An Edited Faith
The Paganism in our Christianity. By Arthur Weigall. (Hutchinson. 7a. 6d.)
MR. WEIGALL puts together a mass of data to point out the resemblances, some of them confessedly very close, between the Gospel story and heathen legends, and with them he offers us a theory of belief in an historic Christ. There is nothing particularly novel in his tracing out of Pagan like- nesses to the Christian revelation. Nearly all of it has been done before, and, we may add, in far more convincing style, in Mr. J. M. Robertson's works. But, ages ago, many of these parallelisms were recognized, even by the Christian Fathers themselves, who were wont to say that they were the work of the Devil, trying to ape the true Faith. Nowadays we do not repeat that sort of naivete : for one thing because scholars are hot-footed on the trail of the Mediterranean mystery- cults, whose teaching as to the Atonement and the attain- ment of immortality did approximate so closely to St. Paul's that he must have found in it a vantage-ground for a great deal of his doctrine, or, alternatively, have been himself affected by what he knew and heard.
Clement of Alexandria uses mystery-cult phraseology quite freely and without embarrassment. But, as a matter of fact, St. Paul's special Atonement teaching received little attention or emphasis from the Church until Augustine's day ; and then once more there was a lull, broken by the interlude, as Mr. Weigall notes, of Anselm's and Abelard's protests against the transaction theory of God with the Devil—Abelard being condemned by Bernard and Innocent III. while Anselm was let alone. The lull was finally disturbed by the Reformation and Luther, who revived the Pauline and Augustinian in- fluence, and whose bare Atonement thesis is still accepted by the Ritschlians.
It is rather difficult to cope with the multitude of Mr. Weigall's analogies ; they vary much in importance and directness. He is best, as might be expected, in dealing with Egyptian cults. But he is at once too confident in his dedtic- tions—we are only as yet at the outset of Mithraic investiga- tion, and he has no right to take the mention in Hebrews of the " blood of bulls " as a " clear " Mithraic reference—and too vague with his " and so forth," first cousin to " etc." Then a number of interpolations and glosses, such as those in Matthew ii., have long been recognized by Christian critics, and are no such surprise as he seems to think. But the citation of Matthew leads us to the disputed doctrine of the Virgin-Birth. Two comments inevitably present themselves. First, Matthew's Gospel is Jewish through and through, and it is certainly remarkable that a Hebrew, to whom the birth of a Messiah from ordinary parents was an inherited and national belief, should be the most emphatic of all narrators of a miraculous Virgin birth. Luke, the Gentile, is by no means so sure, though far more detailed. Again, Mr. Weigall commits the usual blunder of citing as analogies a quantity of heathen legends of the union of gods and mortal maidens. The point is that such maidens by that very union ceased to be virgins, and—account for it as one may—the Christian Church went on unfalteringly to declare Mary a Virgin still. We do not say that Gospel and legends may not be laid side by side for comparison and, if you will, suspicion ; we only say that the difference is immediately apparent. Critics may be prepared to concede many coincidences of detail in world-wide beliefs, yet the whole atmosphere and style of the Gospels are something so entirely apart that they con- stitute a literary miracle in themselves. One has but to turn to the Apocryphal Gospels to be aware that " the canon " is no empty term. If early Christians were so avid of signs and wonders, why did they reject what would serve their purpose, say, for example, as regards the boyhood of jeans ? Mr. Weigall seems to recognize the difficulty, but has no explanation.
We turn now to his reconstruction of " the Jesus of history," who, in spite of all analogies, when these and other accretions are cleared away, " still stands as the ideal of the perfect man whom the modern mind can accept as guide, master, and Lord." We wish to do all justice to the writer's sincerity. It is good that he can write as he does. Yet how short is this particular chapter ! Why does Mr. Weigall, like so many, miss that outstanding point—the unmistakable style of Christ's authentic sayings, with their Socratic method of
question, their perfection in parable, in rhetoric, in startling contrasts ? Why does he state, in conflict with all the evi- dence, that the Procession of -Palms was a " demonstration, to 'Which He was never a party " ? Why does he assert, as though it were a fact instead of a complicated and ingenious theory, the notion of an annual Jewish Bar Abbas sacrifice, in which Christ took the place of the chosen victim ? After this, we need not feel Surprise when, in a few brief sentences, we are told that Jesus never really died on the Cross, but revived after being taken down, and tried in vain to tell His disciples that He was still alive: No ; they preferred to believe that He was a spirit risen from the dead ; and " at last He leaves them, saying that lie will return ; but He never comes back, and that is the end of the historic story."
When we are told that Christ taught no theology, we cannot but remember that one of the best authenticated sayings (not in the Johannine " tendency-Gospel," but in Matthew) is the mysterious verse in which Jesus tells of the mutual knowledge betwixt the Father and the Son, incom- municable save " to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal it."
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