Part Four: Conclusions

Part Four: Conclusions

Appendix D

Lessons of History from the Cradle of Christianity

But that you may not have a pretext for saying that Christ must have been crucified, and that those who transgressed must have been among your nation, and that the matter could not have been otherwise, I said briefly by anticipation, that God, wishing men and angels to follow His will, resolved to create them free to do righteousness; possessing reason, that they may know by whom they are created, and through whom they, not existing formerly, do now exist; and with a law that they should be judged by Him, if they do anything contrary to right reason: and of ourselves we, men and angels, shall be convicted of having acted sinfully, unless we repent beforehand. But if the word of God foretells that some angels and men shall be certainly punished, it did so because it foreknew that they would be unchangeably [wicked], but not because God had created them so.

Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, CXL

Introduction

‘Let knowledge grow from more to more,

But more of reverence in us dwell,

That mind and soul according will,

May make one music as before,

But vaster’—Tennyson

There are periods in the history of the Church where powerful and well-directed attacks from without, aided by errors and discussions from within, seem to threaten her stronghold, well nigh with total destruction; and the Christian turning away from this sickening scene of desolation clings only more firmly to his Lord’s promises, though perhaps in the signs of the times as he reads them, he sees nothing to justify his hope.

It were well at seasons like this that the study of past history should come to the rescue of a wavering faith. It would show the Christian that the crisis which he, in his immediate terror, is disposed to represent to himself as unparalleled, in the previous history of the Church has been equaled or even surpassed by the dangers of former times. It would point out to him how the attacks once and again received from the same quarters were triumphantly repelled. It would teach him to distinguish between the real and substantial knowledge that accumulates from age to age, and the illusive phantoms and one-sided sentiments which characterize his own time. Still more he would be warned not to fight for the bulwarks and outposts which have been raised by human hands, when by so doing he is endangering the divine fortress itself, but if need be, cheerfully to surrender these, and to place his confidence in that which forms his real strength, knowing that ‘except the Lord keep the city, the watchman watches in vain.’

It is through one of these fiery trials that the Church has been passing during the last half century. During this period the attacks have been renewed from various quarters but all apparently with equal confidence in their ultimate success. It seems that like some ancient warrior in his tomb, the Christian Church which for ages had preserved its integrity, built in by conventional prejudice and protected by superstitious reverence would, when exposed to the light and air of modern criticism and science, crumbles away instantly and leave but a handful of dust in place of its once imposing form.

If the Christian needed any warrant for disregarding these assumptions, he would find it in the discussions that distract his adversary’s camp; for each form of unbelief has received its deathblow from its successor in the contest. The attacks in the last century were conceived in a very different spirit from those which have succeeded them; an opposition ushered in during an irreligious age, by those, who cared neither for God nor man—adversaries, who, when it served their purpose, would scoff with as little concern and as much self-complacency at the discoveries of scientific research as the revelations of religious truth—were not likely to find much favor with those who strove to undermine the historical basis of Christianity, were ready to allow the pre-eminence of its ethical code, and the importance of the truths it inculcates and whose boast it was, that in their opposition, they were following the guidance of the scientific spirit of the age. Moreover the objection to the miraculous element in the Christian scheme, represented by the elder opponents, was found on closer examination to be fallacious, while the hypothesis, which they introduced to explain the historical phenomena, involving the paradox of a set of men propagating the highest truths by means of the grossest falsehoods at great personal sacrifice was regarded as no less an outrage upon the experience of mankind, than revolting to the moral sensibilities. Thus neither the destructive nor the constructive part of their scheme was cordially received by those who inherited their opposition.

As regards the former, the objection to miracles was abandoned, only however to be reproduced under a different guise, and in a more specious form. It was now urged, that the supernatural element was at variance with the deductions of modern science which negatives the idea of any dealings of God with man, otherwise than by the ordinary medium of natural occurrences. But surely it is great presumption to build a theory on the supposition that we understand the absolute distinction between the mediate and the immediate in the divine agency—terms which, after all, may be merely relative to finite comprehensions. It presumes such a knowledge of the relations of cause and effect that we cannot in any sense be said to have, when it is decided prior to evidence that there must be a certain succession of events even when the conditions of the problem are avowedly different. Nor indeed are the analogies, which touch the case most nearly, to be found in those objects with which the conclusions of science have hitherto been conversant, but rather in those mysterious relations of mind to matter of which as of yet we are utterly ignorant. Are we then justified in sacrificing to a theory so premature the universal consciousness of mankind of its immediate relations to a supreme ruler and giving the lie to the no less general belief in the development of these relations by means of a direct revelation from God?

But again a scheme had to be constructed to account for the remarkable phenomenon which the case presents. The supposition of deliberate imposture was relinquished as inadequate and two methods were proposed in its place, for solving this historical problem—the Rationalist on the one hand, believing that there must be some basis of facts in the sacred narrative, exercised much ingenuous subtlety in divesting them of the supernatural element with as little violence as possible to their historical fidelity. The mythicizer, on the other hand, more bold and consistent, declaring all search after history as hopeless, was disposed to find in the Biblical record merely a collection of legends, the spontaneous product of national feelings and expectations.

The defects of the former method were easily exposed, for a flaw in the criticism of individual circumstances is not difficult to detect, hence no one has laid open its absurdities with a more remorseless hand than the champion of the mythical theory, but the difficulties in his own solution, if not so patent, are not fewer. In one important respect the Rationalist has the advantage of his rival, he is not required to use such violent treatment in the disposal of historical records. The mythical theorist is conscious and acknowledges that so long as the documents are allowed to proceed from eye-witnesses or contemporaneous writers his solution will not hold, hence the caricature of criticism which the adherents of this school have drawn in the attempt to invalidate the Apostolic Writings.

But it does not come within the scope of the following pages to discuss the difficulties attending the growth of these ‘evangelical myths’ under the supposed circumstances, it is only proposed to show how inadequate is the cause assigned—for the formation of the collection of facts and doctrines presented to us in the Gospels.

‘The mythical and the allegorical view,’ it is said, ‘equally allow that the historian apparently relates that which is historical, but they suppose him under the influence of a higher inspiration, known or unknown to himself, to have made use of this historical semblance merely as the shell of an idea—of a religious conception. The only essential distinction therefore between these modes of explanation is that according to the allegorical view, higher intelligence is the immediate divine agency, but according to the mythical view it is the spirit of a people or community. Thus the allegorical view attributes the narrative to a supernatural source, whilst the mythical view ascribes it to that natural process by which legends are developed.’ ‘The mythical interpreter,’ the writer adds, ‘is controlled by regard to conformity with the spirit and modes of thought of the people and the age.’

Accordingly, one writer informs us that with a single exception (which indeed is important—the miraculous conception) ‘parallels can be produced to every doctrine, nay almost to every position advanced in the New Testament from the Talmud, the Midrashim, etc.’ Others, again, have looked to Philo and the Alexandrian school for a solution, while a third party has used contributions from all the Jewish sects in turn, and sought by the admixture of certain Heathen elements with these to make up the sum of Christian doctrine.

It must not be concealed that there has been some provocation to this treatment of the subject. They had been preceded by a class of apologists who looking back on the struggles of unaided humanity by the light of revelation, and anxious to find in the latter a reflex of natural religion, had strained every point to the utmost to produce parallels to the Christian writers in the anterior religions of the world. The impugners of revelation saw the advantage offered to them, and were not slack in wielding it against their adversaries, the irons forged on their own anvils.

Yet as extravagant as were these views on both sides, the advocate of revealed religion had the advantage in one important respect. He did assign a cause sufficient to produce the effects, to infuse fresh life into the corrupt mass of superstition and infidelity, to leaven society anew, to gather together the scattered fragments of truth, and weld them into a consistent whole; for in proportion as the number of component parts is multiplied, in the same degree does the difficulty of combining them grow, and, to render their theory plausible, our adversaries have been obliged to look far and wide for the elements of their compound.

It is hoped that in the following pages, these extremes are avoided. The history of former controversy ought to have taught us this lesson—Accepting as true the definition of myth that has been cited above, we shall carry on the investigation in the trust that, imperfectly as it is made in this essay, its result will be to confirm our belief in the divine origin of our religion.

At the same time we shall meet with more indications than ever that there was indeed some basis for that boon that Christianity offers us. We shall catch glimpses from time to time of partial truths, breaking out from under the cloud of error and obscurity which envelops them—‘broken light’ of the great Sun of Righteousness which was soon to rise over the world. We shall recognize here and there faint foreshadowings of that spiritual kingdom which is to include all nations of the earth. We shall find the philosophers and statesmen alike ‘Seeking the Lord if happily they might find him, though he was not far from every one of them.’

Part One: The Jews of Palestine and the Dispersion

ἐποίησέν . . . πᾶν ἔθνος ἀνθρώπων . . . ζητεῖν τὸν Θεὸν, εἰ ἄρα γε ψηλαφήσειαν αὐτὸν καὶ εὕροιεν καί γε οὐ μακρὰν ἀπὸ ἑνὸς ἑκάστου ἡμῶν ὑπάρχοντα.—St. Paul (Acts 17:26-27)

The history of a people who persevered for many centuries, a national character unaffected by their intercourse with neighboring races, laws and institutions peculiar to themselves, and a deep consciousness of the unity and attributes of the Deity and their own special connection with Him—who, after so long a period of obscurity and seclusion were destined to give to mankind a religious system, which in arts and sciences, in morals and in politics should produce a marvelous change unparalleled in the history of the world—would be an instructive field of inquiry even to those who recognize in such manifestations only the ordinary workings of human society.

For the Christian, the history of the Jewish race possesses a higher interest. He regards it as the cradle of that religion in which all his hopes and plans center, and to which he looks for the future resurrection of the world, as he has seen a light of promise in the past. If he is not ungrateful for that goodly inheritance of literary treasures which he has drawn from the storehouses of Greece, or those prudent maxims of law and government which he owes to the teaching of Imperial Rome, he feels that he is indebted to Palestine for that knowledge without which all literature is hollow and superficial, and all government unstable and transitory. A brief review of the relations of this nation to the Gentile world will be a fit introduction to the examination of its position with respect to Christianity.

Among our deepest intuitions is the idea of God. Reflections on our own weakness and folly and wickedness does by a law of our own nature suggest to us its Divine correlative, a Being of Infinite Power, and Wisdom, and Holiness. Again the contemplation of external Nature, simple in its very complexity, as varied in its results as it is uniform in its operations, directs us to the Idea of a First Cause. Yet each of these proofs, the one from our innate intuition, the other from the world without, in reality includes and presupposes the other, for on the one hand our intuitions are developed by contact with the world, while on the other, no accumulation of facts can call forth an idea, the germ of which is not already planted in our soul. Nor are we without a natural consciousness of the relationship which exists between God and Man, our heart speaks of this, indeed of our entire dependence on Him, but it likewise tells us of the separation between Finite weakness, and Infinite Power, between human Folly and divine Wisdom, above all between the wickedness of man and the Goodness of God.

Coincident with this sense of his separation from God, there is on the part of man an anxiety to atone for his past sins, a desire for his present reconciliation, and a deep craving for closer communion with Him in the time to come. To this he looks as the fulfillment of his deepest aspirations and the realization of that higher destiny for which he feels he was made. We can assign no other meaning to the priesthood, sacrifices, temples, and oracles which we everywhere meet when traversing the domain of religious history.

Thus we find growing up side by side a consciousness of separation from God, and an earnest craving after union with Him. It is not meant to assert that man could ordinarily read and interpret the working of his own heart, still less to imply that this belief and these aspirations burnt brightly and steadily a beacon light to warn and guide him in his voyage through life. Such a view would be contradicted by every page of history, as it would also supercede the necessity of that mission, which we believe was assigned by Divine Providence to the Jewish people.

It was to restore and preserve the original handwriting traced by the finger of God on the heart of man, which had been blurred and overlaid by irregular characters and legends of human invention, in the race by centuries of disobedience and rebellion and in the individual by natural propensities to evil and contact with a world of sin, that this people had been chosen and set apart. For not only had the original Idea been obscured, but men had sought to satisfy their craving by irregular means, in anticipation of which God in his good Providence was pleased to supply. It had been the province of the Law to fence about our consciousness of the true relations between God and man. It was the mission of the Gospel to point out the fountain from which our thirst could be quenched. If the older dispensation had proclaimed the sovereignty of the ‘One God,’ the watch­word of the new is ‘the One Mediator between God and Man, the man Christ Jesus.’

What then were the relations of Judaism to Heathenism in these two respects?

How little the hero worship of the Western world allayed the cravings which it was intended to satisfy, and how far removed it was from the Christian idea, is at once apparent. The Oriential belief, on the other hand, seems to approach nearer to the Christian standard. It bespeaks a deep consciousness of the difficulty with which it grapples; but it is still far from solving the problem of our wants. The incarnation of the deity in Hindu mythology is imperfect. Vishnu appears on earth in human guise, but he appears also in various forms, his humanity is no part of his nature, and the deliverance which he works is only momentary. He returns to heaven and leaves the human race under the dominion of evil, as it was before he visited it.

It is Christianity which teaches us that God ‘was made flesh and dwelt among us’ (John 1), in such sense as to apprise us of our reconciliation with Him. Here first do we learn that we have a ‘great high priest,’ ‘the son of God,’ who has indeed ‘passed into the heavens’ but yet can be ‘touched with the feelings of our infirmities’ (Heb 4:14-15).

Meanwhile, the chosen people, living under the immediate government of the Most High, and thus in some sense realizing a closer communion with Him, were taught to regard that more perfect union after which mankind was yearning as a matter not of human speculation, but of direct revelation from Heaven. They were prepared by a series of intimations becoming more and more distinct as the great day of their accomplishment drew nigh—at first confirming the promise given to the fathers of their race that ‘in this seed all the nations of the earth should be blessed,’ and speaking of a second lawgiver like unto him by whom the words of the prophecy were uttered, afterwards depicting in more glowing colors and ever increasing brightness the office and person of the great Redeemer till at length they were told of one ‘like the Son of Man who should come with the clouds of Heaven, whose dominion was an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away’ (Dan 7:13-14), again, foretelling his human lineage, the place of his birth and the very time when this great deliverance should be wrought. We shall see hereafter how the Christian idea was yet ‘a mystery, which was kept secret since the world began’ (see Col 1:26).

The natural bent of the Hebrew mind was not speculative. They belonged to that family of the human race which is rather receptive than originative, for the greatest systems of philosophy and speculative theology, whether of the East or the West, have had their rise not in the Semitic but in the Indo-Germanic races. If their characteristic warns us to pause, ere we attribute any highly developed religious system to the unaided efforts of the Jewish mind, it betokens a peculiar fitness in their selection to be appointed guardians of ‘the oracles of God.’

Again, their national education had prepared them for the important destiny which awaited them. Fenced off from the heathen, by peculiar laws and institutions, warned and guided by the voice of prophecy, and protected by mighty signs and wonders, wrought on their behalf, the chosen race had nevertheless from time to time turned aside to the idolatry of the heathen, but the Babylonian captivity had purged them like a refiner’s fire, a great change had been wrought in them, and henceforward we read no more of any great national declension from the God of their forefathers. The presence of some tyrannical conqueror might tempt them for a moment to forget their allegiance, but this disobedience was not self-sought. The sufferings which befell them from the vices of their native princes and the oppression of foreign despots only strengthened the bond of union among themselves.

To the glories of the Maccabean period more especially they looked back with an honest pride, and the fond remembrances of a later age (contrast 2 Macc with 1 Macc which was nearly contemporaneous with the events it records), delighted to adorn with wonderous stories of daring and might the history of that ‘valiant man who delivered Israel’ (1 Macc 9:21). The warning of the prophet had not been heard, and the right arm of the Lord had not been revealed as in old times in signs and wonders, but it was felt that He had been present among them in their hour of need. Thus the feeling of nationality was fostered and cherished and with this were bound up those heaven-sent traditions which were to be the preparation for the Gospel.

Hence there was a peculiar fitness in the time that was selected for the revelation of Messiah to his people. But can we venture a step beyond, and say that we see in the popular mind of the day the germ of a natural development of the Christian scheme?

The voice of prophecy had been silent for four centuries, but it was felt to be as the death-like stillness that precedes the hurricane. Hence, men with busy whisperings were anxiously looking for the coming of that great Terrible Day of the Lord which, amidst many horrors, was yet to bring their deliverance. See for example Josephus, Bell. Jud. vi.5.4: Ταῦτά τις ἐννοῶν εὑρήσει τὸν μὲν θεὸν ἀνθρώπων κηδόμενον καὶ παντοίως προσημαίνοντα τῷ σφετέρῳ γένει τὰ σωτήρια, τοὺς δ᾽ ὑπ᾽ ἀνοίας καὶ κακῶν αὐθαιρέτων ἀπολλυμένους, which is repeated by Suetonius and Tacitus. The flattery of the Jewish historian would have attributed it to Vespasian.

The iron despotism of foreign masters had naturally led them to these expectations of a temporal Prince, of the overthrow of the heathen and the triumph of the People of God. The best evidence of this feeling is the character of the claimants of the Messiahship at this period, especially Judas of Galilee, and later Bar-Kokhba. Thus while the hopes of men were never more generally covered, they did not take the direction in which Christianity held out their fulfillment.

Again, the teaching of those who were regarded by the people as their authorized instructors was no less averse to the spirit of Christianity; it was the narrow adherence to the letter, which saw in the Mosaic ritual nothing more than a collection of ordinances, to be enforced and added to according to the caprice of the interpreter.

As a natural consequence, their teaching reacted upon the morals of the people. The Jewish historian gives a fearful picture of the corruption of the time—‘No species of vice,’ he says, ‘was unpracticed by the nation, none could be so much as imagined which had not found a place among them. One moral plague had infected both public and private life. They strove to outbid each other in impiety towards God and injustice towards their neighbors’ (Bell. Jud. vii.8.1). Thus, Christianity could find no resting place in the state of national opinion or public morals.

The reverence for the institutions of the Mosaic ritual had never in the course of Jewish history been greater than in the interval between the Maccabean period and the Christian era. But narrow in its spirit, and burdensome in its interpretations, it naturally provoked a reaction that found expression in the school of the Sadducees. We are informed that Antigonus of Sokho, the reputed founder of this sect based his teaching on the following thesis: ‘Be ye not,’ he said, ‘as servants who serve their lord for the sake of gain, but as servants who serve their lord without an eye to receiving a reward’ and as if to guard against misinterpretation he added, ‘The fear of Heaven be upon you.’

We shall doubtless be right in regarding these maxims as a protest against the carnal and selfish worship of his day, but in the hands of his followers, the teaching of the sect assumed a very different aspect. We find them maintaining a principle destructive of all religion that ‘good and evil lie within the power of man, and the Deity does not interfere to inflict or chastise evil’ (Bell. Jud. ii.8.14). Thus, if they did not absolutely deny the doctrine of a divine Providence, they at least trenched upon it in that full sense, in which it is recognized in the Old Testament writings. It was one additional step to deny the immortality of the soul, and the ministry of angels. The former would not present much difficulty to those who denied the canonical authority of all the sacred writings except the Pentateuch, and subjected even this to a narrow interpretation that recognized nothing beyond the most positive declarations. The latter indeed appears on almost every page of the Mosaic narrative, but it is not difficult to see how a free use of allegory would enable them to reduce even the most stubborn facts to a conformity with their pre-conceived bias. But by whatever path they arrived at these results, their position of direct antagonism to Christianity is evident. In short, the Sadducees sought to fix an arbitrary limit to the Mosaic dispensation, which it was the mission of the Gospel to develop and extend.

The moral character of the Sadducees accorded with their religious creed; they were cold and skeptical (so Ant. xviii.1.4), cruel in their punishments, and uncourteous even to members of their own body (so Bell Jud. ii.8). They were devoted to a life of luxury and ease. The sect numbered but few adherents, yet these were all men of rank and wealth (see Ant. xviii.1.4; xiii.10.6).

The notices we have of the demeanor of the members of this sect to the early Christians accord with what we know of their peculiar tenets. The Sadducees are only mentioned three times in the Gospels: 1) as coming to the baptism of John (Mt 3:7); 2) as the objects of the Lord’s reproof (Mt 16:1-12); 3) as questioning the Lord respecting the resurrection of the dead (Mt 22:23; Mark 12:18; Luke 20:27).

During the lifetime of the Savior when the new teachings turned upon the regeneration of the inward life, the Pharisees were the constant opponents of the Lord and his disciples, but subsequently, when the Apostles preaching centered in the fact of resurrection the bitterest persecution was carried out by the Sadducees. The history of their opposition does not close with the evangelical narrative; we meet with them once again (if an authority may be trusted) as the murderers of St. James, the first bishop of Jerusalem. Josephus puts it this way—ὁ δὲ νεώτερος Ἄνανος, ὃν τὴν ἀρχιερωσύνην ἔφαμεν εἰληφέναι, θρασὺς ἦν τὸν τρόπον καὶ τολμητὴς διαφερόντως, αἵρεσιν δὲ μετῄει τὴν Σαδδουκαίων, οἵπερ εἰσὶ περὶ τὰς κρίσεις ὠμοὶ παρὰ πάντας τοὺς Ἰουδαίους, καθὼς ἤδη δεδηλώκαμεν. ἅτε δὴ οὖν τοιοῦτος ὢν ὁ Ἄνανος, νομίσας ἔχειν καιρὸν ἐπιτήδειον διὰ τὸ τεθνάναι μὲν Φῆστον, Ἀλβῖνον δ᾽ ἔτι κατὰ τὴν ὁδὸν ὑπάρχειν, καθίζει συνέδριον κριτῶν καὶ παραγαγὼν εἰς αὐτὸ [τὸν ἀδελφὸν Ἰησοῦ τοῦ λεγομένου Χριστοῦ, Ἰάκωβος ὄνομα αὐτῷ, καί] τινας [ἑτέρους], ὡς παρανομησάντων κατηγορίαν ποιησάμενος παρέδωκε λευσθησομένους (Ant. xx.199-200). The words within brackets are considered spurious by some, but the passage is somewhat awkward without them, and one who has left such testimony of the Baptist might well have written these words. At the same time, this account is directly at variance with that given by Hegisippus in Eusebius (see Hist. Eccl. ii.23).

The ethical system of the Sadducees, as discarding a morality of consequences has been alleged to have exerted its influence on the Christian scheme. Had the doctrine, as entertained by Antigonus, been held by his sucessors at this time, this argument might have carried some weight with it, but we have already seen how entirely its complexion had been changed. Thus, the negative tendencies of the Sadducees present no point of resemblance with Christian teaching. If such influences are to be found, they have to be sought rather in the positive developments of religious feeling at this period. We shall here examine their claims to such a connection.

The course of positive teaching among the strict adherents of the Mosaic institutions took two separate directions. The one party was satisfied with a formal obedience to a number of set ordinances, without looking for anything of deeper significance. The other, no less strict in outward observances, added to them an element of fanciful mysticism, which the Eastern mind is peculilarly prone to substituting for a spiritual religion. They are represented by the schools of the Pharisees and the Essenes respectively.

The spread of skeptical opinions, and the consequent laxity in religious observances resulting perhaps from a contact with foreign influences, and finding expression, as we have seen, in the sect of the Sadducees, had produced a strong reaction. A number of men bound themselves by oath to the closest observance of the Mosaic ordinances and from the strictness of their lives assumed to themselves or won from others the name of ‘the Pious’ (Hasidim, or Assideans—1 Macc 2:42). They had fought bravely in the War of Independence under Judas Maccabeus and it was long before this page of history would be blotted out of the remembrances of the people. The after-growth of this society was the school of the Pharisees. Thus, they were identified with the cause of national freedom (see Ant. xvii.2.4), and their consequent influence, perhaps not undeserved in the first instance, with the mass of the people had no bounds. ‘So great was their authority,’ we are told, ‘that if they brought any charge even against the king or the high-priest, they were at once believed’ (Ant. xiii.10.5; cf. xviii.1.2; xiii.10.6).

The strictness of their outward demeanor (Josephus laying great stress on the strictness of their morals), their tenacious observance of the minutest points of ceremonial law, the comparative purity of their doctrine, all combined to magnify them in the sight of those who could not penetrate beyond the surface or probe the rottenness which was concealed beneath this fair outside. It was reserved for Him, who knew the thoughts of men, to unveil and denounce their hypocrisy. Yet we must not forget, as we are apt to do, the denunciations of woe ever ringing in our ears that He who condemned them as ‘blind leaders of the blind,’ also told the people that they did well to harken unto them ‘for they sat in Moses’ seat’ (cf. Mt 15:14 with Mt 13:2).

What then is their position with respect to Christianity? So far as they represented the teaching of the Old Testament, they must have prepared the way for the Gospel, but in proportion as they departed from the ancient Hebrew type, they resigned their claim to be considered as forerunners of the new dispensation. The Christian teachers took up the religious development of the nation where it had been laid down by the latest of the prophets. The Pharisees had retrograded for they had sought to crush that spiritual element which it had been the mission of the ancient teachers to evolve from the ordinances of the Law. The only point of contact between Christianity and the distinctive teaching of the Pharisees is the recognition of the immorality of the soul.

Far more attractive is the picture that is presented of the Essenes. Living apart from the world, and simple in their habits, they engaged only in husbandry, sleep, tending on such other harmless occupations. Moreover, they are represented as being amiable in their private relations of life, devout worshippers of God, regarding a simple affirmation as equally inviolable with the most stringent oath, severe dispensers of justice, patient under suffering, charitable to the poor, and hospitable to strangers. Like the Pythagoreans, they were strictly a religious brotherhood. They had no wives, no slaves, no private property. They took their meals in common, and as for money it was distributed each according to their needs by those who were entrusted with the common purse, as their wants were but few, they could afford to be liberal in almsgiving. ‘Everyday,’ we are told, ‘their numbers were increased by an influx of new settlers, for they were visited by crowds of men, whom the tide of adversity had driven, weary of the world, to their modes of living’ (Pliny, Nat. Hist. v.5). The principal passages about the Essenes are Josephus, Bell. Jud. ii.8; Ant. xviii.1.5; Philo, Quod Omn. Prob. Lib. Vol. II, p.456; M. Fragm. Vol. II. The account of Philo is scarcely trustworthy, for he does not give the reverse side of their character. Josephus, on the other hand, had some connection with them in his early life (see Vit. no. 2).

Were there no other lives in the portrait (and Philo gives us little else besides), we might be disposed to admit that there was some connection between this sect and the first preachers of Christianity, but there are other features, painted by a more trustworthy authority which entirely destroy the illusion.

The historical bearing of this question is reserved for a later section. At present it will suffice to single out a few points in which there is a marked contrast between the doctrine and the tendencies of the Essenes, and those exhibited in the New Testament. First, we observe in this sect the strictest adherence to the law of ordinances. They practiced the severest asceticism, their meals were spare and of the plainest food, their garments worn and tattered (see Bell. Jud. ii.8.9). They shrunk from anointing themselves in the Oriental manner as a pollution; so great was their abhorrence of this practice that if any oil touched them by chance, they carefully wiped it off (so Josephus). In their ceremonial observances, they surpassed even Pharisaic strictness. None were more careful than they to purify themselves before sitting down to a meal, none were more strict in the observance of the Sabbath. Not only did they prepare their food the day before, that they might not have to light a fire on that day, but they would not willingly before the most trivial offices of life.

Again, we find an exclusive spirit prevailing among them, which indeed was a necessary consequence of their being a religious order. A new member was clothed in the peculiar dress of his grade, and commenced his year of probation. After that period he was admitted into closer communion and allowed to participate in the higher lustrations. Yet even then his novitiate was not ended. Two years more lapsed during which his disposition was tested and if approved he was at length admitted. The oath of admission was of the most stringent kind, besides promising obedience to all moral ordinances, he also engaged not to conceal anything from the brotherhood, nor to divulge their secrets to others, not to communicate their doctrines to anyone in any different way from that in which he himself had received them. There were four grades among them, according to the time which they had passed in religious exercises (τὴς ἄσκησεως) and so rigidly was this distinction of caste observed, that if a member of a superior grade chanced to touch an inferior, he immediately washed himself to escape defilement.

But the strong and peculiar development of the mystic element presents the sharpest contrast with the simple teaching of the Gospel. They were careful to abstain from any profane expression before the rising of the sun, to whom they offered up certain traditional prayers. They paid particular attention to the writings of the ancients and were acquainted with the healing qualities of herbs and the properties of minerals. Again, when the novice was admitted into the brotherhood, he engaged to guard the sacred books of the sect, and the names of the angels. ‘There were some of them also,’ says Josephus, ‘who professed to foresee future events (see also Ant. xv.10.5), being versed from childhood in sacred books and various purifications and in the utterances of the prophets.’ He also speaks of their speculations regarding the nature of the soul and its state after death. Philo adds that they had a system of symbolism in the interpretation of their sacred books in Quod. Omin. Prob Lib. ad loc.

It will be seen from this account how little the characteristic teaching of the Essenes had in common with Christianity. Indeed it is allowed by one whose peculiar bias makes the admission more valuable, that certain features in the sect ‘are so foreign, nay so directly opposed to the spirit of Jesus, that the aid with which they contributed to his development must be limited to the uncertain influence which might be exercised over him by occasional intercourse with them.’

At Alexandria, the metropolis of art and literature, and the door of communication between the philosophy of the West and the religions of the East, for some centuries had been established a colony of Jews, inferior in number and importance only to those of the mother-state, with a regular priesthood and temple worship of their own, and employing a version of the Scriptures in the language of their adopted country, they had no bond of union with the land of their fathers except that which was furnished by a common faith and origin and the deep impress of nationality, which their past history had stamped upon them.

Even these bulwarks were in danger of being swept away by the tide of Grecian art and philosophy that set in upon them with all its irresistible charms. There was a temptation to smooth down some of the most rugged discrepancies between their religious beliefs, and that of the nations with whom they were brought in contact, and to recommend their traditions to the Heathen, even at the risk of trenching upon the integrity of their faith.

This course, that was dictated by policy, was recommended also by purer motives. They found much in the speculations of some of the heathen writers, especially Plato, which could only be traced to Him, who had gifted their own prophets with riches and a more abundant measure of inspiration. Desirous of incorporating this into their system, but destitute alike of true principles of criticism, and a clear insight into their position among the nations of the world, they resorted to the most violent method for combining elements adverse and irreconcilable.

At times the spirit of accommodation displayed itself in a harmless manner. Thus we read of one who exhibited ‘the Exodus’ as a Greek drama, of another who celebrated the Holy City in an epic, while a third, probably a Samaritan, chose Shechem as the subject of his poem. But it was Greek philosophy that made the greatest inroads upon the precincts of their faith. They were tempted to merge the ever-present God of the Old Testament with the Absolute Being of the Greek, and invisibly to abandon the moral standing point of their lawgiver and their prophets in favor of the physical or metaphysical grounds on which the speculations of heathen philosophy were built.

Yet the results of these foreign influences must not be exaggerated. Though indiscriminant in their use of allegorical interpretation, they yet believed in the plenary inspiration of the Old Testament writings, nor did they forget that they had an important part assigned to them in the history of mankind, though, as we shall see hereafter, they did not recognize the manner in which their destiny was to be fulfilled. At the same time, there was the greatest earnestness in all their questionings and even their practical excesses on the side of asceticism are a testimony to the sincerity of their purpose.

On the whole it may be doubted whether they had not lost more than they had gained by their partial allegiance with the heathen. On the one hand, they had escaped from that narrow spirit which looked with jealousy on any attempt to bridge over the gulf that separated Jew and Gentile. Indeed, it had been the great aim of their speculations to affect this union with as little violence as possible to their religious creed. And thus a great stumbling block in the way of their reception of the Gospel had been removed. But on the other hand, they had substituted at least partially a pagan element in place of the ancient Hebrew teaching, and Christianity had to replace the latter, as the only basis on which the fabric of the Gospel could be raised.

We find a type of this class of union in Philo as one who wrote on the nature of God and of the Word, when God the Word had already ‘been made flesh and dwelt among us,’ as one who has left such marked traces in the writings of many of the Christian fathers, and to whom modern criticism has not scrupled to attribute the highest truths of evangelical teaching—he has a strong claim to an attentive hearing.

The foundation of Philo’s system is the attempt to graft the philosophy of Plato upon the religion of the Old Testament. He starts from the proposition that God cannot be known by man as he is. ‘There is but one name which can be rightly assigned to Him, “The Being’’’ (de mutatione nomine, 2, p. 579). Any other term is misapplied and only figurative (de somn., 1.3 sq. p. 655). He is superior to virtue and to knowledge, superior to the absolutely good, and the absolutely beautiful (de Mund Opif. 2, p.2). ‘Men are either lovers of the body or lovers of the soul; the latter only are competent to hold converse with intelligible and immaterial natures, and they do not compare the (absolute) Being with any idea of created things, but divest it of all quality’ (Quod Deus, 11, p. 281).

Yet in a certain sense, God does reveal Himself to the world. His master Plato had taught him this lesson, and the manifestation of Yahweh recorded in the Old Testament demanded an explanation. The Word then is this link between the Finite and the Infinite. ‘The highest aim of the philosopher,’ he says, “is to behold the Absolute Being. If he cannot attain to this, he must contemplate His image, the most Sacred Word, and next to this, the most perfect of all sensible works, the visible world’ (de confus. Ling. Par. xx, p. 419).

What then is this ‘Word’? It is the manifestation of God’s reason in the Creation and Government of the universe. Thus it has a twofold energy, which Philo describes in the following figurative language; communing with his spirit, he says, he was informed that in the presence of the One Absolute God there are then two highest powers (δύναμις)—goodness and sovereignty. ‘By goodness he has created the world. By sovereignty he rules over His creation. Between these is the Word which connects them together, for by the Word God displays his Dominion and his Goodness. The cherubim are the symbols of these two powers, sovereignty and goodness, the flaming sword represents the ‘Word’” (Cherub. 9, p.144; I p. 205 Lipsius).

In another passage, he carefully guards against attributing distinct personalities to the divine nature, speaking of the appearance of the three angels to Abraham, he says ‘in the threefold representation there is one really existing substance, and two shadows. Just as we often cast two shadows.’ The substance is the Father, called in Holy Scripture ‘He that Is.’ The shadows are the creative and regal powers. The creator is God, for by this he founded and ordered everything. The Regal is Lord for that which has created has a right to rule over the things created. Philo then says that the soul that is initiated in the highest mysteries ‘ascends not only above the many, but also above the dyad, which resides nearest to the monad.’ When not so initiated, it dwells on the threefold representation for it is unable to apprehend the One except by the medium of its workings, either as creating or as governing (de Abraham, par. 24). The Word therefore is the synthesis of these two powers, and is used for either separately. Let us examine how he characterizes it in these two functions.

I. The Word the Creative Power (not ἐφ’ ὃ but δ’ ὃ). It is here especially that the Platonic side of Philo’s system is exhibited as an architect, he says, who is to build a great city, after reviewing the site, designs in his own mind all the parts thereof, the temple, the market, the docks, the walls, and so forth, and afterwards notes them down, as it were, on the tablets of his soul, and when he commences building refers to these and fashions every part of his work accordingly (de Mund. Op. par. 4 and 5, p. 4). So are we to conceive of God. The Word of God corresponds at one time in Philo’s language to designing mind of the builder, at another to the plan itself. In the former sense it is the seat of the ideas, in the latter, the ideal world itself. At the creation God said ‘Let us make man after the fashion of our image’ (καὶ εἶπεν ὁ θεός Ποιήσωμεν ἄνθρωπον κατ’ εἰκόνα ἡμετέραν). The image here, according to Philo, is the Word.

II. The Word the Governing Power. The Word of the Absolute Being is that which binds the universe and keeps its parts together so as to prevent their dissolution (de Prop. para. 20 Vol. I, p. 562; Lipsius ed. pp. 32-33). In one place he compares the Word to the viceroy of a great King (de Agric. para. 12, Vol. I, p. 308), in another, to the helm by which the pilot of the universe guides creation (de Migrat. Abr. v.i, p. 437). To the Word are to be referred all those manifestations of God recorded in the Old Testament. The Word comprehends and directs all these powers or words (λόγοι) of the one Existent Being, which are called angels.

Hitherto, we have seen no reason for supposing that Philo attributed a distinct personality to the Word. On the contrary, many of his express cautions exclude such a supposition. Sometimes, indeed, his language seems to indicate this, but as his master Plato had often done, he might well personify an attribute or an emanation without intending to assign to it a personality. This solution is surely more reasonable than to represent Philo in direct contradiction to himself, in accordance with his allegorizing tendencies.

Nor are these personifications difficult to explain. Thus he speaks of the Word as the First-begotten Son of God (de Agric. para. 12), for it is the ideal world, the pattern and archetype of the universe, but if we are tempted on this account to attribute a distinct personality to the Word we are reminded that the sensible world is, in the language of Philo, the second-begotten Son (in Eusebius, Prop. Ev. vii.13). If the Word is styled ‘the arch-angel’ it is only, as we have seen, the bond which connects the ruler to those powers or angels by which God manifests himself. If again it is the high-priest (de Prob. para. 20), it is so named as being the medium through which creation ascends to the knowledge of the Absolute Being. If it is ‘the Image of God’ it is so because the Idea of the universe bears the impress of the divine minds to which it owes its origins.

If at the same time there is a striking similarity between the language of the Alexandrian Jew and the inspired writers of the New Testament, this should present no difficulty. Every revelation of God to man is an accommodation in the matter, for our present faculties are not competent to receive the things of God in all their fullness, and the time is not come when we shall know even as we are known in the language, for language is itself a symbol and therefore implies an accommodation. If this be so, what language could be chosen more suitable for the communication of divine truth than that in which the most thoughtful men of the age had invested the questionings of their uninspired reasonings? New combinations would stamp the words with an infinitely deeper significance than they brought with them from the mint in which they were first coined.

Strange indeed has been the unanimity which which the doctrines of Philo have been misconceived by men of the most opposite tendencies. On the one side by the Christian anxious to show that his Faith was also the belief of natural religion; on the other by the unbeliever striving to undermine the Gospel by connecting its doctrines in a natural chain of events with the speculations of the age. Insofar as the natural reason was striving to supply the wants which Christianity has retrieved. There is a grain of truth in these representations. But these men have looked back upon Alexandrian Judaism from the vantage-ground of Christianity instead of placing themselves with Philo, and endeavoring without any guiding star in the heavens, to trace their path to the Apostolic heights.

It is hoped that enough has been said to show that the Word in Philo was far removed from the Word in St. John, but before discussing the Jewish philosopher we must review some points of contact which his doctrine presents to Christian teaching:

Philo strikes us as an earnest and moral man, one who can appreciate all the yearnings of unaided humanity towards God and in a certain sense sees good in everything. Yet after all, how barren are his theosophic speculations. How little is there here of deep spiritual consciousness. How little to convince the world of sin, of righteousness, of judgment.

But Philo was not the first who spoke of the Word. There were others before his time who tried to represent definitively to themselves the distinction between God as He is, and God as He manifests Himself to our limited faculties. It is difficult perhaps to discover such a bearing in the language used to describe Wisdom in the Book of Proverbs. But when we turn to the Apocryphal writings there are some traces of this tendency. In the Book of Jesus, the son of Sirach, these are very faint (Sirach xxiv-xxv). In the Wisdom of Solomon, which was more directly influenced by Alexandrian gnosis, we find these in greater distinctness. Wisdom ‘sits by the throne of God’ (Wis. Sol. ix.4), and is ‘conversant with Him and privy to the mysteries of the knowledge of God’ (Wis. Sol. viii.3-4). She is the breath of the power of God and a pure influence flowing from the glory of the Almighty, the brightness of the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of the power of God, and the image of His goodness (Wis. Sol. vii.25, 26). To her are attributed the works of God’s providence, manifested in the creation and throughout the history of the chosen people. Aristobolus, another Alexandrian Jew, exhibited this view in a more definite form, and we cannot doubt that there were many of this school who were struggling to represent to themselves the doctrine with more or less of the distinctness which it appears in Philo.

But were there any counterparts to this in the teaching in the mother country? In the oldest of the Targums that perhaps may be dated as far back as the Christian era, we find a disposition to explain those passages of the Old Testament which speak of the immediate interposition of God, by a periphrasis (e.g. Gen 32:30; Ex 19:17). This was a necessary reaction against the anthropomorphism, which among a large portion of the nation, had assumed the grossest form. But we are not warranted in going beyond this—a desire to anticipate Christianity in the Jewish forms of theosophy has led to much violent treatments of historical records. A disposition to antedate these records themselves, to see the later developments of a system in its earliest manifestations, above all to extract portions of a whole, and by giving them undue prominence and destroy the relations of the parts, has not yet succeeded in producing a faint semblance of the Christian scheme. Thus we are referred to the ‘Memra,’ the sensible revelation of God to man, or to the ‘Shekinah’ the abiding spirit of God which directs the universe, to ‘Metatron’ the angel of the Lord guiding the Israelites in their wanderings, for the Jewish counterparts of the Divine Persons. Yet the first two never assume a concrete personality, and the last is a created being. If we reflect that the writings to which we are referred are some centuries later than the Christian era, if we consider the influences of the dispersion of the Jews among the nations, the fusion of the Jewish sects, their contact with Christian communities, whether orthodox or heretical, must have excited, we shall be little disposed to accept these documents as representing the state of Jewish belief at the time which we are considering. Indeed, the weakness of this point of attack has been felt by our adversaries, and with but few exceptions, they have laid the stress of their argument on the theosophy of the Alexandrian school.

If in all these questionings, we have not failed to recognize foreshadowings which spoke of a coming substance, we must have been struck with the inadequacy of human speculation to explain to itself the great truth that ‘no man has seen the Father at any time; the only begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared Him.’

Part Two: The Messiah

ὑμεῖς δὲ πάντα σαρκικῶς νενοήκατε—Justin Martyr

In the present section, it will be our task to ascertain how far the relations between the Law and the Gospel, and the person and office of the Messiah, were firstly apprehended by the Jewish mind at the time of the Christian era.

The Law was in its nature temporary and imperfect. It was its mission to develop the national consciousness of the separation between God and man, and to teach the creature to look forward anxiously to the time when he should enjoy a closer communion with the Creator. In other words, it created a want which it did not supply, and named hopes and aspirations which it could not fulfill.

Hence, the necessity of a Second Dispensation which must be at once the fulfillment and the abrogation of the former, a fulfillment because it supplied the wants and realized the hopes created by its predecessor, an abrogation because it substituted the reality for the expectation, the substance for the shadow, the thing typified for the type.

The Jew was not unaware that a high destiny awaited his nation. He looked forward hopefully, even against hope for the day of deliverance from his present bondage, of triumph over his enemies. But he did not see that it was a spiritual freedom, a moral victory, which the prophets had foretold. Hence, the fulfillment was misapprehended by him, the abrogation ignored. ‘There is no difference,’ says one of the writers between the days of Messiah and these times, ‘except that Israel shall no more serve the kings of the Gentiles. He shall be lord over them.’

In consequence of this carnal view, they made no distinction between Messiah’s earthly and heavenly kingdom, between his first and second advent. ‘There are three seasons of the Lord’s appointment argues one of the Apostolic Fathers in combatting Jewish errors, the hope of life, the commencement, the consummation’ (Epist. Barnabas, para. 1). He spoke of the past world of Judaism, the present world of Christianity, and the future world of Glory. And this is the language which the New Testament writers themselves always employ regarding the Christian era. Note the words of Peter using the phrase ἐν ταῖς ἐσχάταις ἡμέραις to interpret the prophecy of Joel (Acts 2:17).

Another early Apologist too complains that in interpreting the prophecies the Jews had applied to Christ’s first coming in humility, what was spoken of his second coming in Glory (Justin, Dialog. with Trypho). His reign on earth, as they had painted it in the highest coloring of sensuous enjoyment satisfied all their wants; they would not see beyond these earthly glories ‘to the city of the living God, the Heavenly Jerusalem, and to an immeasurable company of angels to the general assembly and the Church of the first born which are written in heaven, and to the spirit of just men made perfect and to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant’ (Heb 12:22-23 etc.).

It would indeed be unjust to suppose that there were not others who had drawn from the Scriptures of the Old Testament a deeper and more spiritual meaning, but all records, whether sacred or profane, justify the belief that as a nation they had ‘understood everything carnally.’ Still, among the many shades of opinion, which must have existed on a subject at once so obscure and of such stirring interest, we recognize two prominent forms, which the Messianic visions of Jews took at this period, both equally inadequate as expressions of the Christian Idea. These two types we may call the Pharisaic and the Essene.

I. A sense of the impending Fall of the Roman Empire, and an ever increasing impatience to throw off the galling yoke of slavery, combined to give a sensuous turn to the national yearnings after that deliverer, whom for centuries past they had been expecting. The Messiah was to be ‘a mighty potentate and ruler over all the earth and all the nations and hosts’ (Origen, Contra Celsus ii.2sq.). The Holy City was to be the seat of his government. The Roman Empire was waning and the ‘star of Judah’ was to shine forth in its place with far greater brilliancy. So great was the national belief that the time for Israel’s deliverance was at hand as to create in the minds of many the suspicion that Messiah was already on earth, though by reason of their sins he had not yet been revealed to his people (see Justin, Dial. Trypho p. 226B).

The glories of Messiah’s reign were a rich theme for fancy. They told of the wars and victories of their Christ, of the homage paid, and the gifts presented to him, by the kings of the nations. They dwelt on the luxuriant vegetation and splendid palaces of his kingdom, and even the banqueting and festivities with a minuteness not seldom bordering upon the ridiculous.

There was nothing in Christianty to answer such expectations. The Jew had read in prophecy how the glory of the second temple was to exceed that of the first. He had formed his own carnal idea of its fulfillment. He would consider it a mockery to be told that the presence of the long-expected Messiah had already glorified the later building with a brightness greater than that of the visible Shekinah which illuminated the former, that the light had shone in the darkness and the darkness had not comprehended it, that He had come to His own, and His own had received Him not.

He had dreamt sensuous dreams of the kings of Thrace and their giving presents, of the Kings of Arabia and Sheba bringing gifts. How little would his visions be realized in the humble fulfillment of the Magi presenting their offering at the manger in Bethlehem, or the more glorious fulfillment of the spiritual homage of the kings of the earth? He had pictured to himself the inhabitants of Messiah’s kingdom free from bodily hurt or blemish. He would not be satisfied with the cure of a few sick folk, or the healing of the spiritual wounds and bruises of which this was the earnest and the type (see Mt 8:17). Difficult would it be for him to believe if these things did so happen, but if the kings did not present their gifts, if the cures were not performed, who would care to invent such stories in order to honor the carpenter’s son of Nazareth, who possessed so few charms to attract their national prejudices, whose claims belied their fondest hopes?

II. Such were the general expectations, but there was yet another type of the Messiah, which was held by some few of the more mystical and less sensuous turn of mind. The Christ was regarded by them as a spirit, which should again become incarnate as it had before sojourned on earth in some of the patriarchs and prophets of the Old Testament. Thus one tradition said that the soul of Adam left him at the Fall, and was incarnate again in David, it deserted him also when he sinned and was once more to be embodied in the person of the Messiah. Probably the most common form of the mystical view was that which was held by the Gnostic Ebionites, and is found in the Clementines, that the spirit of Adam and of the Messiah was the same. Perhaps St. Paul may allude to this opinion when he distinguishes between the first and the second Adam ‘the first Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam a quickening spirit. The first man is of the earth, earthy, the second man is the Lord of heaven’ (1 Cor 15:45, 47).

We have no direct notices indeed of this Messianic type except in the later Jewish writings, but from its existence in the doctrines of the Gnostic Ebionites and from the strong mystic tendencies of the Essenes, we may reasonably infer that it found place among the members of this brotherhood. Moreover the notice of Philo with respect to their use of symbols in their interpretation of the sacred books points to the same conclusion. We are therefore perhaps justified in calling this the Essene type. If this view of Messiah’s person was higher and more spiritual than the Pharisees, it was still equally removed from the Christian Idea. Even if it had been otherwise, as the religion of the few, it would not have excited any wide influence on the popular feeling.

Hitherto, we have seen no traces of the Christian doctrine of ‘God Manifest in the flesh’ of ‘the Word dwelling among us’ having been anticipated in any of the clearest evidences in the records of the sacred writings, in the language of the Apologists, and in the doctrines of the Judaizing sects that this was the great stumbling block in the way of their acceptance of the truth ‘as it is in Christ Jesus.’ ‘Your statement,’ says Trypho, ‘that this Christ is God, and existed before the world began, and then endured to be born as a man, appeared to men not only strange (παράδοξον) but absolutely foolish’ (Dial. w. Trypho p. 267B), ‘We all of us,’ (p. 268B) he adds, ‘expect that he will be born a man and of human parentage (ἄνθρωπον ἐξ ἄνθρωπον).’ The same language is also held by Origen’s opponent.

Hence also, the miraculous conception was repugnant to Jewish feeling. ‘Such a fable as the birth of the Messiah from a virgin would have arisen anywhere else than among the Jews. Their doctrine of the divine unity which placed an impassable gulf between God and the world, their high regard for the marriage relation, and above all their persuasion that Messiah was to be an ordinary man all conspired to render such an invention impossible among them.’ Accordingly, the Christian Apologist spends much labor in proving to his Jewish opponent that the Septuagint had rightly rendered the original ‘a virgin shall conceive’ and this referred to none other than the Messiah.

The Christian view was disappointing to the Jew in another not unimportant point. It was expected that Elias [i.e., Elijah] would have appeared as the precursor of the new reign. He was to have anointed the Christ and thus ‘inaugurated him in his kingly office.’ That this was a fundamental article in the Messianic creed of the Jews we collect from the same unsuspicious source, the Christian Apologist arguing with one of that nation. The preaching of the Baptist was too mean a fulfillment to satisfy such expectations.

But the death of the Savior, as recorded by the Evangelical writings, was most repugnant to the conception of those who had looked for every accumulation of earthly glory in the person of their Christ. To a tale of suffering they might have listened, though impatiently, but the ignominy of a death on the cross would excite in them only feelings of abhorrence. They did not see that with the Master, as with the Servant, the way to glory was through the portal of Humility. They could not conceive with St. Paul that ‘because he humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross, therefore, God also highly exalted Him’ (Phil 2). They could not join in the heavenly song of praise, ‘worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and honor and glory and blessing.’ Still, recognizing those prophecies which foretold suffering, and when pressed, acknowledging that they referred to Messiah, they sought to escape from conclusions so unacceptable to their national feelings by supposing two Messiahs—the son of Joseph, Christ suffering, and the son of Judah, Christ triumphant.

With such unworthy views of the person of the Savior, they could not rightly have apprehended those truths which cluster around the fact of the Incarnation. They could know nothing with St. Paul of that atoning sacrifice, which was to him the principle of all the actions, and the center of all his teaching. They could know nothing with St. John of that communion with the Father and the Son on which he dwells so fondly and so earnestly.

But there is yet another point of view from which we must contemplate the Savior’s office. Christ is to us the pattern man. It had been said ‘be ye holy, even as I also am holy,’ but the Christian teacher could enforce this by reference to Him, whose human nature was perfectly sanctified by ‘the indwelling of the Godhead bodily.’ Is humility recommended? ‘Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.’ Is endurance? ‘For inasmuch as Christ has suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same minds.’ Is forgiveness of wrong? ‘Christ has left you an example, that you should follow in his steps, who when he was reviled, reviled not again’ (cf. Phil 2:5; 1 Pet 4:1; 2:23).

But if the Christ of the Gospels had been ‘fabulous’ [i.e., the stuff of fable], where was the artist who could draw so perfect a picture? It has been allowed indeed that a sinful age cannot depict a perfectly sinless Ideal, yet it is hinted that it may produce an image in which the partial eye, ‘even of a later and more clear-sighted age’ cannot detect any blemish. Waiving the consideration of the defects alleged to exist in the portrait of our great Exemplar, but not conceding them, we may ask ‘could such an age have produced an image so free from blemish?’ To give weight to the assertion it should be shown that a picture at all approaching to this standard had ever been drawn. How inadequate, for instance, is the Stoic model, their wise man! It is unfair to produce portraiture of a Christian age as a parallel, for these are but copies (often faulty), of one great archetype. Where then are we to look for the artist? Not surely in the cold and skeptical Sadducee, not in the narrow-minded hypocritical Pharisee, not in the mystic Essene recluse, not in any or all these combined, nor even in those faithful few who were waiting hopefully for the expectation of Israel.

For our Pattern is not a mere outhne or a shadowy sketch. He appears to us over the funeral bier and at the marriage feast, in the highways and in secret prayer, among the chosen few and in the mixed crowd, before the judgment seat and in the synagogue, in health and in suffering, in honor and in ignominy. We have hitherto been supposing that our rule of faith, the idea of Christ both God and man, was also implicitly the belief of the infant Church. But our opponents have intercalated a stage of transition between the old era of Judaism and the new era of Christianity. We admit this as a confession, that some stepping stone is needed from the one to the other and must now investigate its claims to truth or historical grounds.

Part Three: The Judaizing Christians

‘Dum volunt et Judaei esse et Christiani, nec Judaei sunt nec Christiani’—Jerome

A bishop of the Christian Church, writing towards the end of the fourth century, stigmatizes a certain sect of heretical Christians with more than historical severity. He compares their founder to the ‘many-headed Hydra of fable’ and describes him as having ‘gathered together in one every monstruous and pernicious doctrine, all the abominations and absurdities which any heresy could contribute’ (Epiphanius, ad Haeres. i.ii.30). It is allowed on all hands that Epiphanius was acquainted with the tenets of the sect (for one of their strongholds was in the neighborhood of his see), that these tenets were directly at variance with those of the orthodox, and lastly that he is here expressing the opinion of the Church. Now we are told that the Ebionites whom he thus describes held mainly the same doctrines as were taught by St. Peter and St. James and even by St. John.

Doubtless, a great change had taken place meanwhile, the number of laborers in the harvest had been multipled, the truth of the Gospel which before had been felt with more or less distinctness had now been laid down in creeds and formularies, discussion and attack had in a certain sense developed doctrines which hitherto had found their resting place in the consciousness of the Church. Doubtless also, many minor errors had crept into the teaching. But does history warrant that the change of feeling had been so entire, as these critics represent?

The distinctive tenets of the Ebionites, as they are handed down to us, are decisive and invariable—the observance of the Mosaic Law is binding on all Christians and the denial of the divine Sonship of Christ. In the minor details there is some variation. Several of the Fathers speak of two classes of Ebionite, and though they often do not observe this distinction, still the features of the picture which they present are so incongruous when combined and range themselves so naturally under two heads, that we cannot be wrong in accepting this view. We shall see moreover how these two classes correspond to the two schools in which the positive religious teaching of the Jews was developed, and these respective tenets regarding the person and office of Jesus, were the natural outgrowth of the Messianic expectations in their two most prevalent forms. Anticipating these results, we shall speak of the Pharisaic and Essene Ebionites respectively.

I. Regarding the new dispensation as a continuance of the old, the Pharisaic Ebionites were scrupulous observers of the Mosaic ritual. Though Jerusalem had been destroyed, they still regarded it as the habitation of God, and the seat of Messiah’s government when he should again appear on earth and reign for a thousand years, the chosen people being gathered from all parts of the world to this glorious kingdom. Their views of the person of Jesus were correspondingly inadequate. He was the son of Joseph and Mary, a prophet like Moses or Elias, of his pre-existence, miraculous conception, and Godhead, they knew nothing. His Messiahship commenced with his Baptism. Hence their Gospel (a recension of that to the Hebrews), omitted the account of the Lord’s birth, and interpolated the narrative of the Baptism in order to give prominence to it. ‘They live after the Jewish customs,’ says an early Christian writer, affirming that they are justified by the Law, ‘saying that Jesus was justified because he observed the Law.’ ‘Wherefore Jesus, they say was called the Christ of God, since no one before him fulfilled the Law, for if any other had observed the things commanded in the Law, he would have been the Christ, and they consider it possible for themselves to become Christs if they do likewise’ (Hippolytus, adv. Haers. p. 257).

Thus having so far overcome their Jewish prejudices as to accept the fact of the humble life and conception of the Savior, they made amends for it by the substitution of a millennial reign on earth. Again not able to divest themselves entirely of the common belief that Elias ‘must first come and anoint the Messiah’ they wrested the facts of history to obtain a closer parallel to the view in the life of the Savior. In other respects, they are simply Jews of the Pharisaic school.

II. The same scrupulous observance of the ritual marked the Essene Ebionites also. The Ebionites of Epiphanius are of this class. His account is confirmed by the Clementines. But their position with respect to the old dispensation is somewhat altered. Christianity with them is a return to the primitive religion of Judaism. They accept the patriarchs as true prophets, and they reject David, Solomon, Isaiah and the later prophets. They therefore only admit the Pentateuch as canonical, and view the Gospel as a reintroduction of the older religion, divested of the excrescences of a later age. Jesus is the successor of the true prophets. Christ is higher than the archangels and the first of God’s creatures. He was incarnate as he had been in Adam. He is the prince of the world to come, as the devil is the prince of this world. Their asceticism was strictly of the Essene type. They abstained from eating flesh and drinking wine. The virtue that they attributed to bathing in cold water elicted the sneer that ‘water was their God.’ Though they were particular in the observance of the Sabbath, they shunned the sacrifice and the Temple service as unholy. We shall see hereafter how the Essenes avoided the Temple service.

Such is the picture that is painted of these mystic Ebionites. We observe here that peculiar view of Gnosis which, as we have seen, characterized the Essenes. In details there is some difference between the two, but even here often the one presents a germ that would naturally develop into the other. We must add also that there are faint traces of an historical connection between the Essenes and the Gnostic Ebionites.

In the history of these sects we have an instructive lesson in every way. It confirms our opinion, derived from other sources, of the direction that Jewish speculation would, if unaided, naturally take. It explains where existing prejudices and feelings found vent. In their resemblance to Jewish theosophy and contrast to Christianity it provides a strong proof of the divine origin of the latter.

But how are we to answer those who tell us that our Christianity is not the same with that of the primitive Church, least of all the Church of the circumcision? The historical examination of this question is naturally fourfold. What were the opinions of the early Gentile Church? What were the opinions of the Jewish Church and how far were they in accordance with those of the former? What do we know historically of the relation between the two? What was the attitude assumed by both or either towards Ebionitism?

I. Of the opinions of the Gentile Church we have the most explicit and decisive testimony. As the Church planted and watered by the one whom the Ebionites ever regarded as a heretic and an imposter, its doctrines must have been antagonistic to this sect. But since some have sought to weaken this testimony by circumscribing the influence of the great Apostle of the Gentiles, others by denying the authenticity of the Epistles which bear his name, a reference to the opinions of the writer of the Apostolic age, and the period immediately succeeding will not be out of place.

The language of Clement of Rome is clear and unequivocal. Christ is the Son of God far higher than all the angels (chapter 36), yea he is God himself (c. 2). Though he might have come in power, he condescended to take our nature upon him (c. 16.32). Thus he was the mercy of God for the whole world (c. 7). Clement speaks of Christ as our Lord and our Savior, our High Priest (c. 21, 36) through whom we obtain mercy and peace (c. 1.20). Of our membership with Him (c. 46), of our justification by faith (c. 32), of Christ as the center of our spiritual life.

Not less decisive is the Epistle that bears the name of Barnabas. The writer warns his readers of confusing the Law with the Gospel (c. 4). Christ is the consummation of all prophecy and the fulfillement of every type (c. 6sqq.). The deeds of the Law are not acceptable before God (c. 15). The Temple of Jerusalem is no more but the Christian’s heart is a new and living temple. Again, how exalted are his conceptions of the person of Christ? ‘He endured to suffer for us, even though he is the Lord of the whole world to whom God said before the creation “let us make man in our own image’’’ (c. 5). ‘Let us believe,’ he says, ‘that the Son of God could not suffer except for our sake’ (c. 7), and often and again he speaks of the remission of our sins through his death.

The Ignatian Epistles and that of Polycarp are so explicit on this subject, that any citation would be superfluous. We pass on to the Shepherd of Hermas. Here though we meet with a different type of Christian teaching. The author’s language is for our purposes as distinct as any that we have reviewed hitherto.

‘The Son of God existed before all creation and all power has been given to Him by the Father; he was incarnate and dwelt on earth that he might open the way of life for us. He suffered for our sins. Through him alone we have access to God. He is the rock on which the Church is built, the door of Life.’

Here are two extracts from the Epistle to Diognetus (the author of which styles himself a disciple of the Apostles—par. 11). After stating that the Christians do not sacrifice or observe the ceremonial law like the Jews, he adds ‘their superstitions with respect to meats and Sabbaths, their vaunting boast of circumcision, and their hypocritical observances of fasts and new moons, I think I need not tell you are ridiculous and unworthy of Christ’ (par. 8). He says, ‘God did not send him among us as a minister or angel or any of the powers of earth or heaven, but he sent the maker and artificer of the universe, by whom he created the heavens and set bounds to the sea, whom the moon and the stars obey etc.’ ‘Did he send him,’ he adds, ‘as one might suppose, with sovereignty and terror and dismay? No, but in meekness and gentleness. He sent him as a king sends his son, himself a king. He sent him as God (ὡς θεόν). He sent him as to men. He sent him as their Savior’ (par. 4). And he follows out that doctrine in its bearing on Christian life. The acknowledged teaching of the Gentile Church from Justin Martyr downward, obviates the necessity of continuing the chain of evidence any longer.

II. But was there really that difference between the teaching of the Jewish Church and the Gentile Church that some modern critics have discovered? As the Epistle of St. James has generally been selected as the starting point of this criticism, let us examine whether it bears any traces of this ‘Ebionite’ tendency. What then is the doctrinal relation between St. James and St. Paul? The one regards the Gospel as the fulfillment, the other as the abrogation of the Law. The one looks to works as the fruit of faith, the other to faith as producing works. St. James had known Christ in the flesh, therefore he dwells specially on his human relations; to St. Paul he appeared in the clouds of heaven, therefore to him the human character is absorbed in the contemplation of the divine. But there is here no contradiction. The views are rather complementary, the one to the other. As on the one hand, that is a narrow view of inspiration which would take offense at the appearance of the subjective element, even when duly regulated by the presence of the divine, so that is a loose criticism which refuses to distinguish between different objects and the same object regarded from different points of view.

What, on the other hand, is the relation of St. James to the Ebionites? He lays such stress indeed upon a law, but the ceremonial is here replaced by the moral, the law of bondage here by the perfect law of liberty (James 1:25). In this new covenant, even the outward service of religion (θρησκεία) consists in works of love and purity, how precious then must be the kernel? Nor again does this writer share the low Ebionite view of the Savior. He who, according to the flesh, was the Lord’s brother, here styles himself his slave (James 1:1). He sees in the Son of Man, the Lord of Glory (James 2:1), who is to come again in judgment (James 2:7-9).

If it be asked why St. James dwells so much on the ethical side of Christian teaching, the aim and scope of the Epistle will furnish us with an answer. Its object was not, we believe, as at first sight his words would seem to imply, to counteract the extravagances which some had grafted on the Pauline teaching of justification by faith. The writer had no connection with the Churches founded by St. Paul. His letter was not likely to reach them. Moreover it is addressed to Jewish hearers, who had indeed arrived at the same result, but could scarcely have done so by the same means. We shall therefore be probably right in considering this Epistle as directed against a Pharisaic spirit, which some converts had brought with them into the Christian Church, claiming to itself all the privileges of churchmanship on the ground of a barren orthodoxy. It is obvious that with such a view the writer must necessarily have dwelt upon works as the only test of a lively faith.

After these considerations, perhaps a notice in the Hebrew Christian historian Hegesippus will not be thought to have a very important bearing on this controversy. ‘James,’ he tells us, ‘was holy from his mother’s womb. He drank no wine nor strong drink, nor did he eat any flesh. A razor never touched his head, nor did he anoint himself with oil or use the bath. He wore no wool but only fine linen.’ He then narrates how he was constantly found in the Temple, ‘kneeling in prayer to God, and asking remission for the people.’ St. James appears from this account to have been a Nazarite, but as the facts bear a strong Ebionite coloring, Hegesippus must have received this tradition through that sect probably unconsciously. That he was himself no Ebionite will be shown hereafter.

What again are the relations of the Synoptic Evangelists to St. John? It is not our task here to recite historical difficulties. Our question is simply concerned with their doctrinal views. If it is allowed that the Synoptists present the facts while St. John dwells upon the Ideas, this is all that the most perfect harmony requires, for there is here no incongruity as each supports the other. This important truth has been more than once insisted upon with regard to the Incarnation, the Baptism, the Last Supper, and the Ascension. We may perhaps add another instance. The rending of the veil of the Temple is recorded by all the Synoptic Evangelists. On this point St. John alone is silent. Yet none of the sacred writers dwells more earnestly (in his own teaching of the records of the Master’s words), on the event thus typified, our communion with the Father through the Son, our access by the death of Christ into the Holy of Holies. The Synoptists give the text, St. John the commentary.

But lest we be led into the error of supposing that silence betrays an ignorance or implies a rejection, passages are not wanting to show that the other Evangelists did acknowledge these truths, which St. John advances so prominently. We prefer taking St. Matthew, who as being especially the Hebrew Evangelist, might be supposed to be more exposed to Ebionite influences. What then are we told of Him whom he introduces as ‘God with us’ (i.e. Emmanuel, ‘through whom we have access to the Father’). All things are delivered to Him by His Father. ‘No one knoweth the Son but the Father, neither knoweth any man the Father save the Son and he to whomever the Son will reveal Him’ (Mt 11:27). All power is given unto Him in heaven and on earth. His disciples are bidden to teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and He promises he will be with them always, even unto the end of the world (Mt 28 end). Again, what is his position with respect to the Law? Where can we find stronger protests against the narrow teaching of the Pharisees (Mt 15:ff.)? Or less weight attached to asceticism or ceremonial observances (Mt 11:19; 9:10; 12:9 sqq.), or larger promises of the Extension of the Church among the Heathen (Mt 13:32-35, 47-48; especially Mt 13:40)?

Nor is it difficult to account for the form of teaching adopted by the Synoptists. If we suppose that these Gospels were drawn up as a basis for catechetical instruction to be enforced and illustrated by oral teaching, we can understand why these authors should have been led to record facts rather than ideas, history rather than doctrine.

The few notices of the Church in Jerusalem which we meet with after leaving the sacred writings, are all confirmatory of the view advocated above. Thus, Sulpicius Severus says that in the reign of Hadrian, ‘almost all the Jewish Christians believed in the divinity of Christ, while they observed the ordinances of the Law.’ Still, this writer lived some centuries after the events to which he alludes. But the importance of ascertaining the opinions of Hegesippus as representing the state of belief in the Church of Jerusalem in his own day (about the middle of the second century) has been allowed by all. The testimony of Eusebius is explicit on this point: ‘The truth,’ he says, ‘drew out many champions in her cause who carried out her warfare against the godless heretics not only in debate, but also in writing. Among these, Hegesippus was famous.’ In another passage he says, ‘At that time flourished in the Church Hegesippus, Dionysius, Melito, and lastly Irenaeus, who have left us in their writings the orthodoxy of a sound faith in accordance with the Apostolic tradition.’ And if any doubt should arise of his competency to judge of the opinions of Hegesippus, it is dispelled by the following words ‘Hegesippus has left in his five books of memoirs which have come down to us, the fullest record of his own opinions.’ And elsewhere, he speaks of these memoirs as containing ‘the unerring tradition of the Apostolic preaching’ (Hist. Eccles. iv.7.8; iv. 21.22). That he should have used the Gospel to the Hebrews, which bore a close resemblance to our St. Matthew, will create no surprise; it was cited by many of the Fathers whose orthodoxy was never questioned.

III. When again we come to review the connection between the Jewish and Gentile Churches, the result will not only confirm us in our previous position, but also remove the only remaining difficulty by disclosing the basis upon which the observance of the Mosaic Law by the former group rested. It seems clear that the early Christian Church did fulfill the requirements of the Law and that this was sanctioned by the usage of the Apostles of the circumcision. But there is no evidence that they made this a requisite or even a prominent point of Christian duty. In the case of St. James, the absence of any traces of this nature, both in the Epistle which bears his name, and in the notices of him preserved by Hegesippus are all the more important, because both these sources of information concur in representing him as leaning to the ethical side of Christian life.

If the acquiescence of the Apostles in the usages of their countrymen was designed to win favor for the doctrines which they preached, and thus to remove a stumbling block in the way of reception of the Gospel, we may safely conclude that such a course would meet with full approbation from the Gentile Apostle who, in two recorded instances, displayed his readiness to yield to such motives, and who declares of himself that he had become all things to all men in order that he might save some. Still, there were doubtless many both sincere and nominal Christians who would not disentangle themselves from the spirit of bondage. Their day of trial was postponed, for the season had not yet come when the tares were to be separated from the wheat and the ‘false brethren’ cast out of the Church. In accordance with this view we find the greatest good-feeling existing between St. Paul and the Apostles of the circumcision. He was regarded indeed with jealousy by many of the Jewish converts as one who would have subverted their Law, but he strove ever more earnestly to remove this impression, and the interest which he took in the Collection among the Gentiles Churches for the relief of the Jewish brethren is a noble testimony to the kind feeling with which he viewed his countrymen. On one occasion he finds it necessary to raise his voice against the dissimulation of the brother Apostles. But the terms in which he records this circumstance bear the most unsuspicious evidence that there was a kindly feeling and mutual recognition of Apostleship between St. Paul and the heads of the Jewish Church, and that the error of St. Peter was only momentary. We may well believe that he who shed bitter tears of remorse when he denied his Master formerly would acknowledge with penitence and gratitude the justice of the reproof of ‘his beloved brother Paul.’

About a century later we meet with an interesting record that connects the Church at Jerusalem with other parts of the Christian world. Hegesippus, a member of the mother Church, anxious to learn the state of opinion in other Christian communities, made a journey to Rome, staying on his way at many other places and conversing with the bishops. The result of this tour was a conviction that the same doctrine was held throughout the Christian world which was taught at Jerusalem. ‘In every city in which I stayed,’ he says, ‘everything is ordered as according to the commandment of the Law and the prophets and the Lord.’ Eusebius in another place adds his own testimony to the integrity of the faith in the Church of Jerusalem until the siege under Hadrian, derived from written record.

IV. On the other hand, the position of the Fathers is one of direct antagonism towards the Ebionites. Justin Martyr, writing shortly after the sect must have arisen, distinguishes between true Jewish Christians who observe the Law as binding upon themselves, and those who would impose it upon others as necessary for salvation (the Ebionites). Justin refuses to recognize the latter, telling them ‘There are some of you who allow Jesus to be the Christ, but declare him to be a mere man. . . . With these I do not agree, and I have the majority on my side’ (see Dialog. Trypho p. 265). The express testimony of Irenaeus, Tertullian, Hippolytus, Cyprian, Origen and others might be added. Of Hegesippus we will speak presently. Eusebius stigmatizes this heresy in strong terms. It is unnecessary to pursue this subject further.

There is only another look requisite to explain the chain of evidence. We have to give some account of the rise of the sect. We learn from Hegesippus that heresy broke out openly in the Jewish Church at the death of Simeon, when it ceased to be presided over by those who had been eye-witnesses of the Lord’s life. The Church was then smitten ‘by corrupt teaching against God, and against his Christ.’ There were some few indeed even before this who undertook ‘to corrupt the sound rule of Apostolic teaching’ and the historian Hegesippus mentions the name of one Thebulis who immediately after the martyrdom of James the Just commenced undermining the faith. But it was not until the generation of Apostles and apostolic men had passed away that the false teachers ventured openly to promulgate their doctrines. Up to this time the Church was called a virgin, for it was uncorrupted by false teaching. These notices are not in themselves indeed very explicit, but we cannot be wrong if Hegesippus held the opinions which we have assigned to him, in referring them to the outbreak of the Ebionite heresy.

If any other impulse was needed to render the separation between the orthodox and the Judaizing sects more complete, it was furnished in the abandonment of the Mosaic ritual, and the appointment of the first Gentile Bishop of Jerusalem. This took place after the destruction of the old city and the foundation of Aelia Capitolina on its sight under Hadrian.

The course of the foregoing argument will in some measure have reported the opinion that Christianity was an outgrowth of the Essene sect. With strange confidence, some have sought to build an argument on the silence observed in the Gospels with respect to this sect. But an argument of this kind is never of much value unless supported by positive proofs. In the present case, it is not difficult to account for the silence in the sacred writers.

The sect indeed was not inconsiderable, as it numbered probably about 4,000 adherents, but they did not stand in the same relation to these people as did the Sadducees and Pharisees. They did not, like the Pharisee, move heaven and earth to make one proselyte, nor like the Sadducees did they seek to leaven society with the spirit of coldness and disbelief. They would not be charged with the hypocrisy of the one or the cruelty of the other. Standing aloof from society they led for the most part a blameless and an amiable life. The voice of reproof and denunciation was reserved for more serious offenders.

Some have sought a connecting link between Christianity and Essenism in the preaching of the Baptist, but besides the scene of his ministry, the only other point of contact between John and this sect is his asceticism, and in this there was a marked difference between the Precursor and the Founder of our Faith. Besides, it is not unimportant to observe that even the practice of the Baptist did not fulfill all the requirements of a superstitious formalism, and a later age had to corrupt the sacred records in order to render them conformable to their own standard of asceticism.

On the other hand, we have seen how marked is the contrast between the distinctive features of the sect, and Christianity; and if any further evidence of disconnection is required, it is found that historically the Christians are connected not with the Essenes, but with the orthodox Jews. Yet we cannot doubt that the ‘new way’ would attract some at least of those crowds who otherwise would have flocked to the ‘retired’ abodes of the Essenes and thus more or less the mystic spirit which marked the sect would grow up in the Church. At the same time, the cessation of the Temple worship would swell the numbers of the Christians from the orthodox party. Thus both this Judaizing element, the spirit of Pharisaism, on the one hand, and the spirit of Essenism, on the other, like tares attempting to choke and kill the growth of the plant in the sacred precincts, were plucked out by a violent hand. In the soil of Ebionitism, they would flourish anew with a ranker growth. But even here there were the seeds of division. These elements, though they had much in common, were in many respects incongruous. Ebionitism itself would be rent asunder, and form the two sects which we have been reviewing.

Part Four: Conclusions

The defense of a cause such as that which has been undertaken in the preceding pages, leaves no room for self-congratulation on the part of the advocate. He feels his utter inadequacy to fulfill worthily the important task that he has undertaken. He is aware that he is endangering his cause by fixing attention on a part of that which cannot be duly estimated except as a whole. Above all, he is conscious that there is a higher evidence which can find no expression in the pages of an apology.

For there is a testimony which it is not in the power of historical criticism to grasp; the testimony of the heart which finds in Christianity its deepest aspirations realized and its fondest hopes fulfilled—the testimony of the conscience smitten and pierced as by a sharp two-edged sword, by the record of His words ‘who spake as no man spake,’ the testimony of experience which reminds the Christian that in proportion as he has cultivated his best faculties and highest feelings of his nature, the clouds of doubt and difficulty have been dispersed before the ‘light of the Spirit which bears witness to his spirit,’ and have only gathered again when he has been betrayed into spiritual carelessness or moral ambiguity.

But what explanation are we to give of the phantoms that have crowded our path and perhaps startled us by their resemblance to some well-known truth? Are we to accept the account that satisfied some of the early Christian Apologists that they are merely Christian caricatures held out by evil spirits to seduce men from the path of truth? This might be plausible for men of their age but for us it can be no solution. Yet still less shall we be disposed to accede to the views of those modern critics who cut the knot which we would have untied, who would have us believe that sacrifices, oracles, priesthoods are utterly meaningless, that we are to expect no atonement for sin, no direct revelation of the will of heaven, no mediator between God and man. We have a right to demand an account of these wants.

There is a third course open to us, it may accept these as an evidence of the reality of our wants. We may believe that cravings so deep and so universal were not implanted in our race without a purpose. We may expect that he who created the need, will also supply the means of satisfying it. Then regarding these as foreshadowings of a coming substance, as counterfeits of a genuine reality, we shall find in them no more a stumbling block but a confirmation of our faith.

Again if we are told that some cherished precepts and maxims of the Gospel are to be found in the writings of the rabbis, there should be nothing here to dismay or confound us. We must not forget that the scribe prepared for the kingdom of heaven brings out of his treasure, things old as well as new. It is enough that Christianity practice the purest morality; we have no right to dictate the source in which it is nurtured. If He stamps with his image and superscription the deep seated truths of our nature, or the wise saying and other ages shall we refer to . . .

[The manuscript breaks off at this point. It should be remembered that this is Lightfoot’s essay from early in his career, an essay that won a considerable prize, finished or not. At the bottom of the last full page are the letters P.T.O. standing for ‘please turn over.’ When one does so, one finds an apology from Lightfoot as follows: ‘The writer regrets that the time designed expired. He has been obliged therefore to finish abruptly.’]

[Some later thought the prize-winning essay was on Stephen; another, apparently Hort, suggested it was on Philo. In fact he was partly right. Here is a clue from the obituary that you can find in the final appendix to volume one of the Lightfoot Legacy series: ‘The Norrisian Prize was gained in 1853. It was gained but not claimed for with characteristic modesty Lightfoot was dissatisfied with an essay which the examiners had decided to be first, and he never fulfilled the condition of publishing it.’ Hopefully Lightfoot would not be too upset that this essay from his early Cambridge days has now seen the light of day. The man was only twenty-five when he wrote this essay, and it showed what great promise he had. (BW3)]

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