DR. SCHENKEL'S SKETCH OF THE CHARACTER OF JESUS.* THE address

which Dr. Schenkel lately delivered to the Protestant Union of Germany, and of which most of our readers will have seen a summary in the newspapers, exactly represents the spirit of this book. It is full of devoutness and reverence, and, at the same time, free to the limits of audacity in the criticism which it applies to its subject. With the methods and results of this criticism we find ourselves very often at variance. Most of the comments we shall have to make upon the book will necessarily be of an adverse kind ; but we heartily acknowledge the great pleasure that we have felt in reading it, a pleasure caused not only by its high literary merit and the new interest which it gives to familiar topics, but also by the profoundly religious tone of feeling which distinguishes it.

Dr. Schenkel begins his work by a brief statement of his views on the personality of Jesus and on the sources of the Gospel history. It is here, of course, that we naturally expect to find the greatest and most arbitrary assumptions. Does he think that controversies which have exercised human ingenuity for the last eighteen centuries can be settled now by an a priori reasoning which, it it not too much to say, must have occurred in some shape to every human being that has discussed this question ?— " It is essential, above all things, to the idea of a person, that he is in his inmost self a unit ; only upon this supposition can he be historically comprehended. This unity is by the traditionary doctrine destroyed iz. the person of the Redeemer of the world. In the Church creed Jesus Christ is represented as a double being, as the personal union of two existences which in themselves have nothing in common, but rather contradict each other, and only by means of a miracle transcending all comprehension have been brought into the closest and most inseparable connection. Accordingly, he is man and God in one and the same person."

• A Sketch of the Character of Jesus: a Biblical Essay. By Dr. Daniel Schenkel,. Professor of Theology in the University of Heidelberg. Translated from the Third German Edition. London : Longmans. 1669.

This union he calls "historically impossible "; the attempts of orthodox theologians to explain it he stigmatizes as "not only empty and unmeaning subterfuges, but also a degradation of the dignity and glory of God." But it might easily be retorted upon him that his own view of the person of Christ is "historically incomprehensible "; that it comes out in his pages as something which is neither human nor divine. We look in vain indeed for a definite statement, but it is plain that he is not satisfied with simple humanitarian views. He says, commenting on the words "no one knows who the Son is but the Father, and no one knows who the Father is but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal it " :—

“From the mysterious depths of his own self-consciousness, from the purest and most secret revelations of his spirit, he became conscious of God as his Father. He has communicated this consciousness in all its freshness to his Church, and by it disclosed the nature and truth of God to humanity itself. It is accordingly an extraordinary and unique

• personal character that Jesus attributes to himself in the above expres- sion, but we must take care that we put no more into it than Jesus himself intended by it. That he attributed to himself a wholly new conscious- ness of God, the most intimate and indissoluble fellowship with God ; that he regarded this, his personal character, as an inexhaustible source of revelation and life to mankind,—so much is beyond all question. But ho has not therefore claimed for himself Divine power and dignity," &c.

Does Dr. Schenkel think that those who accept the canon by which he judges the orthodox creed will be able to harmonize with it this "mysterious consciousness," this "extraordinary and unique personal character ? " By what test does he propose to try the truth of these conceptions ? There never was, he would seem to say, such a being before or since. Where, then, is the experience to which we are to appeal to prove its possibility? Or does he appeal to the authority of records which can hardly support so great a demand on the faith -of men, and the less so when we come to see what havoc his -criticism makes with them? May we not say that no authority can be conceded to documents which have only now, after eighteen ,centuries, been reconstructed ? Must we not wait for at least as much longer, till the criticism of the future has confirmed and • ratisfied the work of the present ?

For Dr. Schenkel's criticism of the Gospel narratives is, as may be supposed, of the most destructive kind. He supposes the second Gospel to be the most ancient of the four, but not to have been itself the work of an eye-witness, though recording the expe- riences of one who was—that is, St. Peter. But it is not the gospel of Mark, as we have it in our Bible, whom he thus accepts as the most authentic of Christian records, but a certain "Primitive Mark," which he obtains by rejecting whatever does not harmonize with his views. Besides the "Primitive Mark," there is a certain "Collection of Sayings," to which is referred whatever strikes Dr. Schenkel as being, though not included in St. Mark, of a genuine and authentic character. As to the other Gospels, "Matthew and Luke contain amplifications and variations attributable to the later traditions ; and the fourth Evangelist," whom he does not even allow to have been of Jewish birth, "subordinates the his- torical to the dogmatic interest." On the question of the origin of the fourth Gospel we quote a passage which gives an excellent idea of our author's manner and spirit :—

" This Gospel was composed with reference to Gnosticism, for the purpose of showing that faith in Jesus Christ not only meets the deepest longing of the heart, but also satisfies the highest need of the intellect, that Jesus Christ is not only the Messiah of the Jews, but the Saviour of the world. It is not to be denied that the author has treated with the greatest freedom the traditional material to which he had access. He has transferred the scene of the public life of Jesus for the most part to Jude; that he might bring out as clearly as possible the antagonism of Jesus to the Jewish theocracy at its very seat. He has made a typical,

• allegorical use of the Christian traditions. Here and there he has .clothed the profoundest ideas of Christian truth in the garb of outward

-events Important events, recorded in the original documents known to him, he has omitted when they did not fall in with his main ideas, &c. But he has not wilfully undertaken to invent or create fictions and fables. He has taken out of their historical framework, elevated into the region of eternal thoughts, and in- vested with the transfiguring glory of a later century, a selection of reminiscences from the Evangelical traditions of the public life of

Jesus The first three have shown him to us still wrestling with powerful earthly forces. The fourth Gospel portrays the Saviour glorified in the victorious power of the Spirit over the earthly nature. The former show us the Son of Israel striving in his Humanity towards Heaven ; the latter, the King of Heaven, who descends, full of divine grace, from the throne of eternity into the world of men. Our portraiture of him must not forsake the natural, earthly foundation of the first three Gospels, if it is to be historically real ; but the representation of the character of Jesus becomes eternally true only in the heavenly splendour of that light which streams forth from the fourth Gospel."

Starting from this view of the origin of the four narratives, he proceeds to apply his processes of criticism to their text. A sublime person, human, yet transcending humanity, who became gradually convinced of his mission, is his conception of Jesus. That concep- tion he believes to have been set forth in the genuine documents of Christianity. To find the remains of those documents in the midst of additions of later times is his object. He owns that it cannot be done with precision ; but there is no want of confidence in his method of attempting it. We take an instance. He wishes to show that Matthew, being profoundly penetrated with the belief that the Old Testament promises were fulfilled in Jesus Christ, "used the documents at his command conscientiously on the whole, but not without slight changes adapted to his purpose." And then he adds this note :

"Thus, e. g., ch. i., 16, where he probably left out the words IaX0 iiiiyiwy4trey s-61, facroiiv nv XE74CLEVOY XparOy, and put in their place, nov arelpac Mapia;, i ; i7syvids 'WIZ; O XE7410£1/0g The attribute As7OP,EY0;, which was not in accordance with his dogmatic idea of Jesus, nor with his apologetic tendency, he left standing, through the naively uncritical way of using his materials."

We cannot but think it a fortunate circumstance that some of the German critics are beginning to apply these methods to the master-pieces of classical literature. Questions of literary taste are not obscured by the mists which involve theological controversy. The doubts which when they concern a gospel narrative some wholly refuse to consider, and some seem too glad to entertain, may be more fairly estimated when they deal with a passage of Virgil or Horace. While the external evidence to the authen- ticity of the Gospels is incomparably greater than that which can be alleged for any classical work as taken in its entirety, it is use- ful to see how very uncertain and insecure is the action of internal criticism, by observing it when it deals with documents which there is no overpowering wish to believe or to reject. Dr. Schenkel's treatment of the Gospels may be summed up by saying that in what he accepts or rejects he seems to be restrained by no considera- tions, and to need the support of no evidence ; that he wants no guide but his own consciousness and the exigencies of the theory which he has formed. Every difficulty is assumed to be a contradic- tion; the labours of the harmonists, which, though they have not established verbal inspiration, have certainly cleared away some obscurities, are treated as if they were absolutely valueless and ineffec- tive. We may take, as an instance, what Dr. Schenkel says of the relation between Jesus and John the Baptist. The unanimous view of Christendom has been that there was a mutual recognition on the part of each of the position of the other, though this may have been obscured on the part of the Baptist by temporary doubts. Here we are told that the Baptist never acknowledged the mission of Christ ; that his disciples, if not he, were positively hostile ; that, on the other band, Jesus "regarded John's enter- prise as essentially more hurtful than useful," applying to him the words about sewing a new patch into old garments and pouring new wine into old bottles. That the Gospels, even the Mark on which Dr. Schenkel most relies, must be mutilated to support this view, counts for nothing ; and, in fact, it only harmonizes with the critic's uniform method.

Dr. Schenkel distinguishes his method of dealing with the Gospel history from the method of Rationalism, and in a sense is justified in doing so. His whole spirit is different, and so is his conception of the personality of Christ; yet, in another sense, he is in harmony with it. In fact, he is driven into it when he comes to speak of the miracles. That Simon's wife's mother was healed by Jesus taking her by the hand with kindly consoling words ; that the leper was, in fact, cured before he presented himself to Jesus ; that the herd of swine were terrified by the paroxysms of the demoniac of Gadara; (are we to believe that Eastern swine are so much more susceptible than Western, who would not be moved by all Bedlam let loose ?), that the five thousand were fed partly by the provisions which Jesus sent his disciples to buy, and partly by what every man produced from his own stores,—are all explanations of a kind with which rationalism has made us familiar. Here they seem out of place. A few strokes of the pen drawn through every passage which is tinged with the miraculous would have been easier and more consistent.

When we come to Dr. Schenkel's treatment of the chief miracle of all, the Resurrection, we find ourselves at a loss. That the grave was found empty on the first day of the week he regards as an historical fact, nor has he any doubt that the death had been real. Further, he allows it to be true, as, indeed, after the testimony of St. Paul could scarcely be doubted, that the disciples were convinced that they had seen their risen Lord. But he protests against the notion that there was any physical reanima- tion, a notion which he thinks needed only by those who do not believe in the "living presence of the real Christ in the history of the world." He maintains that St. Paul denies all worth to the

"external fact of a bodily resurrection," quoting in support the words, "though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we Him no more,"—a passage which seems to us, as far as it concerns the subject, to tell the other way, the apostle speaking of the original disciples, among whom by virtue of a special revelation he inclmled himself, as having learnt that to perceive the spiritual presence of Christ was a higher privilege than that of having seen his human form. Yet this appearance to St. Paul he conceives to determine the character of the other manifestations together with which it is mentioned by the apostle,—a wholly unfounded assumption, even did we concede all that he demands about the nature of the revelation to St. Paul himself. But is not, after all, this distinction between appearances very shadowy ? If, as our author seems to allow, St. Paul heard a voice and saw a light, what does it profit to say that the Risen One did not "work upon the Apostle through the organs of a material body " ? Can there be an appearance that is not physical ? What we should like to know is whether Dr. Schenkel thinks these appearances objective or subjective. And has he any explanation of the empty grave? Our general impres- sion is that he finds himself confronted over again, as in the case of the personality of Christ, by facts which he will not consider to be miraculous, but which he cannot reduce to ordinary experience. One thing we cannot but notice with surprise in a writer of so much spiritual insight. He asks, why did not Jesus, if He had risen with a material body, show Himself publicly, to Scribes and Pharisees, as well as to his disciples ? What can be more obvious than the answer, that His post-resurrection appearance was to be cognizable by sense, but yet wanting before it could be recognized something more than sense, an awakening of inner faculties, and was thus an education for understanding the truth of His perpetual presence throughout all the future?

We feel little satisfied with what we have said, partly because we have left many things that we had noted for remark untouched, partly because we have been able to do small justice to the noble qualities of the book, to the acuteness, the eloquence, the profound devotion of spirit which it displays. These demand for it the hearty admiration of all earnest students.