Man or God ?

The lecture given by Mr Charles Bright at the Princess Theatre on Sunday, July 28, was the first of two under the above title in reply to the lectures in course of delivery by Professor Salmond. The prefatory reading was taken from a sermon by Theodore Parker, entitled, "The Relation of Jesus to his Age and the Ages."

Mr. Bright said that he desired at the outset to point out to his audience that the rev. gentleman whose lectures suggested the subject of the evening occupied the position of an advocate. In the great case of "Catholicism: or, Universal Religion v. Presbyterian Christianity," he held a brief for the defence. As soon as he saw that any line of argument was carrying him outside of that brief, he drew back. Of course he would consider that Presbyterian Christianity and truth were identical, but he was not in a position to judge that question, because he was careful not to be led away from his prescribed limits. One line of argument, he foresaw, would lead to Pantheism, therefore, he forsook it. Another he was conscious would take him to Deism. A third might involve him in Mariolatry; or a fourth in Rationalism: and he must have nothing to do with them. If a person set off to walk from Dunedin to Caversham he would naturally take the road which led to Caversham. He would not turn one way, for St. Kilda lay in that direction, nor the other, lest he should find himself in Mornington. He would reach Caversham, but he would not know which eminence in the neighbourhood of Dunedin gave the broadest view of the ocean. So with Professor Salmond. He set off with the avowed intention of reaching Calvinism, and so, of course he arrived at Calvinism, but he did not therefore necessarily obtain the most extensive view of the great ocean of truth. If they bore that fact in mind they would be able to form a fair estimate of the voluminous lectures the Professor of Presbyterian Theology was delivering. After having devoted several evenings to proving that Jesus of Nazareth was a man—a fact which (to adopt the French idiom) might be supposed to go without saying—Professor Salmond opened the sixth lecture of his course with these observations as given in that lecturer's revised report in the 'Christian Record' :—"We now affirm that Christ was very God—of equal power and glory with the Father. It is a stupendous assertion, one which takes our breath away, whenever we awake from the passive traditional way of assenting to it and realise the vast and overwhelming meaning of the assertion. We believe and affirm that God walked on this earth in fashion as a man—that he who lay in the manger, who was a babe in the arms of Mary, who wrought at a carpenter's bench, and wore a peasant's dress, who had not where to lay his head, and was crucified on Calvary—was very God, by whom the heavens and the earth were made. We can scarcely wonder that men say in their hearts or say openly, it is absurd, impossible, and incredible. Wilberforce tells us that a great statesman once said to him, 'How can I believe that the Almighty Creator of all things should have become a wailing infant, and submitted to the weakness of our nature ? Surely it is utterly impossible.' Similarly, J. S. Mill speaks with wonder of the fact that there should have once lived on earth a man who made so great page 3 an impression that whole nations have believed he was the Almighty in person ! Yet so it is and I stand here now, to affirm with the universal Church of these eighteen centuries that Christ was very God." That was a clear and straightforward statement of the position, and, doubtless, the assertion was well characterised as a stupendous one. Some time was then taken by the Professor in trying to show that the alleged fact ought not to be regarded as impossible. He (the lecturer) purposed pointing out that it was impossible to human thought at the present age of the world, but that had little to do with the question, which was—Is it true? It was admitted to be stupendously improbable, and, according to the canons of evidence, therefore, it needed overwhelming testimony to induce its acceptance. Professor Salmond did not press its acceptance as a blind act of faith; he appealed to reason, and it thus became needful to discern what unbiassed reason had to say to the proposition. That Jesus was a man born of woman was generally admitted; that he had been an infant, and then a boy, and then a youth, and had grown in knowledge and strength, was also admitted. That he had been taught the trade of a carpenter, and had worked at the trade, doing such jobs as came in his way, seemed to be allowed. That up to a certain time he must have been regarded by his friends and neighbours as an ordinary individual, appeared from the opinion expressed by them when he commenced his active career as a preacher, and from their then seeking to have him arrested as one beside himself. Here, then, came in the "stupendous assertion" to which Professor Salmond drew attention—that this man was the Creator of the Universe in person. Admitting this difficulty, the reverend gentleman contended that if we rejected it we had to encounter one as great—viz. : How came those who associated with him to believe him to be God Almighty, if it were not true. But this was not a fair statement of the case at the bar of reason. They did not know that those who associated with him believed him to be God. They only knew that certain persons unknown, compiling certain records more than a century after the events narrated, so shaped them that others—at a period still later—derived from them the conclusion that he must have been God. Now, in those days, when printing was unknown, and writing, even, was a rarity, the lapse of fifty years was far more potent than five centuries in modern times in throwing a haze of fancy around obscure facts. But, even in the records as now existing, there were loopholes left through which it could be recognised that the immediate associates of Jesus could not have believed him to be God. Had they so believed, could one of them have betrayed him to his enemies I Could another of them have altogether denied that he knew him ! And could the whole of them have deserted him as soon as he was arrested ? Had they conceived him to be the Almighty would they have declined to believe in his resurrection, and regarded the first statements respecting it as "idle tales?" Nay, even after his reappearance, subsequent to his crucifixion, was not Poter reported to have spoken of him as "A man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders, and signs, which God did by him"? Thus they did not know, as Professor Salmond alleged, that his associates believed him to be God; and so that difficulty disappeared, while the other "stupendous" difficulty remained. But if they looked at the earliest writings relative to Jesus which they possessed—writings supposed to have been penned from twenty to thirty years after his death, and admitted by the ablest biblical critics to be, in the main, genuine—what did they find I In these writings—the Epistles of Paul to the Romans, Corinthians, and Galatians,—while arguments of all kinds were presented to prove the beauty of Jesus's character and the grandeur of his sacrifice,—while the fact of his reappearance after death was insisted on over and over again, there was not a word about his having been born differently to other men—not a single attempt to demonstrate that he was Jehovah in person. Numerous passages might be quoted as showing that Paul held a different and more rational opinion, but he would give only three as illustrations. In Romans xv, 6, they read, "That ye may with one mind, and one mouth, glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." In 1st Cor., viii, 6, "To us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all thing, page 4 and we in .him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things," In 2nd Cor. i, 3, "Blessed be God, oven the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ—the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort." If Paul had had this "stupendous assertion" of Professor Salinoud's to make good, was he the man to have shirked his work I Professor Salmond said that the idea of the incarnation was so foreign to the mind of the Jewish doctors that they could not understand Jesus' alleged allusion to it. Well, now that it was affirmed to have occurred once in the world's history, and was so believed by the "universal Church," would such an allusion gain more ready credence I would the professors of the Otago University be more open to comprehend such a hint from a youth in their midst I The belief of the early fathers of the Church too, on this subject, was different to that of Professor Salmond, and was admitted to be so by many Trinitarian writers. It was not until the fourth century that the idea that Jesus Christ was "very God," crystallised into a dogma. Three centuries of traditions, moulded by the streams of opinions and fancies, flowing in from all quarters—Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and many others—at length settled themselves into that belief as orthodox, in an age when the deification of man was familiar to the human consciousness, and God himself was regarded as merely a monarch on a mightier scale. Thus Jesus, the last and noblest of the Jewish prophets, was made first a Prince of the House of David, then a son of God, then the only begotten son of God, and then God himself. In an age when tradesmen were despised, and only the blood royal thought worthy of respect, was it to be expected that the Jews, Egyptians, Greeks, Persians, and Romans, who became Christians, could endure to have it conceived that they were reverencing a Galilean carpenter, however much he might be, by nature, a spiritual King among men? Nowadays, less was thought of royalty, and, possibly, there were many there who, in the annals of their country, would not barter those commoners Shakspere, Milton, and Cromwell for a whole line of Kings. Thus, then, the idea of Jesus as God had taken possession of Christendom, and, once in possession, held it until men were allowed to reason about it,—a privilege which was scarcely yet fully accorded. The mere presentment of the proposition to the eye of unprejudiced reason was sufficient. It was seen to be as impossible for the Infinite to become the Finite as for a whole to be less than a part. People might say it, but they could not think it. They might say that the paddle-wheel of a steamer was the solar system; nay they, the "Universal Church," might dogmatically affirm it, but that would not make it true. Of course, when closely pressed, orthodox believers fell back on the phrase, "It's a mystery," and asked if we were not surrounded by mystery. The answer to that was—"We do not dogmatise about the mysteries which surround us. We leave them as mysteries until we can learn something definite concerning them. If you say that the angles of an equilateral triangle are equal to each other, and together equal to two right angles, you may dogmatise, because you can demonstrate; but if you say that an equilateral triangle is an elephant, you cannot dogmatise about that, and then, as a last resort, say it is a mystery." Jesus himself was reported to have spoken of "My Father and yours," "My God and yours;" and in the words of John Milton, "If the Father be the God of Christ, and the same be our God; and if there be none other God but one, there can be no other God beside the Father." That was unanswerable, and no amount of theological jargon could obliterate it.

Talk of essence and substance, and I know not what;

God either made Christ, or else He did not.

If He did, Christ's a creature—that's plain to our view;

If not, Christ's a God—and then we have two.

It was irrationalism in religion which repelled great minds—Milton, Newton, Locke, Hume, Humboldt, Goethe, in the past—and almost all the eminent thinkers of the present day. It reduced God from the Father of Humanity to the Father of a procession of Y.M.C. Associations. Why, the other day, at the meeting held to form a Young Women's Christian Association in Dunedin, the one living woman hold up as a pattern—Florence Nightingale—would not be eligible for membership. In the last page 5 number of the 'Christian Record' a correspondent stated that "there was good reason for believing" that Miss Nightingale, "though living among Unitarians," was becoming a believer in Jesus as the Divine Saviour. She had always believed in Jesus as a Divine Saviour, chief among the great and noble souls who helped humanity to progress towards God. The next probable convert spoken of by the same correspondent was Charles Brad-laugh ! Whatever religious views thoughtful men and women might entertain, there was little likelihood of their becoming perverts to irrationalism,—to a belief that the Infinite God, the incomprehensible Spirit of Power, Love, and Wisdom, ever walked the earth as a single finite human being.

Concluding Lecture.

After a preliminary reading, taken from Greg's "Creed of Christendom," and a brief re-statement of the principal points of his preceding lecture, Mr Bright said they wore informed in Professor Salmond's last lecture that the Church never affirmed that the Infinite became finite. It was true that this was nowhere affirmed in so many words, as the absurdity would thereby be made too conspicuous; but it was declared in effect when it was asserted that God became a man, that Jesus of Nazareth was God. The only ideal they could form of God was, that He was infinite. He was described in the Westminster Confession of Faith thus :—" There is but one only living and true God, who is infinite in being and perfection." Man, they knew, was finite in being and perfection. Hence to say that God became man, or that a man was God, was to assert that the Infinite became finite. It would not be worth while to dwell upon such a self-evident proposition wore it not that people were dogmatically told that they must think as the Church thought, or stand in peril of eternal torment. Women and children were still frightened by the Church's thunder, so that it became important to show that the Church's thought was, with our enlarged ideas of an infinite Deity, simply impossible. A single finite man, as a manifestation of the whole of an Infinite God, was an impossibility of human thought. Even the whole of humanity, Jesus included, was too limited; and that was felt by rational minds to be the weakness of Comte's system of religious philosophy. In order to facilitate their conception of the union of God and Man in one person, their attention was directed by Professor Salmond to the union of soul and body in ordinary men. There was an immense difference, they were told, between the body "which suffered pain" and the mind "which worked a problem," and yet both were united in one person. Without doing more than pointing out that there were no dogmas on this question,—that they were loft free to work out the problem as facts might direct,—he would beg of them to remember that they knew nothing concerning mind or soul except through the manifestations of matter. To speak of "the body which suffered pain and the mind which worked a problem" was most unphilosophical, excepting in go far as they might speak of the body of a dog which suffered, and the mind of a dog which went for a buried bone. They discerned mind developing in matter as matter might shape itself, from the protozoan to the man. They knew little yet of the potency of matter which might include all they were in the habit of speaking of as mind or spirit. So far as the science of spiritualism had been investigated they were led to believe that in all future lives they would only know of what they termed "mind" by its manifestations in matter, though matter not of a kind to become cognizant through their existing avenues of sensation. And as we knew of mind only by its manifestations in matter, of every atom of which it probably formed an essential part, so we only knew of God by His manifestation in the Universe, and from those saw that He must be different to a man. Mind acting in matter, operated according to a given conjunction of atoms. An oyster acted like an oyster; never like a lion. There was a uniformity apparent in nature from an observance of which they were enabled to systematise their thoughts, and to speak of a God-man was, to scientific thought, just as absurd as to speak of a lion-oyster. But, it was impressed upon them that the page 6 whole of the Bible in a marvellous way led up to this thought, that without it the prophetic writings became unmeaning. If this were so, was it not strange that the Jews, through whom those prophecies were given, and to whom they wore addressed, entertained a different conviction ? They regarded the Messianic prophecies as definitely indicating a Prince of the blood royal, an earthly sovereign, one who was to restore the sceptre to Israel, revive the national grandeur of the Jews and enable them to triumph over their enemies. The Old Testament gave the Jews no idea of a God-man, an idea which they still rejected with scorn. They insisted that they held by the Bible in declaring that God was the only Redeemer and the only Saviour. The explicitness of the Bible on this point had probably insured that Jesus should be declared to be God whenever he came to be worshipped as Messiah. But it was asserted that he was worshipped in his lifetime. That learned writer Dr Vance Smith pointed out that the Greek word for religious worship was never used towards Jesus in his lifetime, but merely the word with the old English sense of worship—respectful obeisance. Take the sentence, for instance, in Matthew—"Then came to him the mother of Zebedee's children worshipping him," it was the same word as was used in the parable in the same gospel of the servant who owed money to his master—"The servant therefore fell down and worshipped him, saying, Lord, have patience with me, and I will pay thee all." Even on Jesus' reappearance after the resurrection when his disciples were said in the book of Matthew to "worship" him, the word for obeisance was adopted. But assuming that they could become confidently aware of the opinion entertained of Jesus in his lifetime, they would not be justified in binding the thought of this age by the thought of the past. Through the advancement made in a knowledge of the operations of nature, the leading minds of this day were in a position to form a safer judgment of a question of this description than people could form in times when the incarnation of a deity was regarded as a by no means unlikely occurrence. After a quotation from Justyn Martyr's 'Apology,' showing how that writer appealed to the ignorant prepossessions of the Greeks and Romans on this subject, the lecturer contended that it was for this age to consider and judge the problem, and not to be bound by the superstitious belief of an inferior epoch. When it was affirmed that the miraculous achievements of Jesus attested his divinity, it must be remembered that we did not know what achievements a gifted man could perform, and what needed a God to accomplish. Moreover, there was no scientific testing of the alleged marvels of those days to discover their significance. There was also this tremendous weakness in the evidence on which they were believed—a weakness reference to which was carefully avoided by orthodox lecturers. The alleged marvels took place in a portion of the great Roman Empire in an age of historical research and philosophical observation. Yet secular history was silent regarding them. On this head he would quote the following passage from Gibbons' 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire':—

How shall we excuse the supine inattention of the Pagan and philosophic world to those evidences which were presented by the hand of Omnipotence, not to their reason, but to their senses ? During the age of Christ, of his apostles, and of their first disciples, the doctrine which they preached was confirmed by innumerable prodigies. The lame walked, the blind saw, the sick were healed, the dead were raised, demons were expelled, and the laws of nature were frequently suspended for the benefit of the Church. But the sages of Greece and Rome turned aside from the awful spectacle, and, pursuing the ordinary occupations of life and study appeared unconscious of any alterations in the moral or physical government of the world. Under the reign of Tiberius the whole earth, or at least a celebrated province of the Roman Empire, was involved in a preternatural darkness of three hours. Even this miraculous event, which ought to have excited the wonder, the curiosity, and the devotion of mankind, passed without notice in an age of science and history. It happened during the lifetime of Seneca and the elder Pliny, who must have experienced the immediate effects, or received the earliest intelligence of the prodigy. Each of these philosophers, in a laborious work, has recorded all the great phenomena of nature—earthquakes, meteors, comets, and eclipses—which his indefatigable curiosity could collect. Both the one and the other have omitted to mention the greatest page 7 phenomenon to which the mortal eye has been witness since the creation of the globe. A distinct chapter of Pliny is designed for eclipses of an extraordinary nature and unusual duration, but he contents himself with describing the singular defect of light which followed the murder of Cæsar, when during the greatest part of the year the orb of the sun appeared pale and without splendour. This season of obscurity, which cannot surely be compared with the preternatural darkness of the Passion, had been already celebrated by most of the poets and historians of that memorable age.

But not merely did the Roman historians and philosophers pass unnoticed the alleged miracles in Judea. Josephus, who wrote an elaborate history of that very province and time, was silent concerning them, though loquacious enough about incidents which were by comparison of the most common-place character. Added to this silence of historians, there was the undoubted fact that the early Christians were apt at invention and forgery—a fact which tended to throw additional disrepute over the existing narratives. The forged interpolation in Josephus was yet more eloquent than his own silence—an interpolation in which Josephus was made to suggest that Jesus was possibly Cod in person, and then to devote an obviously sandwiched paragraph of a dozen lines to such an astounding marvel. It was not merely a forgery, but an extremely clumsy one, to boot. Then there were no less than 132 scripture books, including 34 gospel accounts, referred to by different early christian writers, and none of them included in the established canon. All of them—and many of them were still extant—must now therefore be set down as spurious. "What else could be expected of an age when, to adopt the saying of one of the Fathers of the Church, men "believed because it was impossible?" To test the question for themselves, they should consider what evidence would be required at the present day before a man could prove that he was God. Suppose a mechanic in some outlying village of the British Empire—Nazareth was a place so insignificant that it was not mentioned in the Old Testament, or by Josephus—were to go to the metropolis of his country and desire to convince people that he was God, what evidence would be sufficient? Would any! If the still came and made obeisance to him, would it not be regarded as an optical illusion or a trick ! But if no testimony at this day would convince people of the truth of such an impossibility, how was it to be expected that thoughtful men should be convinced by the testimony of ancient traditions ! Look what an injurious effect the supposition that Jesus was God had, too, on any rational theory of God's moral government of the world. So long as he was believed to be man, however highly gifted and inspired, it was conceivable that God should have commissioned other gifted men to proclaim His Word to other branches of the great human family. Then, the myriads of mankind who never heard of Jesus of Nazareth were not left without the comforting assurance of their Infinite Father's love, but were all spiritually tended according to the needs of their various natures. Thus the Buddhists, who alone numbered at this day far more than the Christians, had their Buddha to tell them not to lie, or steal or kill,—not to partake of intoxicating liquors oven. Recent travellers through the great nation of Japan told how truth-loving, kindly-disposed, and sober the common people were, beyond anything known elsewhere, and that such a thing as a beggar was not to be seen in the towns. If Jesus were God, and the only God, the only way, too, to true goodness, how were they to account for these anomalies ? The fact was that some Christians, by declining to look at anything but Jesus and the Bible, "shut the universe and God from sight." The symbol of Christianity held in front of their eyes concealed creation. In Jesus' lifetime he was not accepted even as a prophet in his own country, and could there do no great works because of their unbelief, but now he was God Omnipotent! Christendom, itself, had been ever at war over this theological dogma; and at this moment, if the sect which still outnumbered all the rest possessed the power it once wielded, the lectures under review would not be allowed to be delivered, and Professor Salmond, himself, would be cast into prison and probably burned—not because of any immorality he had committed, but because he did not think correctly about this problem, and failed to concede due respect and rever- page 8 ence to her who was regarded as the mother of God. Surely truth was to be looked for, as Socrates indicated, in the region where mankind approached agreement, rather than in that where there was perpetual conflict. And so it would prove in respect to the life and teachings of the Prophet of Nazareth.

Jesus! when will mankind know thee aright?
When will thy struggling brethren reach thy height?
And see that love of all is lore of thee,
And man to man be bound in harmony ?
When all shall follow in the pathway trod
By one whose creed was love to man and God ?
Blest creed of creeds, throughout the nations given,
And all-convincing as the light of heaven !