BOOKS.

RENAN ON THE ORIGIN OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.* IN a dignified and stately fashion, M. Renan, with lengthened intervals between each step, is giving to the world his concep- tion of the origin of Christianity. The sixth volume of the series now lies before us, and we have the promise of a seventh volume, to complete and crown the work. The fifth volume ended with the final separation of the Church from the Syna- gogue, and the main theme of the present volume is the Christian Church. The time extends from the year 117 to the year 161, and the topics discussed are of a rich and varied order. It is true, indeed, that some of those might more appropriately have been disposed of in the earlier volumes, but the position they occupy indicates the conclusions to which M. Ileuan has come, with regard both to the events of the period and to the early writings of Christianity. It is needless to say that this volume, like its predecessors, is singularly beautiful in style, and perfect in its artistic order. That it should exhibit exten- sive and exact scholarship, and manifest a thorough knowledge of all the extant fragments of early Christian literature, is only what might be expected from the author. M. Renan occupies a foremost place among Oriental scholars, and it would indeed be difficult to find any scholar whose knowledge of the literature of those centuries is more accurate than his. Every page testifies also that he thoroughly knows the voluminous literature which, chiefly in Germany, has grown up around the documents which have descended to us from these early centuries. All his references are exact, so far as we have verified them, and it may be said generally that so far as learning is concerned, no one is more competent than M. Renan to write the history of the origin of Christianity.

Every student of this volume will rise from its perusal with a more vivid conception of the state of the Roman Empire during the period it embraces. The account of the character and work of Hadrian will take its place among the masterpieces of litera- ture. And, the sections devoted to the Jews, their last revolt and their final overthrow, the chapters devoted to the Talmud, to the hatred between Jew and Christian, and to the character and work of Antoninus Pius, fascinate us by their transparent beauty, and charm us by their historical truth. In fact, when the literary and historical faculties of M. Ronan are. permitted to have free-play, and to bring themselves into direct relation to the facts, apart from any preconceived idea and system, nothing can be more pleasant or more instructive than hie guidance. Wherever he has to describe personal character, or has only to deal with Pagan life, or with the decaying hopes and fruitless struggles of Judaism, we are safe with him. Here the system of M. Renan is in abeyance, and the facts are per- mitted to arrange themselves in the natural historical order. But whensoever Christianity appears on the scene, we are conscious that we are listening fse a man who has a system.

After the acknowledgment we have made with regard to the learning and. scholarship of M. Ronan, it may appear somewhat of a paradox if we follow it up with the remark that his treat- ment of the origin of Christianity ie superficial. But, at all 'hazards, we venture to state the paradox, and to maintain it. There are different kinds of superficiality. There is the super- ficiality which arises from defective information. A writer who knows but little of his subject is contented to dwell mainly on those outside aspects which appear at first sight, and never commits himself to any decisive statement, in case it should be- come apparent that he is out of hie depth. Such is not the superficiality of M. Renan. But there is a superficiality which is quite consistent with fullness of knowledge. This kind has its origin in the artistic temperament, and in the artistic habit of mind. It seizes hold of what readily lends itself to pictur- esque effects, and it imperiously constrains all the facts to group themselves in such order as will most luminously illustrate the central idea. If the artistic habit of mind is combined with a icgical tendency and with a rooted love of system, we have

• the most favourable conditions possible for the production of a great picture of a historical period,—a picture which, in some respects, may be true, but which will inevitably miss the inner life and the moving forces of the time. This appears to us to be the characteristic of M. Ronan's work. He is a great artist, 'who has an artist's imperious way of dealing with his facts, and.

* L'Eglise Chretienne. Par Erneat Ronan, de l'Aeaddrnie Fransalao. Paris : Calmann Levy, Eclitenr, anclonne Timken Michel Levy, Frbrea.

of forcing them to arrange themselves in proper perspective. He has all the French love of system, and his writings are the

best type we know of that severe logic of Prance which is often only a logic of externals. He reminds one of Heine's de- scription of the French intellect, an exaggerated. description, no

doubt, but with elements of truth in it :—

" The French attack every problem in its essential point, and do not rest until they either solve it, or sot it aside as insoluble. This is the character of French intellect, and thus it comes to pass that their history develops itself like a judicial process. What a systematic logical sequence do we find running through all the events of the French Revolution ! what a method in their revolutionary madness ! and historians of the school of Mignet, who attribute but little importance to chance and human passions, regard oven the most frantic outbursts that have taken place since 1789, as the result of absolute necessity." [The translation is from the Wit, Wisdom, and Pathos of Heine. By J. Snodgrass.]

Renan's History of the Origin of Christianity reminds us forcibly of the history of the French Revolution, as told by historians of the school of Mignet. A deeper investigation has for over set aside that reading of the French Revolution, and we are per- suaded that the same fate awaits M. Renau's account of the origin of Christianity. If Heine's description of the French intellect be correct, and if the Founder of Christianity and his Apostles had been Frenchmen, with the artistic instinct, love of system, and severe external logic of some Frenchmen, then the Origin of Christianity might have borne some resemblance to the brilliant picture drawn by M. Ronan, But, unfortunately for the truthfulness of that picture, the logic of Providence and of history bears no resemblance, not even in Prance, to the system expounded in these pages.

It is impossible within our limits to enter into a detailed.

criticism of the positions taken up by M. Renan. Nor ie this necessary. For the solution of the many critical problems on which he touches in these volumes seems to be derived, not from the evidence, external and internal, available in each case, but from general considerations which grow out of M. Renan'e general view of historical probability. As we read those volumes, the impression grows on us that he did not draw his system out of the facts, but brought his system to the facts. Take, for example, his treatment of the Johannine writings. We acknowledge that there are grave difficulties conuectod with the Johanuine writings, and that many problems connected with them yet await solution. But the criticism which cannot solve these difficulties without the hypothesis of a pious fraud on the part of the writers, may be described as a criticism of despair. It cuts in rude fashion the Gordian knot, it does not untie it. This criticism in extremis is the position taken by M. Ronan. He admits a basis of tradition in the Johannine writings :—

" Nona inolinons 4 croire quo le quatriemo Evangilo reprkente hoe traditions de co Presbytdres, et d'Aristion, lesquolles pouvaient remonter l'Apetre Jean. II semble, d'ailleurs, quo, pour pr6parer la fraude piens°, on lanes, pr6alablement rine 6pitre oatholique, coned° do Jean, qui derail habituer le public d'Asio an style qu'on allait tenter do lui faire adopter comme 6tant celui do l'Apetre. On y ouvrait l'attaque centre les docetes on phantasiastes, qui 6taiont alors he grand danger du Christianisme en Asie. On insistait, avec force et meme avec une sorto &affectation, sur le valour du temoignago do l'Apetre, t6moin oculaire des faits 6vang6- liques. L'auteur, 6orivain habile It sa maniere, pout avoir imit6 le ton do Is conversation do l'Apetre Joan. L'esprit do as petit ouvrage est grand, 61ev6, malgr6 quelques traces dos bizarrerios elkasaYtes. La doctrine on est exoellonte; c'est la eharit6 r6ciproque, l'amour dos hommes, la haine du monde corrompu. Le style, touchant, pressant, p6n6trant, est absolument lo memo quo eelui de l'Evangile ; les defauts dii quatriemo Evangile, is prolixit6, l'aridit6, r6sultant d' interminablos discours pleins do metaphysique ab- struse et d'all6gations porsonollos, sent ioi beaucoup moms choquants." (pp. 49-50.)

The Johannine Epistle having thus habituated. the Asian public to the Johannine style, soon from the same factory issued the Johauniue Gospel. It was necessary to overthrow the specula- tions of Gnosticism, so M. Renan adds :--

'ri fildlait opposer N. cola un Verbe tangible, et o'est co quo fit le nouvel Evangile. Lo J6sus quit peeche est It quelques tar& plus historique quo colui des autres Evangelistes, et neanmeins c'est uno aroli6e mOtaphysiquo, one pure conception de th6osophie transom- dante. Le gait ost cheque d'un tel assemblage ; male la th6ologie n'a pas les memos exigences quo l'esth6tique. La conscience Ohra- tionne, si souvent affol6e depuis cent ans ear l'id6e qu'il fallait so fairo de J6sus, avail trouve enfin son point de repos."

It is difficult to imagine that M. Ronan is here writing of Ephesus in the early part of the second century. It was, no doubt, not an unusual practice, in the Paris of the Second Empire, for a pamphlet to be sent forth to educate the public, and to prepare the way for the realisation of Imperial ideas. But this is a modern practice, and what is true of the Paris of

the Second Empire is not necessarily true of Ephesus in the beginning of the second century.

In the last quotation, M. Ronan, with considerable naivet6, admits us into the presence of his final court of appeal in critical matters,—" Le goat eat choqu6 d'un tel assemblage ;

mats la th6ologie n'a. pas lea mantes exigences que l'esthetique." It is all a matter of taste. It is the latest version of the old saying, " Securus judicat orbis terrarum." The exigencies of ix3sthetics must rule. It is, however, an uncertain canon. And at the risk of having the word " choquant," in all its varied forms, hurled at our literary judgment, we must say that we have not found prolixity and aridity in the Fourth Gospel. We decline to recognise "le goat" as final judge in this matter.

We ask if it is a probable thing that the Christ of the Fourth Gospel should have been invented P—for all the lines of evidence lead up to Jesus of Nazareth as the source of that great move- ment which has revolutionised and regenerated the world. Ho is not less, but greater, than he seemed to the early Church. Probability is grossly outraged by the supposition that the portrait we have of Jesus Christ in the New Testament is one

• to which each separate nationality and each of-the early genera- tions of Christianity added its own distinctive touch, the shaping hand of time having moulded all these touches into the form which now shines on Christendom from the New Testament Scrip- tures. Is it not more probable that the early Church slowly ar-

rived at the conception of what her Founder was, than that she must have invented him first, and afterwards bowed down before him, for, according to M. Renan, this is precisely what the early Church accomplished :—

" J6sus et ses disciples imtnediats avaient tout h fait neglige la partie do l'osprit humain qui desire savoir ; us no firent aucune part ft la connaissance, us no s'adressont qu'au ccour et h l'imagination. La cosmologie, la psychologio, at memo la haute speculation theo- logique fureut pour eux une page blanche, et peat-etre euront us raison. Le christianisrne me venait satisfairo aucune value curiosit6; ii vonait consoler ceux qui souffrent, toucher lea fibres du sons moral, mettre Vhomme pieux en rapport, non avec on don ou on logos abstrait, lauds avec on Pero celeste, plcin d'indulgence, auteur de toutes lea harmonies et de tons lea joies do l'univers. Le christianisme primitif n'eut, do la aorta, ni science, ni philosophie. Saint Paul, surtout Tors lit fin do sa vie, sent cleja, le beso d'une theologie speculative ; il se rapproche de Philon, qui, cent ens auparavant, avait essaye de donner an Judaism° one tournure rationaliste. Les Eglises d'Asie Mincure, vers le memo temps, se lancuieitt dans one sorte de oabbale, qui rattache le riffle de Jesus it uno ontologio chimerique at ituno aerie indefinie d'avatars. , (Col. ii. 18 ; I. Tim., i. 4, vi. 20.) L'ecolo d'oh sortit lo quatrieme Evangile eprouva do mein° lo besoin d'expliquer les faits miraculeux do la Galileo par one theologio. Jesus, fut le Logos divin fait chair ; Video touto juivo de Vapparition future du Mosaic se vit remplade par In theorie du Paraclet. Cerintho obeit it one tondouce analogue. A Alexandrie, cotta soif do metaphysique so montra encore plus prononcee, et produisit des resultats bizarres, qu'il eat temps maintenant d'etudier." (pp. 192.3.)

In this passage we have the secret of M. Renal'. Christianity was a simple thing at the beginning. It came to console the suffering, to touch the fibres of the moral sense, and to place the pious in relation, not to an abstract Logos or an !Eon, but to a Father in heaven, full of indulgence, and the Author of all the harmonies and all the joys of the universe. It has neither science nor philosophy, and its Founder is described in the first volume of this work on the origin of Christianity. We have thus our critical principle. What consoles the suffering, what • touches the fibres of the moral sense, belongs to primitive Christianity. But where you have anything of science or philosophy, you must place it, if not in the third generation, at all events far down in the second generation. The Epistles of Paul which touch on the place and function of Christ in the universe are therefore not Pauline, and the Johannine writings must be placed still further down. There are an easiness and sweet simplicity about this style of criticism which are delightful. The pity is that it leaves so much unaccounted for. It does not explain why the period of creative activity in the formation of opinion stopped short at the middle of the second century, and why comparative barrenness immediately afterwards fell on Christian literature. It does not explain, either, how this period of creative activity began ; for the Jesus of Ronan is un- equal to the mighty task of originating this tremendous impulse. It does not explain in any way the moral and spiritual power of Christianity. The impulse to purity of life, the mystic force which bound the followers of Jesus Christ with new social bonds, and clasped them with ties of love unknown in the world before, the motive which urged these people on to the vast enterprise of winning the world to the recognition of the Crucified One as Lord and Master and Saviour of the world—in short, all that made the Christianity of the early centuries what it was—is

left without explanation, almost without recognition, in the fancy picture of M. Renan. This is, indeed, the weakness of much of the scientific criticism of our time. It has an inade- quate conception of the problem to be solved. And any attempt to account for the origin of Christianity without taking account of the divine factor in it, is an attempt foredoomed to failure.. Neither genius nor learning—and nowhere can we find a better representative of both than in M. Renan—is equal to the' mighty task of construing a living Christianity apart from the living Christ delineated in the New Testament.