshippers cower, and often consent to sacrifice their life. Undoubtedly working men are seeking to-day, as much as eighteen centuries ago, after a great organizing force, such as we believe Christ's revelation contains. But they cannot find the organizing force without finding the revelation. They cannot find the "enthusiasm of humanity" without finding the living well of inspiration. They cannot find the infinite love of man which it contains without finding the root of that love. Human love is a poor instrument for any Divine purpose. St. John knew what he meant, and knew that he was touching a chord of feeling as deep in the working classes of the first century as it is in those of the nineteenth, when he said: "Herein is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us." The scepticism of the modern æsthetic refinement is in some respects the deepest, because apparently the most human, and because it is mingled with that spiritual thirst for poetry which is usually but one side of faith. Shelley's scepticism has warped deeper minds than ever did Comte's. When the poetry of the most passionate yearning refuses to hear any voice that answers to its yearning, there comes a deeper shock to those who enter into its spirit than either the scepticism of science, or of dull laborious labour, can awaken. And the fine discrimination of shades of feeling on which it prides itself, is often so true and delicate, that men are at first sight disposed to give it credit for ample power to discover the truth as to God and His revelation, as well as perfect fidelity in reporting all the char acteristic facts it discerns. Shelley's scepticism, however, may be seen to rest chiefly on his impatience on the ardour with which he gave himself up to thick-coming impulses, and the abhorrence he felt for the regal power of conscientious volition. He seemed almost incapable of understanding, "Be still, and know that I am God." His heart panted after sweet emotions, not after One "who sitteth between the cherubim, be the people never so unquiet." His poetry was the poetry of yearnings, rather than of yearning-of single desires chasing each other eagerly through the heart; and yet, had he lived, he would probably have reached a higher faith, for nearly his last and greatest poem contains the finest of all assertions of the Absolute and Immutable Light that shines behind the flitting shadows of human emotion: "The One remains, the many change and pass, Heaven's light for ever shines, earth's shadows fly; Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of Eternity." But the modern poetic sceptics are certainly far enough from the feverish impatience which marked the genius of Shelley. They are, for the most part, Goetheworshippers, lovers of tranquil discriminations, of calm insights. The sign of weakness, however, appears in their intellectual exclusiveness; their delight in "distinction" that love of moral monopoly which forms a great part of their joy in art. They love to criticise from above, to sit on an intellectual throne and judge the world. And then they maintain that "the modern spirit," "the relative spirit," in which they discharge this function, is the only one which can do justice to the infinite variety of nature and circumstance which comes beneath its eye. The belief in an absolute God, in an absolute love of men, in an absolute standard of morality and humanity, they say, makes criticism rigid, inflexible, unfair; weakness and frailty must be misjudged if the mind is full of a dream of absolute righteousness. In short, this school believes that there is not really any absolute standard; the historic and "positive" view, which admits no categorical "ought," but looks at everything in relation to the antecedents out of which it arose, affords the only elastic, the only humane canon of criticism. The writer in the Westminster Review to whom we have alluded, applies this doctrine to show the injustice of Coleridge's " romantic" faith in the Absolute, by the havoc it would produce in the criticism of Coleridge's own wrecked genius. "The relative spirit," he says, "by dwelling constantly on the more fugitive conditions or circumstances of things, breaking through a thousand-rough and brutal classifications, and giving elasticity to inflexible principles, begets an intellectual finesse, of which the ethical result is a delicate and tender justness in the criticism of human life." Now we believe that no one has practically shown better than the author of Ecce Homo, how precisely this passage describes the moral judgments of Christ, whosenature even the Westminster reviewer must admit was fed upon faith in the Absolute, and not on a philosophy which makes it its chief duty to "dwell on the fugitive conditions or circumstances of things." Indeed, we believe the fact to be the precise contrary of the essayist's statement. In philosophy and practical life alike, the "modern spirit," the spirit which is satisfied with "the relative," and dwells much on the fugitive conditions or circumstances of things, has always been the greatest victim of the spirit of "brutal" classification, the least able to reconcile the various contradictions of life and thought. Where has there been a school of philosophy more tyrannic and brutal in its classifications than that of Locke, and James Mill, and Bentham, and, though in less degree, even of J. S. Mill, who has, nevertheless, profited greatly by the teaching of his great opponent Coleridge? Where has there been one of larger, more catholic, and elastic spirit than that which we owe to the moral criticism of Bishop Butler? And in practical life, where do we go for trenchant "brutal criticisms, with so much certainty as to the light gossip of the drawing-room? Where do we expect to find gentler, kindlier criticisms than from the contemplative piety which, like Fénélon's or Madame Guyon's, or Bishop Berkeley's, or Mr. Maurice's, is really formed upon Christ's? But the test of the truth or falsehood of the criticism is, of course, in the extreme cases at either end of the scale. If this view is right, whose lives should be so full of severe and unjust criticisms as Christ's and His apostles whose spirits were permeated as it were with God? Yet even Renan attributes to our Lord a tenderness and delicacy of moral discrimination which marked a new crisis in the Oriental genius, and there has been no great critic of any school, of St. Paul's character, who has not testified to the wonderful tact and charity of the apostle in adapting himself to the "fugitive conditions" of things when passing his moral judgments. We believe the truth to be, that without profound rest in the Absolute righteousness, there is always some little criminal appeared to them wholly unimportant; towards her crime or her character they had no feeling whatever, not even hatred, still been asked about her, they might probably less pity or sympathetic shame. If they had have answered, with Mephistopheles, "She is not the first;" nor would they have thought their answer fiendish, only practical and business-like. Perhaps they might on reflection have admitted that their frame of mind was not strictly moral, not quite what it should be, that it would have been better if, besides coninvolved, they could have found leisure for sidering the legal and religious questions some shame at the scandal and some hatred for tendency to overstrain our own dogmatic opinions. So much more seems to depend on emphasis of statement, if you cannot trust the vindication of your faith to God. Besides, the faith in Him in whose mysterious essence so many seemingly conflicting attributes are reconciled, engenders a habit of mind which renders it comparatively easy to recognise in the same men the most apparently conflicting qualities. At all events, every new delineation of Christ that attracts attention, even among sceptics, insists upon the flexibility and beauty of His feeling for human infirmity, and the "tender justness" of His moral judgments. The author of Ecce Homo is evidently penetrated with this feeling, and we wish the plan of his book had allowed him to illustrate more fully his conception of the individual relations between Christ and His followers. There are, however, several passages of great - beauty on isolated scenes in Christ's life, and the following will show, as well as any, how little, in our author's conception, Christ's eternal communion with God had blunted the delicacy of his feeling for the fugitive in-centre of a circle, when the crime was narrafluences which shade off human character: "We have insisted upon the effect of personal influence in creating virtuous impulses. We have described Christ's Theocracy as a great attempt to set all the virtue of the world upon this basis, and to give it a visible centre or fountain. But we have used generalities. | It is advisable, before quitting the subject, to give a single example of the magical passing of virtue out of the virtuous man into the hearts of those with whom he comes in contact. A remarkable story which appears in St John's biography, though it is apparently an interpolation in that place, may serve this purpose, and will at the same time illustrate the difference between scholastic or scientific and living or instinctive virtue. Some of the leading religious men of Jerusalem had detected a woman in adultery. It occurred to them that the case afforded a good opportunity of making an experiment upon Christ. They might use it to discover how he regarded the Mosaic law. That he was heterodox on the subject of that law they had reason to believe, for he had openly quoted some Mosaic maxims and declared them at least incomplete, substituting for them new rules of his own, which at least in some cases appeared to abrogate the old. It might be possible, they thought, by means of this woman, to satisfy at once themselves and the people of his heterodoxy. They brought the woman before him, quoted the law of Moses on the subject of adultery, and asked Christ directly whether he agreed with the lawgiver. They asked for his judgment. "A judgment he gave them, but quite different, both in matter and manner, from what they had expected. In thinking of the 'case they had forgotten the woman, they had forgotten even the deed. What became of the the sinner. But they would have argued that such strict propriety is not possible in this. world, that we have too much on our hands to think of these niceties, that the man who makes leisure for such refinements will find his work in arrears at the end of the day, and probably also that he is doing injustice to his family and those dependent on him. This they might fluently and plausibly have urged. But the judgment of Christ was upon them, making all things seem new, and shining like the lightning from the one end of heaven to the other. He was standing, it would seem, in the ted, how the adultery had been detected in the very act. The shame of the deed itself, and the brazen hardness of the prosecutors, the legality that had no justice and did not even pretend to have mercy, the religious malice that could make its advantage out of the fall and ruin and ignominious death of a fellowcreature-all this was eagerly and rudely thrust before his mind at once. The effect upon him was such as might have been produced upon many since, but perhaps upon scarcely any man that ever lived before. He was seized with an intolerable sense of shame. He could not meet the eye of the crowd, or of the accusers, and perhaps at that moment least of all of the woman. Standing as he did in the midst of an eager multitude that did not in the least appreciate his feelings, he could not escape. In his burning embarrassment and confusion he stooped down so as to hide his face, and began writing with his finger on the ground. His tormentors continued their clamour, until he raised his head for a moment and said, "He that is without sin among you let him first cast a stone at her," and then instantly returned to his former attitude. They had a glimpse perhaps of the glowing blush upon his face, and awoke suddenly with astonishment to a new sense of their condition and their conduct. The older men naturally felt it first and slunk away; the younger followed their example. The crowd dissolved and left Christ alone with the woman. Not till then could he bear to stand up; and when he had lifted himself up, consistently with his principle, he dismissed the woman, as having no commission to interfere with the office of the civil judge. But the mighty power of living purity had done its work. He had refused to judge a woman, but he had judged a whole crowd. He had awakened the slumbering conscience in many hardened hearts, given them a new deli cacy, a new ideal, a new view and reading of It was the very fulness of His knowledge of the Mosaic law." This strikes us not only as very fine criticism, but as criticism which catches the true secret of Christ's charity towards sinners. It was not "the relative spirit," ""the modern spirit," but the absolute spirit, the spirit of revelation, which enabled Him to feel how much of God there was, how much more there might be, in those who had violated His most sacred laws. Where is there a man possessed of enough of "the relative spirit to have calmly warned his most trusted follower, as Christ warned Peter, that he would be the first to desert and disown his master, and this without a touch of bitterness or contempt, adding, in the same breath, "and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren?" Communion with the absolute God, rest in the absolute God, is alone equal to producing so perfect an equanimity as this in dealing with the weakness and frailty of man without any loss of love. No doubt such communion and such rest does give a firmness of touch in laying down what is righteousness and what is evil, which " the relative spirit" may disown. But that is only saying that the knowledge of God brings with it insight into what is nearer to or farther from God,phrases which have no meaning to those who think that the fugitive elements in human morality are the only important elements. The speciousness of the fallacy that the "relative spirit," the "modern spirit," is more charitable, more capable of a "tender justness" than the faith in the Absolute, consists in this, that we are accustomed to confound "absolute" moral rules with literal rules-rules incapable of exception, like those of the Decalogue, for instance, and to regard the hard old Jewish spirit which carried them into effect with a Draconic severity, as the natural illustration of the absolute spirit. But this is really to speak of "the absolute" in its application to God, in the same sense in which we speak of absolute despotism, and to use the word not to convey moral power and insight, but moral weakness and ignorance. In this sense the prophets reveal a far less absolute God than Moses, and Christ a far less absolute God than the prophets. In fact, however, that which made the Jewish moralists so external and literal, was, as our Lord pointed out, the hardness of their hearts, the want of knowledge of the absolute God, and not the knowledge of Him. He who came from eternal communion with God, softened every rigid judgment of the Jewish law, while raising its spiritual demand up to the "absolute " point. the absolute life which enabled Him to see at once how much of compliance with God's verbal law was really rebellion against its inward meaning, and how much of infrac tion of the verbal law was really compatible with its inward meaning. Absolute morality too often means, no doubt with man, formal morality,-morality by formula, morality which has no life-standard by which to judge. But if the author of Ecce Homo has done one thing more effectively than another, it is to show how infinitely superior is the spiritual morality which lays down no iron verbal rules, but simply requires the heart to open itself to the fulness of the beauty of one perfect spirit and life, to morality of the abstract kind. Indeed, it is all but self-evident that the only true knowledge of the absolute Father, which we may be permitted without irreverence to call intimate-the knowledge of Him shown by the Son of God and Man,-must imply, as it did imply, insight into shades of human character infinitely more various and delicate, related in infinitely more subtle ways with the Divine nature, betraying sympathy with or alienation from God, or here sympathy, and there alienation, at points infinitely more numer ous, than any knowledge which the divinest Decalogues could give. We see the signs of this pervading everywhere even our imperfect Gospel histories. The "rich young man," though he cannot rise to our Lord's standard, is loved by Him even in the very act of disobedience. The woman who is a sinner is forgiven because "she has loved much." When John the Baptist begins to doubt, the moment is seized by Christ to delineate his true greatness. Peter's threefold denial was made the opportunity, not for reproach, but for a threefold confession, followed by a special prediction of a glorious death. When it is necessary to indicate the traitor, it is done silently, by an act of kindness which might even then have touched his heart. The moment of ambitious strife is seized to teach the lesson of childlike humility; the moment after transfiguration to teach a lession of coming humiliation. Nothing, in short, is more remarkable than the exquisite feeling for the delicate shades of moral and spiritual life which pervades the teaching of Him who com muned most with the Absolute God. Our Lord's most special war was, we may truly say, waged against the legal and formal spirit; His most special teaching was the sweetness of the spiritual liberty conferred by the yoke which was easy and the burden which was light. We have not pretended in these few pages |
