TWO OPINIONS 139 cial incarnation is admitted; if the claim is that Jesus was not perfect, the philosophical objection to special incarnation is abandoned for the historical; if the contention is that Jesus is but a typical instance of that perfection to which all good men will ultimately attain, it is to be noted that interjected perfection is not the same thing as the perfection which is the final issue of eonian discipline; if it is held that the cases of perfection are numerous, it must be said in reply that this position has not yet been made good. The story is that Bronson Alcott said to Carlyle that he could use the words of Jesus, “I and the Father are one," in the full sense in which Jesus used them. Carlyle's reply is significant, Jesus got the world to believe him; Bronson Alcott has failed at this point. The world goes with Jesus; it feels that he is worth taking at his word.1 When one comes to the universal bearing of the incarnation in Jesus Christ one becomes aware of the presence of a sympathetic habit of thought. It is generally accepted that man is the highest known form of life. It seems reasonable that the ultimate character of the universe should be judged by its highest product. 1 The Christ of To-day, pp. 112-136. The discussion here is only supplementary since the uniqueness of Christ emerges but incidentally. Reference is here given, therefore, to the more extended treatment in the earlier work. The final standard of judgment is therefore man. Man at his best gives the universe at its best. He, above all else known to human intelligence, is the organ of the Infinite. If Plato's wise men were right in their agreement that “mind is for us king of heaven and earth,”1 the human mind is the highest known mediator of it. If there is an eternal power not ourselves that makes for righteousness, the human conscience and the course of human society can alone declare it. If it is true that there is at the heart of all things Infinite pity, the soul of man is its highest organ. The ultimate character of the universe is to be judged, not from its first but from its final product. That which made man, brought him on his way, inspired his creative moods, became the fountain of his social order, ideal, and hope, and lifted him slowly but steadily into higher character, is the divinest force known to the human mind. In reference to the Supreme being human thought and love and character are mediatorial. Eternal wisdom, Transcendent love, Infinite power are not denied; they are objects of faith. Only as they are mediated by men to men do they become part of the spiritual life of the race. That the Divine thought should come into human society in any other way than through thought is inconceivable. The love of God has for its exclusive 1 Philebus, 28 c. THE PROPHETHOOD OF JESUS 141 channel the love of man. The moral government of the world has but one way of declaring its reality, and that is through the process of human society. The tree of life is for all forms of existence; the fruits of the tree of life man alone can reach; they fall only at the touch of his hand. The prophethood of Jesus is not generally recognized as it should be. The perfection of his utterance of the wisdom of God, the supremacy of his mind upon the ultimate concerns of faith, does not receive the unreserved recognition which is its due. The uniqueness of the prophethood of Jesus is the first great note of the uniqueness of his incarnation; and here again the thought of the time that runs so strongly toward identities is comparatively unresponsive. But while unable to see the unique in the prophethood of Jesus, it does confess in him the highest example of the office of the spiritual mind. A large and very noble literature has grown up in the attempt to expound the teaching of Jesus. A book like Wendt's is not only a critical study; it is also an appreciation of the supreme prophet. The works of A. B. Bruce, particularly his "Training of the Twelve," "The Parabolic Teaching of Christ," and "The Kingdom of God," have given a new sense of the richness and depth and beauty of Christ's mind. Leading scholars for a generation have been en gaged in the task of exhibiting a valid historical picture of the teaching of the Master. The result is that it is seen with special clearness that "it was through his personality, his life, and his doctrine as a teacher that his own spirit entered into human lives, as an inspiring, purifying force." The further consequence is that the prophethood of the race is admitted to be conspicuously exemplified in him. If the office of prophet in its full application to Christ is but imperfectly apprehended, in the case of the disciple of Christ it is understood as never before. If the final revelation in the Master is not always acknowledged, the continuous revelation through the servant is one of the great convictions of the time. Humanity is the prophet of the Most High; such in unexampled vigor is the religious belief of to-day. The thought of God is to be translated into human conditions, articulated in the conscious insight of society, revealed in the rational strength of mankind. One man dies and another is born, one generation goes and another comes, centuries fade and other centuries appear, but the one great process of the continuous and increasing revelation of the Eternal thought behind history remains unbroken. This is the true apostolical succession. The generations of the believing and faithful follow 1 Professor A. V. G. Allen, Christian Institutions, p. 385. THE VOCATION OF MAN one another at the great task. man is the discovery of God. 143 The vocation of may have their singular mission and they may deserve singular honor; but the universal movement does not exist for them, they exist for it. Science is in duty bound to find the fact and to carry it to the proper tribunal for judgment; art is under orders to remember that ultimately her vision of beauty is the beauty of the Lord our God; industry is reminded by a whole army of secular preachers that she is a form of human brotherhood, a brotherhood which reflects in itself the highest in the universe; philosophy is recalled by her strenuous apostles from individualistic views and enjoined to seek for the thought of the Absolute as it returns through social experience to itself. And science and art and industry and philosophy come to religion to be baptized into the one universal vocation. They represent the factual, the imaginative, the practical, and the purely rational aspects of that human mind which in its totality is held by faith as the prophet of the Lord. The conviction still lives that God speaks, but it lives with this limitation, that God speaks to man only through man. The faith still survives that God educates, but with the modification that this divine education is carried on through human education. The light of God is available for the multitude only through their leaders. |