SEPTEMBER 1867. I : ADDRESS.* Tis a fine instance of the intimate nobility of John's character, of his pure disinterestedness, that he did not begin to do what the majority of preachers do when a more attractive man than themselves, and a better preacher, begins somewhere near them and thins their congregation, try to underrate and cry him down. When his disciples come and say, “Rabbi, he that was with thee beyond Jordon is baptizing, and all men come to him," he replied, "Ye are witnesses that I said, I am not the Christ. A man can have nothing but what is given him from heaven. I never had this gift of the Christhood; this man has it: he is therefore the Christ, just as much as the man who has the bride (in a true wedding) is a bridegroom. But as the friend of the bridegroom rejoices at the wedding, so I rejoice that my friend and kinsman is the Messiah. So then, be quiet; do not be annoyed, or jealous, or hypercritical. You cannot yet see, as I see, how much more this man must be than I ever can be. He must increase; I must decrease." There are two theories of the life of Christ. By the one, he is made to spring from the bosom of God, in a condition of absolute perfection, being all, knowing all, and doing all, -in a fullness as much beyond the demand, as the fullness of the Atlantic is beyond the demand of a chip, or the fullness of the sunlight the demand of a mole. By this theory, the tiny hand that shakes the rude rattle in the home at Nazareth, at that moment also holds the sceptre of the universe. The eye, filled with laughing light at the sound of his mother's voice, as she moves about to her daily duties, sweeps with the same glance into the most distant and dark spaces; and the tongue trying, with tireless diligence, to utter the broken words of babyhood, is heard also commanding all the hosts. * Read before the Boston Unitarian Ministerial Union. of heaven. In the light of this conception, whatever is done beyond the common reaches of common humanity is carried forward and accounted for by his being there and then God. Is he able to puzzle the Jewish doctors? While he was yet a boy of twelve, he carried into that temple all the wisdom of God!- how could he fail? Is he able to break the power of the devil forty days in the wilderness? He carried into the combat the power of God! how, then, could he fall? So, through all he is and all he does, from first to last, this being we call Jesus Christ is made to be only the dark glass through which the world looks at the insufferable light and fire of God. Now, brought within the lines of a careful reason, to say this is to say that he knew infinitely more of everything than all the great masters knew of anything; that his sense of what befitted the Messiah alone held him back from announcing the most important facts that have come in the opening ages; and from doing, by a single act of the will, greater things than have been done by the loftiest souls that came after him. And I mean by this, that the compass, the printing press, the locomotive, the steamboat, vaccination, Peruvian bark, chloroform, ether, iodine, subsoil ploughs, photography, anthracite coal, air-tight stoves, horse-shoes, infirmaries, sanitary commissions, cheap window-glass, the art of engraving, tea, coffee, and savings-banks, were just as clearly present in the mind of the Saviour then, as they are present in the world now. Now, I think you will not accuse me of trying to push my statement unfairly, when I say, that if this theory that Christ on the earth knew all things, his mind a perfect encyclopedia of the universe and of time — be true, then the greatest of all the mysteries in his life, greater than miracle and prophecy, is this mystery, that he should be here, with that heart so full of pity, that hand so ready in the labor, and that tongue so wise in the wisdom of the divinest love; should foresee all the sorrow, agony and death resulting from ignorance, through long ranges of centuries; should see all the steam escaping, all the poor barks creeping along the shore for want of a compass'; in a word, the whole difference between that world and this, yet should maintain a resolute silence. I know it will be said that these things could not take root until the true time; and, if this was not the true time, it were useless to reveal them. But I answer, that the possession of a secret that will benefit the world is the obligation to reveal it. We judge that man criminal who has found a sovereign remedy for cholera, and yet buries it in his grave. We say he did not love his fellow-men: and so, in defending the silence of Christ, if he knew of a preventive for the small-pox, and did not tell it ; or of chloroform, to assuage extreme human agonies, and did not tell it, we assume the ground, that, being in the likeness of a man, he was less than a man. And if you say, "But God the Spirit did not reveal these things until our time, and so why should you expect that God manifest in the flesh would do it"? I answer, God the Spirit is surrounded by mystery: his ways are past finding out. I accept the mystery just as it is, and hold on by my faith until I can do better. But the ultimatum here is, that there is no mystery at all about it. The mystery was, how shall these things flash across the brain, and be revealed by the tongue, and done by the hand of a man? Now, here is a brain in which these unutterable philanthropies are a quenchless fire, you say; and an eye seeing into the eighteenth century, how to prevent the small-pox, how to save human life, human beauty, human everything; a tongue crying, "I am come, not to destroy life, but to save it." And in that mind a secret how to save life, beside which the cures that he did (apart from their spiritual influence) were as nothing, yet he refused to tell it! So that the mystery is not in the possession of divinity, but in the want of humanity, if this claim be true. And so I do not really sorrow because he did not build a railroad or a steamboat, or the dome of St. Peter's; or anticipate the Riverside Press in printing, or the Waltham chronometer. There may be questioning about those things: there can be no question about these other things. By all the holiest intuitions and inspirations of the human soul; by the loftiest teachings of our own, and so far as I know of all other, Bibles; by the greatest utterances of his own holy, loving, and divine nature, if he knew everything, he was bound at least to tell this, because he had the face and touch and pity and love of a man, or his divinity was not so good a thing as a decent humanity. I have stated this argument at this length and so fully, because it is a small shaving, and no more, from the vast bulk of argument in favor of our position on the nature of Jesus Christ. I believe no interpretation can be right, except that which is rooted and grounded in the deepest convictions and experiences, the clearest light and truth, that we apply to all the holiest and best things beside. In that light the light in which we see our daily duties and homes and children, our common honesties, and humanities and hopes, there can be no such universal knowledge ascribed to the Messiah. Ascribe it, and you rob him of what is to me infinitely better. So far as this small splint of light, then, can reveal God, Christ is not God, neither indeed can be. - So, secondly, when we get away from theories, and look honestly into the facts of the case as they stand in the Gospels, we begin to see at once, that the conditions of life to this beautiful and ingenuous soul were very much what they are to you and me. The Gospels, as you know, are not four separate and complete lives of Christ, arranged in exact chronological order, but, at the best, fragments, of which the real sequence and order are almost hopelessly gone. Still, the careful, diligent student is not left entirely without chart and compass. The harmonies that have been constructed help us somewhat, and the knowledge of what must have been the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus helps us still more. The result of all such intelligent study is that Christ began his life a Jew, believing entirely in the Jewish groove, full of exclusive and proud Jewish ideas, colored by Jewish prejudices, and hedged in by Jewish limitations; but that gradually, as his soul rose to higher planes, into clearer atmospheres, commanding vaster ranges of vision, the god of the Hebrew gave way to the God and Father of us all, the Jewish order and ritual, to the holier service and worship of the soul. The narrow party-walls that enclosed the bigoted and turbulent faction that called themselves Jews fell down, and revealed to him the mighty brotherhood of humanity; and the lurid fires and blank despairs of the Jewish Tophet were woven through and through with the golden and silvern relief of hope. Else I cannot imagine how these Gospels make him say at one time, "Not one smallest letter or comma shall pass from the law, until all be fulfilled"; and, "Whosoever shall break one of these least commandments, and teach men so, the same shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; and whosoever shall observe and do them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven ": and, at another time, order a man he had healed to do, and again defend his disciples for doing, that which, on any fair interpretation of the old law and the prophets, must certainly be sabbath-breaking. Or why he should say to the people in one place, "The Scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses' seat: whatsoever, therefore, they bid you do, that observe and do ;" and then warn them, that these very men were blind guides, tyrannic, spiritual despots, binding burdens on the people too heavy to be borne, which they themselves would not touch with one of their fingers, devouring widows' houses, and for pretence making long prayers. How he should stand out so long against the agonizing entreaties of the woman, that he would heal her daughter, and say to her, "I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel; and it is not right to take the children's -- |