THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF THE EUCHA.RIST.*
THERE is much that is striking in this volume, and there would be still more, if Dr. Maclear did not fall too much into the natural habit of believers,—which ought, however, to be carefully avoided by apologists,—the habit of seeming to be as much gratified at those deficiencies and gaps in the evidence which show that the evidence was not artificially manufactured and welded into a complete demonstrative chain for the purpose of producing conviction, as they are at those aspects of it which are really powerful and unanswerable. Now, it is all very well for one who has finally made up his own mind on the subject, and does not doubt for a moment that Christ is what he proclaimed himself, and what his Apostles thought him, to regard the weaker points in the narrative as helping to show that we have here no carefully got-up case, but simply an inartificially arranged statement of the sources of Christian belief. But that is not the impression which such weaker points can by any possibility make on the minds of sceptics and doubters, and it is for them that the apologist writes. It would, therefore, be far better that in writing for them, the apologist should take care not to be as much disposed to congratulate himself and his readers on the difficulties of the narrative, as he is to congratulate him- self and them on those indications of reality and truth which are most impressive, and at the same time most unintentionally indicated. It is quite true that a frank and straightforward way of saying what at first sight seems anything but consist- ent with other statements, is a proof of the absence of all art, of the absence of all conscious desire to make out a telling case ; but then this, of course, must produce a double effect on the mind of a doubter. If it convinces him, on the one hand, that the writer was not trying to make out an effective case, but was just telling what he had seen or heard, even though that should happen to furnish a new difficulty instead of a new proof of the truth of his belief, still, it must also be given its due weight, on the other hand, as introducing elements of inconsistency with the rest of the story which increase the difficulty of accepting that story as it is told. Apologists are too apt to ignore the latter aspect of the matter, and to keep our attention exclusively to the former. And thereby, instead of carrying conviction to the minds of doubters, they inevitably provoke the remark that apologists are never staggered by any difficulty, but take all the apparent inconsistencies as proving only candour, while they take all the evidences of consistency,—of the reciprocal confir- mation of one set of facts by another set of facts,—as final grounds of belief. But if apparent inconsistency is to cause no difficulty, why is clear consistency to produce belief ? And if clear consistency is to produce belief, why is not the absence of it to suggest doubt ? Apologists should not forget that they write for doubters,—that doubters are not convinced, but impressed with the deficiency of the evidence,— and that therefore to take instances where the deficiency of the evidence is admitted, as proving nothing decisively, except that the writer is perfectly ingenuous, is to convey to the minds for which chiefly they write, the notion that they cannot even enter into their difficulties, or appreciate the force of that which staggers them and makes them hesitate on the frontiers of belief. As one illustration of what we mean, Dr. Maclear insists very justly that after the Apostolic account of the Resurrection had become generally known, no one would ever have thought of attributing to our Lord the saying that Jonah's existence for three days and three nights in the sea-monster was an anticipa- tion of his own burial for three days and three nights in the heart of the earth, and for this very sufficient reason, that the Apostolic narrative directly asserts that he was so buried for only two nights and a single complete day. That is, no doubt, a very sufficient proof that the verse in Matthew to which refer- ence is made was not likely to have been invented by an artifi- cial compiler of a life of Christ, after the story of the Resur- rection was known. But is it not also a proof that the so- * The Beidential Value of the Holy Buchari3t, being the Boyle Lectures for 1879- 1880, delivered in the Chapel Royal, Whitehall. By the Rev. George Frederick Maclear, D.D., warden of St. Augustine's College, Canterbury, late Read Master of King's College School, London_ London : Macmillan and Co. 1883.
called "sign of the prophet Jonah "—if it really depended on the story of the prophet's existence for a long period in the inside of a sea-monster—was not a sign of the length of our Lord's own interment in the earth at all, and that St. Mat- thew's language on the subject rather points to an error in the interpretation given to this saying by the first Evangelist (and given by him alone), than to any new evidence of the truth of the revelation ? It is the same with other points which present at once, on one side, difficulty, on another side, testimony of importance. Dr. Maclear ignores the difficulty, or treats it only as affording additional proof of the ingenuousness of the narra- tive (which it does), and yet he rests on the testimony as fully as if there were no difficulty in the matter. Thus, he shows us how early in the narrative of St. John, our Lord anticipates the sacrifice of the Cross, and gives the sign of the brazen serpent in the wilderness as prefiguring his crucifixion, and the healing power it will exert over man ; but when insisting, as Dr. Maclear does insist later, on the careful and gradual way in which our Lord prepared his disciples for the suffering and the ignominy awaiting him, he does not help us in the least to understand why that which in the Synoptic Gospels is so cautiously and gradually unfolded, is in the Gospel of St. John assumed, as it were, from the first, as the very basis of our Lord's discourse. Surely, an apologist who avails himself of both these kinds of evidence for his purpose should have at least acknowledged the difficulty of fully reconciling them, even if he could not have helped us to remove it. This is the only fault we have to find with this valuable book. It unquestionably suppresses several of the difficulties with which the sceptic must be beset, instead of frankly confessing them and so far as may be, trying to meet them fairly.
Otherwise, it cannot be denied that Dr. Maclear puts a strong argument with great power. He opens by reminding us of the question put by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, before the destruction of Jerusalem, and while the sacrificial system of the Temple was still in full force, whether if these sacrifices, so punctually made, had answered their pur- pose, they would not have ceased to be offered, because the worshippers, having been once cleansed, would have had ne more consciousness of sin. And then Dr. Maclear remarks that in a thoroughly historical age this, which the author of the Epistle suggested as possible under a certain hypothesis,—that a great system of sacrificial ceremonies which had lasted for ages should cease,—did actually very soon come about. Within a single century, not only had this great ceremonial and sacri- ficial system ceased among Christians, but the cessation of that sacrificial system had begun to affect the religion of the Roman Empire itself, and on so great a seale that Pliny complains to
Trajan of the alarming change :— "The date of this revolution, I repeat, places us in distinctly historic times and falls within definite historical limits. What was- utterly unknown in B.C. 12 had become notorious by A.D. 112. Let uT contrast these epochs. i. On the sixth of March, B.C. 12, owing to the death of Lepidus, the Emperor Augustus was elevated to the- chief pontificate. Successively imperator, censor, tribune, and consul he now attained the last of the great offices of the Republic, which remained to complete his functions as monarch of Rome. Whatever may have been his religions sentiments in earlier days, he had lately distinguished himself by his zeal for the maintenance of the religious system of the Empire. He had already erected or repaired temples on the most extensive scale, and had instigated others to emulate him in the same career. He had restored the ancient supplication' for the safety of the State. He had appointed the high priest or Jupiter. Be had revived many solemn festivals. He had celebrated the secular games' as a grand sacrifice of prayer and praise to the gods for the welfare of his people. Now, however, he was the highest religious officer of the State, and the first occasion pn which he exercised his new functions revealed the carefulness with which be- intended to discharge them. A month after his elevation he received intelligence that his faithful minister, Agrippa, had died in Campania- He instantly hurried thither, conveyed the body himself to the city, and pronounced a funeral oration over it in the Forum, with a curtain drawn before his eyes, because the chief pontiff might not look upon a corpse. The punctilious carefulness displayed on this occasion he carried into every department of his office. Invested with the conduct of the whole system af religion, be superintended all the colleges of the pontiffs. He filled up the vacant benefices. He himself named the Vestal Virgins. He was initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries, end was the first to extend the range of his pontifical authority from the Capitol to the provinces of the Empire. As he surveyed the various dependencies of the Roman dominions there was nothing to suggest to him any important changes imminent in the religions system, of which he was the recognised head, least of all in the sacrificial ceremonial universally connected with it. In what quarter could the signs of such a change be discerned ? During his eventful career the emperor had visited many lands, and had made himself familiar with the customs of many nations. His wars had brought him to Greece, to Spain, to Asia Minor, to Egypt. Bat wherever he had been, and whatever province of the Empire he had visited, one feature of religions worship remained uniform and constant. Whether be called to mind the famous temple of the Asiatic Artemis at Ephesus, with its hundred and twenty-seven columns of green jasper, -each the gift of a king ; or of Cybele, the mother of the gods, at Pessinua in Galatia, whose fame extended over the whole ancient world ; or that of the Syrian goddess of nature at Hierapolis, the -gold and silver of which Crasaus bad spent days in weighing ; or that of Jerusalem, so lately visited by the deceased Agrippa ; or, nearer home the famous shrines of Greece, and the familiar fanea of his own .capital one feature of the religious rites celebrated from age to age had undergone no change, the ritual of animal sacrifice. In other respects the various nations united under his away might and did -differ as widely as possible. In this habit of sacrifice they were as one, for without sacrifice prayer itself was not considered efficacious. Now, whatever anticipations the new pontiff may have formed as regards the future it may be taken as certain that he never for a poment anticipated the coming of a day when this feature of reli- gious worship then so universal and so constant would have vanished as a dream. No augur or diviner had ever whispered the possibility of such a revolution of religious thought. No indications could be anywhere detected that such a change was in the air,' or that sacri- ficial observances had lost their hold over the religious instincts of mankind. ii. But from the year B.C. 12 let us transport ourselves to the year A.D. 112. During the interval much has taken place. Augustus himself no longer occupies the imperial throne. His suc- cessors have each in turn assumed the sacred title of supreme pontiff, and in respect to religious ceremonies have been careful to follow in his footsteps. The members of the Flavian family have not neglected the worship of their fathers, or ventured on changing any of its characteristic features. Trajan is now clothed in the purple, and the younger Pliny is acting as governor of the province of Pontus and Bithynia. Vigilant, laborious, and conscientious, personally attached to his imperial master, and resolved to govern his province as a philo- +gopher and not as a soldier, he communicates freely with the arm- -cessor of the Cresars on such points as appear to call for his attention. Not, as Horace describes himself,
'Heavens niggard and tudrequent worshipper,'
but ever mindful of his religious duties, he had erected more than one -temple on his own property in Italy, and in his correspondence with the emperor, we find him consulting his master on various topics of religious interest. Thus in one letter he asks of him the office of augur, that he may have the satisfaction of offering those vows in public for the prosperity of the Empire which he daily prefers to the gods in private. In another he solicits his advice as to the restora- tion of an ancient temple, and in yet another consults him as to the sacrifices which ought to be offered on the anniversary of the emperor's accession. Bat in one of these letters there is a complete change from all that has gone before. Instead of asking advice as -to the erection of new shrines he solicits the imperial counsel as to the mode in which he should deal with a new and extravagant 'superstition,' which had already caused many of the temples to be almost deserted, the sacrifices to cease, and the sacrificial victims to find few purchasers."
The explanation of this change is supplied by the rise of the Christian belief that Christ himself had become the sufficient sacrifice for the whole human race,—the sacrifice com- memorated in the Eucharist, -which was instituted before that sacrifice, in view of that sacrifice, and for the express purpose of reminding all who joined in it that that sacrifice was sufficient to cleanse every one who desired to take the life of that sacrifice into his heart, from all that heavy burden of sin which the 'sacrificial system had been intended to lighten. Here, the n, insists Dr. Maclear, we have the clear evidence that one of the most striking aspects of the ancient world was altogether altered by the introduction of a new creed and a new rite,—which creed and which rite wera utterly foreign to the prepossessions of the ;people amongst whom they were introduced, and could only have been naturalised amongst them by the deepest possible conviction of their supernatural origin, and the supernatural power they conveyed. The popular genius of Judaism was sacri- ficial, and this rite swept away the whole system of sacrifices. The genius of Judaism was national and exclusive, and this rite professed to be the evidence that a sacrifice had been offered which included all Gentile nations in its scope, no less than the Jews. The genius of Judaism was opposed to all anthropomor- phism and to anything savouring of a human sacrifice, yet this rite professed to be the declaration that in the self-sacrifice of one perfect being, both human and divine, for the whole world, and by the purifying influence of his blood, the whole world had gained release from sin, if it would but avail itself of that release :—
"The celebration of this Rite embodied in a palpable form, and in a manner utterly unexampled before, the idea that the blood of the Institutor was effectual to produce consequences of inconceivable moment, even the forgiveness of sins, an attri- bute regarded as special and peculiar to the Supreme Being alone. Associations, again, the most solemn and august had ever been connected with the act of breaking Bread and drinking Wine at the Passover Eve Service, at the Passover, at the Sabbath Eve Service of the Synagogue, and even at ordinary meals. Uni- formly it was accompanied by a solemn commemoration of the Supreme Being as the Creator of 'the fruit of the ground,' and the fruit of the Vine.' But the same Elements, which from time immemorial they had blessed and received with thoughts of thank- fulness to Him, to whom belonged the 'Ineffable Name,' they ate and drank in memory of One who had passed away on His Cross of shame a 'very scorn of men,' and an outcast of the people.' Nay, more, though, as strict Jews, they had ever shrunk from the very idea of drinking blood wherein is the life ;' though their great Law- giver had even made it a capital offence to do so, yet now they pre- sume to drink wine as symbolical of the blood of a Human Victim, of One who had died not for their own favoured nation only, but in marvellous contrast to the stern exclusiveness of Judaism, for the sins of the whole world ! What had the genius of their Religion in common with such a Rite ? To what was it more utterly opposed than the idea of human sacrifices ?"
Dr. Maclear remarks that such a revolution in one of the most deeply ingrained habits of the ancient world as this, carried out by the agency of a people to whose genius it would seem to have been most alien in its spirit, can only be accounted for by the truth of the story told in the Christian Gospels,—by the truth of the statement that Christ had for two years been pre- paring his disciples for his suffering and death, had been pre- paring them to look upon that suffering and death as life-giving, and had taught them, after that suffering and death had taken place, and after his resurrection, that they were actually life-giving. Dr. Maclear enters very carefully into Christ's prophecies of his own suffering and death, and shows that it is simply impossible to explain those prophecies, with all their minute gradation, all their apt framework of circumstance and local colouring, as invented after their fulfilment, except, indeed, by conscious and deliberate fraud, which no one now imputes to the Evangelists. All this, Dr. Maclear puts in a very clear and forcible way, and proves, we think, that the Evangelists reported what they believed to be within their own knowledge and what was in no way short of that which was absolutely essential to convince Jewish disciples of the meaning of the great sacrifice of the Cross. We only regret that Dr. Maclear sometimes takes as much credit for what is difficult and appar- ently inconsistent in the Gospel narrative as he does for what is convincing and persuasive in it, and thereby seems likely to make sceptics wonder whether there be anything at all in the
Christian story which Dr. Maclear would or could regard as a stumbling-block to belief, and for which he would not be thank-
ful as at least an indirect proof of the credibility and truth of Christianity.
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