MR. STOPFORD BROOKE ON CHRIST.
MR. STOPFORD BROOKE preached last week a very remarkable sermon before the British and Foreign Unitarian Association, on the paramount importance of keeping Christ and the emotions which Christ excites in the hearts of men, in the supreme place amongst Unitarians, on whom alone, in ,Mr. Stopford Brooke's view, those emotions can exert their full -power. He admitted to a certain extent that there is a coldness towards Christ in Unitarian worship which is very prejudicial to it, but maintained that it was due mainly to the fear which Uni- tarians feel, lest if they accord the full claim of Christ to the pas- sionate love of man, they may be supposed to admit that he is more than man, and is entitled to the sort of adoration which Trinitarians give and which Unitarians cannot give him. Mr. Stopford Brooke maintains, on the contrary, that the very opposite is true. It is not, he maintains, till the life of our Lord is stripped of what he deems legend altogether, stripped of the miraculous, stripped of the supernatural birth and the supernatural resurrection, that it is calculated to excite the most passionate love in man. But when once it is admitted that Christ is man and nothing more, that he is man only and yet sinless, that he is man only and yet perfectly one with God, that he is man only, but a true incarnation of God,—then, said Mr. Brooke, he excites the profoundest love and deserves the profoundest love which it is possible for the human heart to feel, such a love as Unitarians alone, since they alone believe in his mere humanity, can adequately feel. It was this love, and this in its highest form, according to Mr. Stopford Brooke, that St. Paul felt, who—in the language of the sermon as with the utmost amazement we find it reported—never used a single word "which imputes deity to Jesus, or which mingles him up even with God's nature." Nay, Mr. Brooke goes further, and says, " In all the fervent phrases which St. Paul uses of &sus, there is not one which a Unitarian who had, like myself, rejected the miraculous origin of Jesus, and with
that his divinity, might not frankly use." And accord-
ingly Mr. Stopford Brooke's exhortation to the Unitarians, whom he has so recently joined, is to preach Christ with the same passionate fervour with which St. Paul preached him, and to reap the same reward in the greatness and the multiplicity of their conversions.
We should be very sorry indeed to attenuate in any way the force of Mr. Stopford Brooke's eloquent exhortation. The more powerfully it is felt, the better for all who feel it, though not the better, we think, for the cause of Unitarianism, as an intellec- tual cause, itself. For as people begin to love Christ as. St. Paul loved him, they will also begin to ask themselves the meaning of that overpowering passion. Could it be felt except towards one with whom he who feels it is in con- stant and intimate spiritual communion ? Could it be felt except towards one who has both the power and the will to bring God even closer to the heart ? Could it be felt except towards one who is to be more and more to you with every new day, and still more in death and after death than even now P We should reply to all these questions in the nega- tive, and do not feel the smallest doubt that St. Paul must have replied to them in the negative too. The overwhelming love which took hold of St. Paul for Christ was, to him doubtless, the final evidence that Christ was not merely a man,—not merely the man whom, in his earthly form, St. Paul had pro- bably never seen ; was not a mere man who, when divided from his disciples by death, had no more power of com- municating with them, than any other man ; was not a mere man who, if indeed he thought himself sinless, as the records of his life tell us, was even more likely to have been mistaken than when he declared himself able to forgive sins, as the same records also tell us, though these, if he were man only, it was utterly impossible for him to forgive, and oven impious to pretend to forgive.
But, as a matter of fact, let us see what a few of these " fervent phrases " are which St. Paul uses, and which Mr. Brooke thinks that those who can eliminate all that is super- natural and, as he regards it, legendary in the story of Jesus Christ, may frankly use also. We cannot say, of course, which of St. Paul's Epistles Mr. Stopford Brooke still accepts as genuine ; probably not the Epistle to the Ephesians, for it is altogether out of the question that Mr. Stopford Brooke could speak of a mere man as one in whom "all things " are " summed up,"—" the things in the heavens and the things on earth." Such language would never be used by any sober man of any other man, however high in the moral and spiritual scale that other man might be placed. Probably, again, Mr. Brooke does not accept the Epistle to the Philippians, for it would be mere mystification to say of any man that, —as the revised version, or one of its marginal readings, has it—" being in the form of God, he thought it not a thing to be grasped at to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of man." But surely Mr. Stopford Brooke accepts the Epistle to the Romans, on which we never heard of even the most sceptical of German writers casting a doubt; and surely he must regard it as very extravagant and inappropriate language to associate any mere man, even though assumed to be sinless, with God, as the fountain of "grace and peace" to man. Christians are apt to forget what extraordinary significance there is in praying that grace and peace shall descend on any Church " from God our Father and" another, and how infinitely incongruous such a prayer must be, if that other is a limited human being like ourselves, though now passed beyond this world. Conceive a Jew even thinking of a prayer that grace and peace might descend on his people from God and Moses, or from God and Samuel, or from God and Isaiah! The conjunction is simply impossible. All that the Prophet gives is given by God, and the Prophet is the instrument only. Or, take that other expression in the same Epistle, that Christ " died for us, being yet sinners," and that we are " justified by his blood." Is that an expression which it would be possible for one to use who held that he was speaking of the death of .a mere human being, and of the result of that death on the minds and consciences of his fellow-men P Again, Mr. Brooke no doubt accepts as genuine the Epistle to the Corinthians. And if he is right as to St. Paul's belief in Christ's mere humanity, why is St. Paul so indignant against those Corinthians who say,—" I am of Paul " or "I of Apollo.?" Why should St. Paul ask so indignantly, " What, then, is Apollos, and what is Paul P" and reply, " Ministers through whom ye believed." What, in Mr. Brooke's view, is Christ himself, except a " minister through whom he believes ?" Is it not perfectly clear that when St. Paul first contrasts the mere " ministers through whom ye believed " with God " who giveth the increase," and next contrasts his own labour as a master. builder with that " foundation" which is Jesus Christ, any other than which, he declares, it is impossible to lay, he is enforcing the same contrast in different words ? So far from holding with Mr. Stopford Brooke that St. Paul's language concerning Christ could be " frankly " used by Unitarians, we are quite sure that it has hardly ever been frankly used by Unitarians of any type, —even of the old orthodox type, who did not attempt to eliminate the miraculous and supernatural from the life of Christ,—much more that it cannot be frankly used by the anti-supernaturalist Unitarians of the present day, not one of whom would venture to adopt it, if St. Paul had not adopted it before,—and hardly even could adopt it under the shadow of his authority,—without being accused by their Unitarian brethren far and wide of giving their sanction to superstitious language of a dangerous and misleading kind.
And surely, if we face facts frankly, we shall admit that Mr. Stopford Brooke is striving with all the force of his eloquence to reconcile irreconcilable ideas. He may, as we hope, succeed in persuading some of the Unitarians that with- out the love of Christ, Theism, though a noble religion, " is utterly inadequate for the universal humanity of modern life," but if he does, he will also convince them that it is not amongst the Unitarians that that love can possibly be fostered in any sense in which St. Paul can be appealed to as the true repre- sentative of Christian feeling ; for the very fact that this devotion to Christ does lay bold on men as it does, is a witness against the Unitarian view of that devotion. There is no such devotion to the absent spirits of merely human beings ; there is no such devotion which is not fed by the constant experience of inward communion and living guidance. Again, Mr. Stopford Brooke may succeed in per- suading the Unitarians that there was nothing exceptional in Jesus Christ except his virtue, and that his virtue was ex- ceptional only as any other man's who will make the same supreme sacrifices for holiness might be exceptional; but if he • does, he will also convince them that the whole strain of the Epistles as well as the whole strain of the Gospels is fanciful and exaggerated, and unworthy of the imitation of modern en- lightenment. What we are quite sure that he will not suc- ceed in, is the attempt to reconcile pure rationalism with the language of evangelical fervour ; the two are simply incom- mensurable. Either the former is mistaken, and leaves the spiritual world out of account, or the latter is mistaken in the account it takes of that world. History is too strong even for Mr. Stopford Brooke's eloquence. The history of Unitarianism has been a history of fading and blanching devotion from the beginning; and wherever the devotional sympathies of the believers are too deep for their intellectual doubts, there the Unitarianism has, more or less, given way. Wherever, on the other hand, the rationalistic side of the character has been stronger than the devotional side, there the tendency has been to deviate from the Christian type of Unitarianism towards Theism, Deism, or even Agnosticism ; and that tendency, as we believe, will be maintained in the future as it has been main- tained in the past.
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