BOOKS.

ECCE HOMO.*

Tee attempt to delineate from within the life and work of Christ, without making any fundamental theological assumption as to his nature and the reality of his revelations, is almost like the attempt to paint a picture without making any assumption as to the quarter whence the light comes, and consequently whither the shadows fall. This strikes us as the only great fault of a very original and remarkable book, full of striking thought and delicate perception, a book that has realized with wonderful vigour and freshness—with far more power than Neander, and far more both of power and truth than Renan and Strauss—the historical magni- tude of Christ's work, and which here and there gives us readings of the finest kind of the probable motive of his individual words and actions. The disadvantage which the author labours under as com- pared with Renan, for instance, is that he declints to assume any steady theological principle on which to interpret the tree meaning, and estimate the true worth, of the work he describes, and attempts, what is really artistically inconsistent with his design,—to express the historical effect and value of Christ's work in a form that shall be independent of the ultimate motive-power by which it operated. Now unquestionably the writers of the first three Gospels did write of Christ and his work without any fixed conception on this head, and their narratives reflect the uncertain view of Christian tradition and of the early Church as to the theological meaning of our Lord's career. Not till we reach St. John's Gospel is there any steady principle of interpretation applied to Christ's acts and life. But then the first three Evangelists do not attempt, what the author of this book clearly does attempt,—to find the centre of unity in our Lord's life and purposes. They describe him only from out- side,—the startling impression which he made upon his disciples and the external world of Galilee and Judea,—and, again, the occa- sionalglimpses which his language seemed to give that outside world into the mysterious world within him. But the author of this book confesses that " after reading a good many books on Christ, he felt still constrained to confess that there was no historical character whose motives, objects, and feelings, remained so incompre- hensible to him ;" and yet he tries to inquire into " these motives, objects, and feelings," and gives, or tries to give us the result of this inquiry without discussing, or at least without wishing to discuss, " any theological questions whatever,"—reserving " Christ as the creator of modern theology and religion" for the subject of another volume. He may say perhaps that it is one thing to enter into Christ's aims and to analyze the human influences by which Christ hoped to attain those aims, and quite another thing to know whether the private theological assumptions which persuaded him that he could keep those influences ever powerful and fresh, are, or are not, well founded. Yet after all, as M. Renan has truly perceived, it is an essential condition of the picture, if you draw it from within at all, to discriminate the light of a brilliant fanaticism from the light of calm truth. Indeed the author partly perceives this necessity, and involves himself in a double perplexity to evade it. In the first place, he does assume, and from his point of view can hardly help assuming, the divine authority, and even the supernatural powers of Christ ; for either to assume or to deny this was necessary in order to draw any coherent picture at all ; and yet this is, we take it, unquestionably a very great theological assumption. In the second place, he only avoids assuming something much deeper, namely, the permanent and direct personal agency of Christ in the spirits of all his dis- ciples at least, if not of all men, by substituting for that agency an abstract idea which he supposes it to be the great purpose of Christ * ECte Homo. A Survey of the Life and Work of Jeers Christ. London: Macmillan

to propagate in the human heart, and which he calls " The En- thusiasm of Humanity,"—this Enthusiasm of Humanity being in

fact the love for man inspired by realizing that Christ is the per- fect moral ideal of man some lingering trace of whom is to be found in every human being, however degraded. In other words, by a procedure familiar to all theologians this able writer substi- tides a secondary principle, the love for Christ, as the great redeem- ing agency, in the place of Christ himself, and thus postpones the theological problem as to the ultimate divine power by which Christ expected to establish his kingdom. Once admit that Christ intended to establish a kingdom of which " the Enthusiasm of Humanity" would be the essential moral characteristic, and the question how that enthusiasm is to be sustained, whether by Christ's direct inspiration, or by the indirect influence exerted through the picture of him left in the Gospels, or by an Apostolic succession of Christ-like minds exercising some portion of his in- fluence in generation after generation, is at least capable of being deferred for future consideration. In this way all theological assumptions are temporarily evaded ;—and though a certain indefinite divine authority is almost necessarily attributed to Christ throughout, the question as to the character and modus operandi of that authority is left behind in the shadow, the author giving us instead an elaborate and even metaphysical analysis of this secondary evangelizing idea,—' the enthusiasm of Humanity,'—and of its mode of affecting human beings when once it has taken a strong hold of them. But the book suffers for this defect of method. This ' enthusiasm of humanity' really acts as a kind of gauze veil thrown over the central figura on which the investigation was intended to throw light. M. Renan ' explains' Christ on an inconceivable theory, it is true, yet he does give the unity to his book of following him into all he does with such poor clue as he has. The author of Ecce Homo, with an infinitely deeper insight, merges Christ in a disputable if not imaginary theory as to his moral instrumentalities,—in one word, in a formula that may be Christian, but is at least far less Christian than Christ.

, It is scarcely fair, however, to our author to notice the arbitrary character of the formula under cover of which he evades, as it seems to us, his true task, before we have given some conception of the remarkable line of thought by which he arrives at it, and the mode in which he interprets it. Our author begins, then, by notic- ing that Christ took up a movement which had been started not by himself, but by John the Baptist,—a movement which proclaimed anew the revival of the form of government dearest to Jewish tradi- tion, a Theocracy, a Kingdom of God. John had only demanded repentance as a preliminary condition of membership in this king- dom, and had pointed to Christ as the man who should establish it.

Christ felt in himself the power to work out John's anticipation, to reveal the form and meaning of the approaching theocracy, — but before doing so there was naturally a period of conflict in his own mind, which has come down to us in the form of the Temp- tation, as to the sort of kingdom he should establish, and the sort of rank in it he should claim. Our author conceives Christ as undergoing this trial with the new glow of conscious supernatural power weighing freshly upon him. Was it a power he might use to promote his own safety in the midst of perils ? This was his first inward conflict, and he answered it in the negative. He felt himself removed by his extraordinary powers above ordinary rules, and yet instead of being exalted he was but awestruck by his position, and determined to hold his great trust exclusively for the objects for which it was given. But what was that object ? To revive in himself a diviner royalty than had ever been granted to any Jewish prophet or king,—by exercising anew the right of calling mankind into a new and divine society, a right never exercised hitherto since Jehovah himself had called Abraham from the idolatrous world in which he lived—and of legislating for that new society—a right never exercised by any prophet since the time of Moses,—and of judging that society by awarding to it the spiritual rewards and penalties of the invisible future. The winnowing fan by which John had prophesied that Christ should thoroughly purge' the Jewish world, was simply the call itself. Those who were prepared by the want in their own hearts to accept that call were thus separated from those who felt no such want. " On the whole those who accept the Call and abide by it are worthy of it. Yet to this rule there are a good many excep- tions. When the seed has been sown in the best ground, tares will spring up with the wheat, thrown in, as it were, by some spiteful neighbour. And when the winnowing has thus failed through mishaps we must not interfere further, says Christ ; he will have no artificial winnowing by mere presumptuous private judgment of each other." This ' winnowing' which Christ performed by means of his Call, was in some sense a rough separating of the

. bad from the good,—or rather of those whose state is without promise, from those whose state implies a promise of good :—

" Bat now what is the quality that carries a man through the ordeal? Can we find a name for it ? It is, no doubt, neither more nor less than moral worth or goodness; but this is no reason why a more precise

name should not be given to this particular aspect of goodness. For in fact all the good qualities to which we give names, as justice, temperance, courage, /cc., are not so much parts of goodness as aspects of it, and no man can have any one of them without having in a degree all the others. What, then, shall we call goodness when it shows itself conquering con- vention, and unselfishly ranging itself on the right side in those crises when good and evil are most visibly opposed to each other? The first Christians had manifestly occasion for such a word, and one came into use which may be said to have become a permanent addition to the

moral vocabulary of the world. This word was faith. It was not altogether new ; it might be found in the writings of the prophets ; but it had never before seemed so important or so expressive of the essential

worth of a man. When he rejected the test of correct conduct which society uses, Christ substituted the test of faith. It is to be understood that this is not strictly a Christian virtue ; it is the virtue required of one who wishes to become a Christian. So much a man must' bring with him; without it he is not worthy of the kingdom of God. To those who lack faith Christ will not be Legislator or King. He does not, indeed, dismiss them, but he suffers them to abandon a society which soon ceases to have any attraction for them. Such, then, is the new test, and it will be found the only one which could answer Christ's purpose of excluding all hollow disciples and including all, however rude and vicious, who were capable of better things. Every other good quality which we may wish to make the test of a man implies either too little or too much for this purpose. Justice is often but a form of pedantry, mercy mere easiness of temper, courage a mere firmness of physical constitution ; but if these virtues are genuine, then they indi- cate not goodness merely, but goodness considerably developed. A man

may be potentially just or merciful, yet from defect of training he may be actually neither. We want a test which shall admit all who have it

in them to be good, whether their good qualities be trained or no. Such a test is found in faith. He who, when goodness is impressively put before him, exhibits an instinctive loyalty to it, starts forward to take its

side, trusts himself to it, such a man has faith, and the root of th0 matter is in such a man. He may have habits of vice, but the loyal and faithful instinct in him will place him above many that practise virtue. He may be rade in thought and character, but he will unconsciously gravitate towards what is right. Other virtues can scarcely thrive with- out a fine natural organization and a happy training. But the most neglected and ungifted of men may make a beginning with faith. Other virtues want civilization, a certain amount of knowledge, a few books ; but in half-brutal countenances faith will light up a glimmer of noble- ness. The savage, who can do little else, can wonder and worship and enthusiastically obey. He who cannot know what is right can know that some one else knows, he who has no law may still have a master, he who is incapable of justice may be capable of fidelity, he who under- stands little may have his sins forgiven because he loves much."

Nor was anything beyond the absolute personal loyalty implied in this springing forward of a not yet Christianized heart to their new leader, required by Christ as the condition of membership in

his new society. He did not and could not require complete ac- . quiesc,ence in his legislation, for the new legislation made infinitely higher demands on the heart and will than the legislator of any secular society had ever made, nor does any secular society ever demand perfect obedience to all its requirements as a condition of citizenship. Still less did Christ demand, what has oftener been made an absolute condition in modern times, any perfection of theological creed. Our author very forcibly observes that as no society either secular or religious requires perfect actions from its members as a condition of membership, so it is foolish and incon- sistent to profess to require perfect belief. The reason of tolerance towards faults of conduct is that we all acknowledge the fight against bad habits to be immensely difficult, but there is precisely the same apology for imperfect creed :—

" If the way to Christian action is beset by corrupt habits and mis- leading passions, the path to Christian truth is overgrown with preA judices and strewn with fallen theories and rotting systems which hide it from our view. It is quite as hard to think rightly as it is to act rightly, or even to feel rightly. And as all allow that an error is a less culpable thing than a crime or a vicious passion, it is monstrous that it should be more severely punished; it is monstrous that Christ, who was called the friend of publicans and sinners, should be represented as the pitiless enemy of bewildered seekers of truth. How could men have been guilty of such an inconsistency? By speaking of what they do not understand. Men, in general, do not under- stand or appreciate the difficulty of finding truth. All men must aet, and therefore" all men learn in some degree how difficult it is to act rightly. The consequence is that all men can make excuse for those who fail to act rightly. But all men are not compelled to make as independent search for truth, and those who voluntarily undertake to do so are always few. They ought, indeed, to find pity and charity when they fail, for their undertaking is full of hazard, and in the course of it they are too apt to leave friends and companions behind them, and when they succeed they bring back glorious spoils for those who remained at home criticizing them. But they cannot expect such charity, for the hazards and difficulties of the undertaking aro known to themselves alone. To the world at large it seems quite easy to and truth and inexcusable to miss it. And no wonder ! For by finding truth they mean only learning by rote the maxims current around them."

Hence " there are no specific acts which are unpardonable to the Christian. No amount of disobedience which can be named, no amount of disbelief or ignorance of doctrine, is sufficient to deprive a man of the name of Christian." All that is required is this preliminary power of faith, and the consent to submit it to the training of Christ's peculiar legislation.

This being clearly and very powerfully laid down, our author proceeds to inquire into the character of the Christian legislation. Its peculiarity was that it utterly avoided all ambitious collision with existing political systems, and professed to be spiritual legisla- tion for beings to be judged by spiritual judgment, and this alone. Moreover, the legislation was simple, though profoundly searching. It substituted for all mere positive statutes, such as the Mosaic law,—the injunction to each man to assume in the very depths of his spirit, the motives, feelings, aims, in a word the character, of his Master. What was consistent with this, even though ever so much forbidden by the Mosaic law, it permitted, as in accordance with the intention and spirit of that law. What was inconsistent with this, even though ever so much permitted by the Mosaic kW, it forbade, as violating the deepest principle of that and of all Moral law. This was in a word the whole of Christ's legislation. But then in what respect was this new spiritual law most revoln- tkanitry ? how, was it that the change of spirit it imposed rendered the organization of a new and universal society possible ? At this point it is that our author effects his escape from his true subject,— time aims and character of Christ,—tO the secondary instrumentality by which those aims may be realized, and that character may spread itself abroad. First, by seeing what Christ was, men may learn to love him. Then by loving him, they may learn to love all whom he loved, that is all mankind, and'so we come to the enthusiasm of humanity.'

" But it is not absolutely necessary to humanity that a man shall have seen many men whom he can respect. The most lost cynic will get a new heart by learning thoroughly to believe in the virtue of one man. Our estimate of human nature is in proportion to the best speci- men of it we have witnessed. This, then, it is which is wanted to raise the feeling of humanity into an enthusiasm ; when the precept of love has been given, an image must be set before the eyes of those who are called upon to obey it, an ideal or type of man which may be noble and amiable enough to raise the whole race and make the meanest member of it sacred with reflected glory. Did not Christ do this ? Did the command to love go forth to those who had never seen a human being they could revere? Could his followers turn upon him and say, `How can we love a creature so degraded, full of vile wants and con- temptible passions, whose little life is moat harmlessly spent when it is an empty round of eating and sleeping ; a creature destined for the grave and for oblivion when his allotted term of fretfulness and folly has expired ?' Of this race Christ himself was a member, and to this day is it not the beat answer to all blasphemers of the species, the best consolation when our sense of its degradation is keenest, that a human brain was behind his forehead and a human heart beating in his breast, and that within the whole creation of God nothing more elevated or more attractive has yet been found than he?"

From this point our author, though he never loses for many pages together his vivid and original style, more or less merges Christ's legislation in this abstract phrase which he has invented to express what he thinks its kernel. The chapters on the "Law of Mercy," the Law of Resentment," and the " Law of Forgiveness," though they contain much fine criticism of Christ's actual precepts, are more con- cerned with verifying the virtual harmony between these precepts and theformula he has suggested, than with following out the ruling principle of our Lord's character. For example, our author says very finely in his chapter on the Law of Mercy," that Mercy is Pity and Resentment blended at the highest power of each,"—and that in the invitation to Zaccheus, or the pardon of the woman who was a sinner, it was mercy that revealed itself in Christ's word, the pity slightly veiled under royal grace, the resentment altogether unexpressed, and yet not concealed, because already too surely divined and anticipated by the roused conscience of the criminal." Yet, even here, he often loses his true subject in the delight of verifying the method by which his favourite formula, or essence of Christianity, can be shown to necessitate exactly such precepts and acts as those of Christ :-

"Christ, representing all who are possessed by the Enthusiasm of Humanity, does not regard crime with less anger, is not less anxious for the punishment of it, than the legalists. But when it is punished, when the claims of the injured party are satisfied, he does not dismiss the matter from his thoughts. He considers that the criminal also has claims upon him, claims so strong that they are not forfeited by any atrocity of crime. Nay, they are rather strengthened by his criminality, as they would be by misery, for the humane man, who finds his own happiness in his humanity, does sincerely consider the criminal to be miserable. This doctrine that vice is essentially pitiable was advanced sometimes in antiquity, but plain men flouted it from them with irri- tation as one of those childish paradoxes with which philosophers amused and abused their leisure, and some of the philosophers themselves showed that they only half believed it by the self-complacency and affected preciseness with -which they demonstrated it. Nevertheless he in whom humanity is an enthusiasm does honestly feel distressed when ho thinks of those who are fallen and lost in character and whom society repudiates. Even when wickedness is prosperous and flourishes like a green bay tree, he understands pretty well and unaffectedly pities the uneasiness of remorse, the loneliness of pride, the moral paralysis that succeeds satiety, the essential poverty of vulgarity. Nor does he only feel such pity, but he has the courage to indulge it."

This formula of our author's seems to us not only to veil in great measure the subject of his inquiry—Christ himself—from himself and his readers, but to substitute for him a phrase that is mislead- ing as well as abstract. Enthusiasm, like all passion, would appear to imply a temper of mind inconsistent with high contemplative tran- quillity and veracity—with the power of honestly facing every dis- heartening truth with equanimity; and if it imply this, this theory would be liable to tha same criticism as Renan's powerful and dis- torted picture of Christ's supposed exaltation of mind almost run- ning into monomania as the final struggle with the Pharisees cul- minated. The doubt expressed by our Lord whether on his coining he should find faith on the earth can scarcely be described as a doubt

due to the 'enthusiasm of humanity.' It seems to us that the natural attitude of Christ and of Christ's disciples to men is not one grounded on any ' enthusiasm,' but on that deep theological assumption, almost coldly scientific in its nature, which our author wishes to evade or postpone,—that the Son of Man, being also the Word and Son of God, commands the keys of all hearts, and can

command therefore all such access to them in his own time as shall be consistent with the law of freedom of human action.

This faith alone seems to us to reconcile Christ's perfect`calmness and veracity of vision with what our author calls the enthusiasm of his humanity ; and without this faith in his followers we can- not help thinking that it would be far more natural and consistent for us to leave the work of appealing to hardened hearts and corrupted wills simply to God, instead of leading a forlorn hope which can

only be justified by the authority and inspiration of him who knew

what was in man. Our author, in postponing his theology, see ms to us to have postponed the true key to the practical aims and charac- ter he was discussing ; and yet a theological book of more power and freshness and higher insight we have not read for many years. It is, we cannot doubt, the work of a layman, bringing modes of

thought, and illustrations not yet spoiled and formulated by the pulpit, to the consideration of a problem which, because it is pro- perly theological, is not on that account the less, bat the more, also the greatest historical problem which man can discuss.