BOOKS.

PHILOCHRISTUS.* OFTEN as the life and ministry of Jesus Christ have formed the subject of literary treatment within the last few years, another book on the same topic will seem superfluous to none who acknowledge, as we unreservedly do in favour of Philochristus,. that it is a work of earnestness and ability ; and who appreciate the interest felt throughout the whole world of culture and of intelligent religion in what is, without question, the central problem in the spiritual history of mankind. Scholarship, capacity, and a freshness and fascination due to rare literary skill are

impressed upon these pages ; the tone is elevated, and

• Philochrisius Memoirs of a Disciple of the Lord. London: Macmillan and Co.

there is preserved throughout a grave delicacy and refinement of feeling ; yet the author delights in broad panoramic colouring, and the narrative moves rapidly onward, with the vividness and animation of a drama. The work bears' everywhere the self- attesting signature of an original and a richly gifted mind.

The idea of the writer is to present a view of Christ's ministry, as reflected in the reminiscences of one who was one of his com- panions in the flesh. Careful and patient study has manifestly been directed to the object of realising the exact conditions of exist- ence—the whole aspect and activity of life—in Palestine, at the time when Christ appeared. The success attained in this very important matter is indisputable. A copious and felicitous selec- tion of particulars has been made, and they are presented, not in dull statistical narrative, but with graphic distinctness and pic- turesque effect. We seem to behold the spectacle of Galilean and JudEean society, and to hear the buzz of its interests, in- dustries, contentions. The Pharisees and Scribes insist upon a minute ceremonialism of tassels and nail-parings, transmuting the great Mosaic Law, with its majestic enforcement of the fundamentals of morality, into a pitiful carping and quibbling about the in- finitely little. The Jewish patriot, mourning for the subjugation of his country as well as the subordination of his faith, cherishes the memory of deeds done and cruelties suffered in the struggle with the invaders, thirsts inexpressibly for vengeance and emanci- pation, and is ready, without minute inquiry into the credentials of hereditary or theological Messiahship, to rush to arms at the call of any Christ who will gird himself with the sword of Gideon or of David, and promise to call down, naturally or supernaturally, such fire from heaven as will smite the Legionaries of Rome. The Essenes, arising in the confusion and tumult of a revolutionary time, as the Quakers arose amid the heart-breaking troubles of the Puritan time, practise an industrial and ascetic communism, which has always presented an air of engaging innocence, and has never grappled with real effectiveness with the ills that beset humanity. Exorcists, partly quacks, partly believers in their own powers, patrol the country in all directions, probably doing some occa- sional good to nervous patients, if James Hinton's theory of "cure by emotion " is correct ; certainly doing much evil, by confirming the ignorance and superstition on which they flourished, pretending to heal diseases, and driving out devils who generally came back in sevenfold reinforcement. Such are the figures which, with many others, are placed before us in this book, with a force of presentment enabling us not only to learn, but to see. Nor can it be alleged against the author of Philochristus, as it can be alleged

against M. Renan, that he delineates the characteristics of our Saviour's time with a view to mere artistic effect, and in the spirit of romance and dilettantism. Not to enhance our interest in a pious, but feeble sentimentalist, does he elaborate his descriptions, but to enable us to appreciate the complicated and stupendous difficulties of the position of the historical Jesus, and to understand the impression made upon a generation whose religion had shrivelled into the puniest will-worship, whose ignorance was dense, universal, impenetrable, whose heart was selfish and carnal, by a teacher whose clearness and width of in- tellectual apprehension and loftiness of spiritual character de- monstrated him to be very God of very God. That this is the final view presented of Jesus in the book before us appears to be proved by the following sentence :—" When we worshipped him as the Son, it seemed not unto us as if we were honouring him by calling him God, but (if I may speak as a child) it seemed rather as though we were striving to honour God by saying that God was one with Jesus." Such an expression respecting any mere human being would be blasphemous adulation.

This Divine Man is the centre of a group of disciples and in- terested observers, who are in part derived by the author from the narratives of the New Testament, and in part suggested by his knowledge of the characters and circumstances of the period. Philochristus, the supposed chronicler, is not himself a man of very strong personality. We think of him as a kind of Jewish Xenophon, pure and upright-minded, but of slight in- tellectual originality, who longs for the redemption of Israel, feels that the Scribes and Pharisees do not respond to the cravings of his spiritual ideal, and finds in Jesus all that his higher nature wants. His task in the book is to observe with impartiality and simplicity, placing the facts before the reader, though generally, we are bound to add, lending them some colour, or suggesting some interpretation of them, which makes it a matter of extreme difficulty to draw the line between what belongs, in strict dramatic propriety, to Philochristus, and what he must be understood to speak as the mouthpiece of the author. Nathaniel appears as what he is in the Gospels,—entirely trustful, entirely satisfied, incapable of a serious doubt that Jesus is the Christ, the Saviour of the world. Peter and Judas are not without affinity of character, both being fiery, impetuous men, but there is a pro- found difference between them. Peter loves with all his heart, believes as be loves, and cannot be moved from the conviction that the proceedings of Jesus, however enigmatical they may seem, will prove wise, right, and expedient. Judas is a Jewish patriot, willing enough to accept Christ's moral teaching, but inveterately persuaded that his doctrine is of quite secondary importance, and that his real aim must and shall be to expel the Romans and re- establish the throne of David. Judas has found many apologists, or at least, suggesters of a theory which would acquit him of mean and murderous guilt, but no one has undertaken his defence so

boldly as the author of Philochristus. Giotto's notion of Judas, as a

mere brutish reprobate,with the greed and cunning of a thoroughly insensitive nature, vulgar with that incurable vulgarity which Horace rightly discerned to be profane—a view of the char- acter which Mr. Ruskin, in part at least, adopts—gives place in this book to the conception of a man whose faults are virtues in disguise, or at least are very mitigated forms of vice. " At the

first, Judas was no traitor, nor like unto one that should be a traitor, but of a sanguine complexion and disposition, cheerful

even to mirthfulness, and frank on a first acquaintance." He was not given to reflection, but was " active and strenuous, and withal a lover of Israel." Ambitious, readier with advice than with the real offices of kindness, he was yet from childhood " ever given to great purposes," and of a deep understanding and a discerning spirit, though lacking in power to love. " His understanding moved as a flame of fire, but his heart was very cold."

The suicide of Judas, the fruit of remorse, is the only shadow of evidence by which this view of his character can be supported.

De Quincey, whose name is associated with it, from the elo- quence of his special pleading in its behalf, loved paradox, and was often whimsically absurd in his reasonings. We are by no means sure that suicide in consequence of remorse is so trust- worthy an index of character as the crime which occasioned the distress, and there is obvious unlikelihood that if Judas had really meant, as his advocates suggest, to force his Master's hand,

he would have covenanted so carefully for the thirty pieces of silver. The author of Philochristus is shy of the Fourth Gospel as an historical authority, but he too summarily reduces to (virtually) a mere slander of tradition that stern verse in which the Fourth Evangelist describes Judas, not only as a thief, but a thief who wanted to pass himself off as a philanthropist,—" This he said, not that be cared for the poor, but because he was a thief." Although no important fact is taken from the Fourth Gospel, one of the characters adopts to some extent the tone and point of view of its writer, a circumstance indicated in his name " Quartus." The philosophical religion of the period is repre- sented by Xanthias. And there are minor characters not a few, some of whom play no unimportant part. The fertility of the author's imagination is remarkable, and his cast of dramatis persona very rich.

The most strictly original elements in the book—original at least in the way in which they impress themselves upon the mind of the author—are two ; a particular conception of miracles, and a suggested explanation of the occurrences which took place after

Christ's death. These two—the theory of miracles and the theory of the resurrection—are intimately connected with each other, forming parts of a general biographic scheme of our Lord's history which, whether we agree with it or disagree, —and we ourselves wholly disagree,—must be admitted to be singularly consistent and complete. Among the miracles ascribed to Christ, Philochristus—for we shall endeavour to

confine ourselves to what the character dramatically represented says for himself, waiving the inquiry whether his views are or are not those of the author—distinguishes between those which might be accounted for on natural grounds, and those which, if they really occurred in the way in which ordinary readers of the New Testament believe them to have occurred, must have been supernatural. The healing of such cases of deaf- ness or lameness as were due to nervous affection, and might yield to faith in the word of Jesus, including the expulsion of

devils, are comprised in the first of these classes. The stilling of the tempest, the feeding of four or five thousand persons with a few loaves and fishes, and the raising of the dead, belong to the second. Philochristus, convinced that Jesus is the Messiah, has no doubt of his power to work any miracle whatever, but repre- sents him as viewing Nature in a way which would render h is working a real miracle in the highest degree improbable. The real—the world as it is, the appointed order of Nature—constituted, for Christ, the greatest possible miracle. " As Elias the prophet loved to commune with God on the tops of mountains and in deserts and in eaves, received revelations of the Lord from earthquakes and Ores, but moat of all from the still small voice, even so doth our Master look upon all things that are, yea even on the smallest things that live or grow, and from all he heareth a still small voice, that speaketh of the Father." Looking upon the agencies Of Nature as the ministers of God, Jesus submitted to them more willingly than others, enduring cold, hunger, thirst, homelessness, not stamping on the ground " to make the wheat spring up for him," not striking waters from rocks, but " willingly subject to all the fleshly weaknesses wherewith the All-wise bath encompassed the souls of men, to the end that they may depend on Him." Devils are expelled and diseases are healed by Jesus, because he esteems these the works of Satan, not of the Father ; but Nature he regards as too sacred to be interfered with by miracle. " The course and appointed order of the world he esteemeth as the vesture of God, whereof he would not disturb one single fold."

The account given by Philochristus of the signs and wonders recorded in the Gospels, some of which he personally witnessed, some of which were described to him by his fellow-disciples who beheld them, fits in at all points with this theory of miracle. Of the healing of diseases and the driving out of devils, it is unnecessary to speak ; the view respecting them put forward is substantially in accordance with that of many pre- vious writers. What light, then, is cast by the experience of Philochristus, as stated in simple, historical form by him, on the crucial instances before mentioned ? Take that of the stilling of the tempest. The storm arises, the boat is almost filled with the waves, the disciples run terror-stricken to Jesus, and entreat him to save them. He turns himself towards the sea, " and then (as ff it were revealed to him that he, being the safety of the world, could not be wrecked by any turbulence of winds or waves, and therefore that the storm was to cease), behold, he stretched out his hands to the tempest, praying ; and straightway the storm seemed to abate a little ; and then, perceiving the will of the Father, he stood up, like some great king or emperor, and rebuked the storm, bidding it be still, and immediately there was a great calm." On this narrative Philochristus makes one or two very sig- nificant remarks On this only occasion did our Master appear to change the course of the world, and methinks even here he did it only in appearance. For he spake as be was moved by the Holy Spirit, it being revealed to him that the storm must needs cease, lest the fortunes of the world should be shipwrecked, if the Son of Man should perish." Such is the opinion of Philochristus ; we shall not undertake to pronounce it also the opinion of the author of the book ; but if the reader takes the same view of the stilling of the tempest as is expressed by Philochristus, be certainly will not believe that any miracle took place on the occasion. The impression that a miracle had been wrought arose from a coincidence, in time, between the offering up of a prayer by Christ, and the sudden passing over of a storm-gust on the sea of Galilee. It is somewhat perplexing to be told by j'hilochristus that on this occasion alone did Christ even "appear" to change the order of the world, for he must absolutely have 4' appeared " to change that order to those who saw him raise the daughter of Jairus from what they, at least, as Philochristus expressly admits, supposed to be death ; and to ordinary readers of the New Testament, he surely " appears" to modify the order of nature when he feeds thousands with what would usually suffice barely to appease the hunger of tens. Mr. Lewes has pronounced the miracles of feeding the multitudes more exacting in their demand upon the faith of believers even than the miracles of raising the dead. Let us see what Philochristus makes of them. By bread, we are told, Christ meant the essence of his doctrine and example,—in one word, himself. Perceiving that he, as well as John the Baptist, would be put to death, that his spirit would pass into his disciples, and that in this sense, "he would give himself to be the food of men, even the Bread of Life," he looked upon his teaching, and spoke of it to his disciples, as a ministration of bread. At first he ministered the bread himself, " but after- wards," says Philochristus, " because of the multitude of them which came unto him (for they were more than five thousand), he caused the disciples to divide them into companies, and to minister the Bread unto the people." The disciples ministered accordingly, and so much edification ensued, that "Thomas (who had been at the first loth to minister the Bread, as not being worthy) came afterwards to Jesus saying, Of a truth, the crumbs of thy Banquet which are fallen from the table of the guests do suffice unto them that minister, for the Lord bath increased the Bread of Life within us,' so mightily did the Bread of our Master increase in the hands of the Twelve." Matthew made the remark " that Jesus had not only spread a table in the wilderness for the hungry, but that he had also fulfilled his saying, Give, and it shall be given unto you. For,' said he, ' behold, to each of the disciples there cometh back his basketful of the fragments of the Feast.' And the like happened on another occasion, when they ministered the Bread unto another very great multitude, about four thousand in number." Of course, under those circumstances, it never occurred to Philochristus that any departure from the order of nature had taken place. We shall not say that the author of the book adopts the view of Philochristus, but he does not rebut it, and we cannot see any object that could be served by putting it into the mouth of Philochristus, unless the author, believed, to say the least, that it deserves careful consideration. The only plausibility it has, it derives from the unquestionable facts that bread was one leading symbol applied by Christ to his doctrine and to himself, and that he expressly spoke of this bread—in short, of himself—being eaten by those who believed in him. If, as the various branches of the Reformed Church maintain, the literal acceptance of Christ's words in the institution of the Supper is a misapprehension of his spiritual meaning, it may be a plausible extension of the principle of spiritual interpretation to apply it to the easy and obvious explanation of what would otherwise be a stupendous miracle. For the suggested explanation there is, on the other hand, not the slightest support in the New Testament. The observation put by Philochristus into the mouth of Matthew is in sharp discordance with the account of what occurred to be found in that Gospel which all tradition assigns, in its original form, to this apostle. "The disciples," Thomas and Matthew, no doubt, included, said to Christ that the multitudes required, not to be ministered to in spiritual things, but to be " sent away," in order that they might "buy themselves victuals." What St. Matthew is represented as saying by Philocbristus cannot possibly be reconciled with what he says for himself, and for the rest of the disciples, in the Gospel to which his name is attached. We submit that, by all conceivable rules of historical evidence, Matthew is a better witness of what he himself said than Philochristus can be.

Philochristus accounts with equal facility for the recorded instances in which Jesus raised the dead, as well as for what, in view of the acknowledged rectitude of his character, is of equal consequence, his own seemingly explicit assertion that he did so. " Jesus was wont to use the word dead ' of them that were in the deep waters of sin ; as when he said that the dead should bury their own dead ;' and again, when he said that ' the Son of Man bath power to quicken the dead.' Oftentimes, also, he spake in the same way of raising up the dead, as when he told the dis- ciples of John, the son of Zachariah, that 'the dead are raised up." Here, again, of course, there is adducible in support of the view presented by Philochristus the indisputable fact that Christ did habitually apply the imagery of physical death to the death of the spirit in selfishness and unrighteousness. It might, perhaps, be argued also that amid a generation like that to which Christ preached, a generation impenetrably ignorant, profoundly super- stitious, it was, in the nature of things, impossible for a pervasively spiritual teacher to avoid being misunderstood by his hearers, and being handed down to posterity as a miracle-worker. It is clear, however, that this comprehensive solution of old difficulties will provide new ones ; for if our Lord's teaching was spiritual and metaphorical to such an extent as Philochristus suggests, will it not strike many minds as a hopeless enterprise to ascertain what his teaching really was?

The view taken by Philochristus of the Resurrection is organi- cally connected with the theory of miracles which we have ex- plained. As Jesus appeared to Philochristus to studiously avoid interfering with the order of nature—the sequence of physical law—during his life-time, Philochristus would not look for a suspension or violation of natural law in connection with his body after death. The life after death which Philochristus understood Christ to predict, was a life of influence, a life in the hearts of his disciples, a life in the many generations of a humanity purified from sin and triumphing over sorrow. Accordingly, when he was crucified, his body did not, in contravention of the law of nature, resume life, but — here is the peculiar theory of Philochristus—was stolen from the grave by the ministers of the High Priest. Philochristus is represented as having virtually witnessed the occurrence. The enemies of Christ thought that one who died as a malefactor ought not to be honoured with such burial as Joseph of Arimathea had provided him. What became of the body is not stated. It is permissible in the author to preserve a reverential silence on that question, but no modern reader, if he accepts as exact and adequate the account given by Philochristus of the several appearances of Christ after the crucifixion, will entertain any doubt that the body laid in the tomb had no part in them, but that they were visionary. We cannot trust ourselves to do perfect justice to the author by describing in our words what took place on those occasions, but shall quote one typical passage, and leave our readers to say whether the appearance of Christ noted therein was or was not of the kind which men see in visions. It details what occurred on that solemn evening when the disciples were assembled with closed doors, and Thomas also was among them :—

" So about one hour after sunset, we wore assembled all together in the upper room (it was a room in the house of Peter, wherein Jesus was wont to sit at meat with us in past times), and Thomas also was with us. But the door was shut and made fast for fear of spies ; whom the Scribes in Capernanm had begun to set over us for to watch us. When all things were now ready, first we sang a psalm, even the same psalm that Jesus had sung on the same night in the week before, when we kept the Passover together. Then Simon Peter offered up prayers and praises to God, and made mention of the comfortable words of the Lord Jesus, how ho had said that he would never leave us nor forsake us, but that wheresoever two or three were gathered together in his name, there would he be present among them. Last of all he spake of the testament of the Lord Jesus, how he had bidden us break bread and drink wine in memory of him, that we might partake of his body and his blood. Then began Simon Peter to break bread and to roach it to each of us, and at the same time ho said, This is the body of the Lord.' But behold, in the midst of his giving of the bread, Peter made a sudden pause and was silent, and his eyes were fixed, and he gazed steadfastly upon the place which had been left empty at the table ; for Jeans had been wont to sit there in times past, wherefore in that place durst no man sit. Then I turned round hastily to look, and behold, Jesus was there, as clear to view as ever I had seen him in this life, • nly very pale, and there were the nail-prints in his hands, and me- thought there was a wound in his side ; and the brightness of his love and compassion passed sensibly forth from his eyes to mine, and all my soul went out to him as I looked ; but I could in nowise speak, nor did I desire to speak, for I had thoughts deeper than all words. Now not a hand moved, not a word was spoken, and there was such a silence as if one could hoar and count the footsteps of time ; neither could I turn mine eyes from Jesus till I heard Thomas weeping beside me ; but he threw himself on the ground, stretching out his hands to Jesus, and reproaching himself for his faithlessness, and at the same time, pressing the bread, even the body of the Lord, which he held in his hand, he cried out, saying, ' My hand bath touched ; yea, I have touched ; I believe, I believe.' But neither he nor any of us durst adventure to go to that part of the table where Jesus sat; but when I looked again, behold, his hand was stretched out (even as the two disciples had de- scribed their vision of Jeans) as if he brake and blessed the bread that was his body ; and Thomas also heard a voice (but I heard not the voice) saying that ho was to touch with his hand, according to his own saying, and to be no more faithless, but believing. After this, Jesus vanished from our eyes, and neither in his coming nor in his departing was the door opened, but it remained shut fast, whereat we all marvelled."

This is ingenious naturalism of the school of Paulus, as well as delicately clear and expressive in style. A single occurrence of this kind might of course be paralleled from the recorded instances

of spectral apparition and optical illusion. But there is one circum- stance affecting all such representations of the appearance of Jesus Christ after the crucifixion which is irreconcilable with their correctness, namely, that the appearances came abruptly to an end.

There is no fact upon which destructive criticism has more strongly insisted, none upon which it has built more in accounting for

Christianity, than that the followers of Jt sus expected his second

appearing. It was the intense flame of this hope, the enthusiastic ardour of this wish, they tell us, that made Christianity run like

wildfire through the Roman world. Why, then, we ask, did the faint and hesitating hope of the disciples, after the crucifixion and before the ascension, produce many visionary appearances, while the undoubting persuasion that Christ would return after the ascension produced not one ? Why were the disciples unani- mously convinced that they had seen a Jesus whose rising from the dead took them actually by surprise, while the same disciples never once imagined that they saw the Jesus whose return they expected every hour with confident hope, yet inexpressible longing ? So practical and so convincing is the evidence of this fact, that shrewdly logical deniers of a miraculous resurrection, like Mr. Greg, consider it the likeliest hypothesis that the Jesus who was taken down from the cross did indeed emerge alive from the grave, having never been dead. These, again, are confronted with the unanswerable ques- tion,—What became of him? If he had made up his mind to withdraw from public life, is it conceivable that he would have shown himself at all to his disciples ? If he died within a few weeks after his apparent death on the cross, is it credible that there would have been no trace of the event? In the interest of historical science, if in no other, we insist that no solution of an historical problem ought to be accepted, unless it satisfies the con-

ditions of the problem. Admitting the right of science to attempt to account naturally for all that can be naturally accounted for, we maintain that no mode of naturally accounting for the in- dubitable facts connected with the Resurrection has yet been offered to the world.

This study of the life of Christ has some advantages over the most noted handlings of the same subject which have pre- ceded it. More Christian than that of Strauss, more readable than that of Neander. more earnest and genuinely reverential than that of Renan, and more thorough-going than that of the author of Ecce Homo, it will reward a careful perusal by any one who is seriously interested in the subject. Its realisation of the circumstances of Christ's life is perhaps unequalled, its concep- tion of Christ's spiritual character is sublime, but its logical and historical basis is feeble.