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DIVINITY SCHOOL
TROWBRIDGE LIBRARY

3[esusf AS
PROBLEM, TEACHER, PERSONALITY
AND FORCE

JESUS, AS
PROBLEM, TEACHER, PERSONAL
ITY AND FORCE

Four Lectures
BY
W. BORNEMANN, W. VEIT, H. SCHUSTER
AND E. FOERSTER

Authorized Translation from the German by
GEORGE WILLIAM GILMORE
Associate Editor, "The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia
of Religious Knowledge"

FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY
NEW YORK AND LONDON
1910

Copyright, 1910, by
Funk & Wagnalls Company
tPrinted in the United States of America]
Published in September, 19 10

CONTENTS PAGE
Translator's Preface  vii
Preface  xi
I. Jesus as Problem, by Senior Professor
W. Bornemann, Th.D  3
II. Jesus as Teacher, by Pastor W. Veit... 65
III. Jesus as Personality, by Head Master
H. Schuster  1 19 ^-
IV. Jesus as Force, by Pastor E,. Foers-
ter, Th.D  191

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
Since the authors of the lectures here trans
lated are not yet well known in America, a
word of introduction should be accorded.
Senior Professor Friedrich Wilhelm Bern-
hard Bbrnemann, Th. D., born in 1858, was
a pupil of Ritschl, and received his education
at Gottingen and Leipsic. He has taught in
the University of Gottingen, in the cloister
school at Magdeburg, and in the University
of Basel. Since 1902 he has been pastor at
Frankfort-on-the-Main, and senior since
1906. He has written on general and theo
logical education and on missions, and has
furnished a commentary on Thessalonians.
Pastor Willy Veit, who was born at Frank
fort in 1872, studied at Erlangen and Berlin,
served as pastor of the German Church at
Manchester, England, from 1898 till 1905,
and since 1905 has been pastor of St. Katha
rine's at Frankfort and editor of Die
Gemeinde, the organ there of "modern" the
ology. vii

viii Cranslatot^ preface 
Head Master Herrmann Schuster was born
at Uelzen in Hannover in 1874, studied at
Gottingen and Greifswald, was tutor at
Buenos Ayres from 1896 until 1899, and since
1900 has .taught at Gottingen and in the gym
nasium of Frankfort. At Easter of 1910 he
removed to Hannover.
Pastor Erich Foerster, Th. D., was born
at Greifswald in 1865, was a pupil of Har
nack, studying at Marburg and Berlin, and
since 1895 has been pastor of the German
Evangelical Reformed Church at Frankfort,
where since 1907 he has taught church history
in the academy. He is editor of Chronik der
christlichen Welt, and author of a number
of little books dealing with the relations of
Church and State.
At the time of the delivery of these lec
tures, all these men were residents of the
flourishing commercial city of Frankfort.
They belonged there to a circle which goes
by the name of "Friends of the Christian
World." Theologically, they own affiliation
with the new Ritschlian school, of which
Adolf Harnack is the best known representa
tive. The object of this school and circle is
the reconciliation of a "modern" theology,

V

 Ctanglatot'g preface  ix
so scientifically constructed as to be a perma
nent acquisition, with the historical practical
Christianity which dominates the western
world and aims at the conquest of the East.
This is to be accomplished by rejecting the
obsoletisms of a decadent orthodoxy which
repel the modern thinker, and by refuting a
radical rationalism which assails not only
Christianity but religion itself. The basis is
found in rigid application of the canons of
historical criticism to the original records of
Christianity and in attention to the data that
are given by a profound psychology and by
Christian experience.
The present lectures strike a note not very
familiar to American readers, one object be
ing to defend the "historical Jesus" against
the new mythical theory proposed by Profes
sor Arthur Drews. The little volume will be
found full of suggestion, both for the pulpit
and the pew, while here and here such de
lightful insights into the mind and method of
Jesus Christ are afforded as will well repay
perusal. The Translator.

PREFACE
After the four authors of these lectures
had twice appeared in a lecture series before
the Frankfort public, we were bold enough
in October and November of this year to
offer the following lectures. Our addresses
have found response, and from year to year
the number of auditors has increased; this
year it was granted to us to fill each evening
one of the largest halls in the city. For this
we are profoundly thankful. The assurance
il borne in upon us that gradually the work
of modern theology is winning the confidence
of the thinking and the earnest among our
people. While we can hardly hope to be
able to set forth perfected and conclusive re
sults, we assume to address ourselves with
full scientific honesty and rigor to the great
question which the heritage of the past and
responsibility for the future bring to us. It
is our ambition, however, not merely to deal
with interesting scientific problems; we
would also serve Christian piety. We are
less concerned to hold a brief for modern

xii  Preface 
theology than to spread knowledge of the
unspeakably rich and great treasure with
which the world has been endowed in the
person of Jesus Christ, and to inspire in men
the courage from henceforth to draw upon
this fullness. May the printed word attain
this end, which the spoken word also at
tempted to gain.
The Authors.
Frankfort-on-the-Main, Advent, 1909.

3fegug 3s problem
BY
Senior Professor W. Bornemann, Th.D.

JESUS AS PROBLEM
The task which our "circle of friends" has
set itself in this year's course of lectures* is
indicated by the single name Jesus. Present
conditions make it an imperative necessity
for us to consider in public this weightiest
and most central theme of the Christian re
ligion. The greatness of the task, which will
probably never be fully accomplished, and
certainly can not be compassed within the
narrow limits afforded by four lectures, cre
ates in us much hesitation. Yet, so far as our
abilities permit, we offer our answer with
cheerful alacrity and in the consciousness
that we point out to our hearers a road that
may be travelled, one from which indeed
not all the difficulties are removed, but which
leads on to a free and at the same time
* In the autumn of 1907 the present speakers lec
tured on "The Religious Ideals of Modern Theology,"
in 1908 on "May Religion Remain an Affair of the In
dividual?" Both these lecture-courses were published
(Frankfort, 1908-1909). 3

3!egug ag problem

scientific and religious-ethical understanding.
It is my task now to prepare, indicate, and
mark out this road; I have to justify its
character and direction while I speak frankly
of all the difficulties which present them
selves in the performance of our task, de-
potentialize certain objections which would
in advance brand our undertaking as foolish
and superfluous, and, still further, define the
meaning, bounds, and end of our program.
I
My theme expresses the fact that the per
son of Jesus does not mean for us a dogma
that is clearly fixed for all time and set forth
with divine infallibility; what that per
sonality suggests is that it is a problem. By
this is meant that Jesus in the days of his
earthly activities as well as in the entire sub
sequent spiritual history up to the present has
suggested something unsettled, and that
this was not alien to his purpose and was in
the very nature of things. Moreover we are
convinced that a Jesus who first of all is real
ized by the earnest conscience as a difficulty
and a question is for the individual, as for
mankind at large, more fruitful and richer

3[egug 3g Problem

in blessing than the Jesus of early church
dogma, though this dogma was supposed to
have removed completely all occasion for
question and for doubt.
Goethe, when he was at odds with Lavater,
on September 4th, 1788, wrote to Herder as
follows : "It is indeed true that the story of
Jesus is one of those primitive causes of such
a kind that the world may exist for ten
thousand years and then no one will come to
a right understanding of it; for it takes as
much force of knowledge and understanding,
and as high power of conception to defend it
as to assail it." As an old man, less positive
and less bold, he expressed the same idea in
a discussion with Chancellor Miiller, June 8,
1830, in the words: "Christ remains for me
ever an extremely significant but extremely
enigmatic being." More intelligibly still
has Rudolph Eucken characterized the situa
tion* : "From the point of view of the total
impression, Jesus is more thoroughly trans
parent and familiar than any hero of world-
history. But this sense of nearness and fa
miliarity persists only so long as we take that
* Die Lebensanschauungen der grossen Denker, 7th
ed., Leipsic, 1907.

3fegug 3g Problem

total impression absolutely and as a unity;
as soon as we analyze it, as soon as we would
explain and understand the state of fact, his
personality withdraws to a far distance,
question rises upon question, riddle upon
riddle obtrudes, and secure possession is
transformed into toilsome search."
Grave injustice is done to theologians in
the charge which is often publicly made that,
consciously or unconsciously, they are ac
customed to deny this condition of things or
to veil it. The fact is the contrary of this;
practically every theologian experiences what
Eucken has expressed, so much so that
through orthodox circles runs the perception
that theological study makes of the person of
Jesus first of all a problem, and it is this very
thing which so disturbs the pious layman
and fills him with distrust. As a matter of
fact, the very existence of a Christian dog
matics and ethics is evidence that the person
of Jesus both can and indeed must become
the object of scientific investigation. The
history of doctrine speaks to us of the mani
fold development and treatment of the prob
lem. Exegesis of the New Testament and the
attempt, so often repeated in the last century,

3fe0ug ag Problem

to give a representation of the life of Jesus
prove that the so-called "Biblical Jesus"
furnishes for investigation much of difficulty
and of questioning. Moreover preaching,
ecclesiastical instruction, and church hym-
nody reveal unmistakably in their history the
truth that to every age and to every thinking
man the personality of Jesus is a recurring
problem. We may omit from our survey the
theologians who, according to the prejudice
of so many even cultured people, not to
speak of the half educated, look down upon
the world from their "captive balloon" of
ecclesiastical dogma or, worse still, live out
their existence like purblind moles in a tun
nel of foggy thought. If we cast our eyes
upon those who are untrammelled by any re
gard for Church and office and not infre
quently are actuated by hostility to ecclesias
tical teaching, who have nevertheless stood
out as guides in the spiritual life of modern
man, or upon those whose interests are not
primarily religious, but rather philosophical,
literary, or concerned with art or the social
side of life, it will be found that they are
ever drawn anew and enchained by the
mysterious might of the Nazarene. These

8  Jegtig 3g problem 
men have been constantly impelled, even to
the present, to try to solve the riddle of his
personality and have returned answers of
manifold form. One may go further and
note thar the world of workers also halts be
fore his form, regarding it with eager ques
tioning gaze.
I shall not enumerate the names of those
who have attempted the problem. Omitting
all mention of the insignificant, the fanatical,
the mere pamphleteers, one can recall a great
roll of our most eminent poets, thinkers, artists,
and authors whom the subject has tempted.
A guide to him who would in brief time and
cursorily gain information here is furnished
by the brochure of Professor Hermann
Jordan, Jesus und die modernen Jesusbilder,
published in the Zeit- und Streitfragen series
(Gross-Lichterfelde, 1909).* A more pro-
* The settlement with the liberal theology in this
treatise by Jordan seems to me exceedingly weak. In
the really essential parts the author assumes the posi
tion of the critical theology. Yet Jordan emphasizes
the view of the genuineness of the Fourth Gospel as dis
tinguishing his standpoint from that of modern theo
logians (pp. 99-100). But I am unable to understand
how he can attribute so great importance to this point, in
view of his statement on p. 21 : "The Jesus of John's
Gospel is, so to speak, thoroughly interpenetrated by the

3[egug 30 problem

found, spiritual and worthful treatise is
Weinel's Jesus im neunzehnten Jahrhundert
(Tubingen, 1907). A very direct and lively
entire personality of the author, and has taken over
from him many a passage, many a manner of speaking,
many a term of expression, many a thought; John has
viewed Jesus through his own eyes alone, while the first
three evangelists have, more nearly than he, approached
an objective historical presentation." I am inclined to
think that Wrede's Messiasgeheimnis (Gottingen, 1901),
the fundamental position of which is, by most critical
theologians rejected as untenable, is just as little to be
regarded as invalidating the picture of Jesus presented
by modern theology as the words of Albert Schweitzert
or the fanatical pronouncement of Schnehens (cf. Jor
dan's work, pp. 101, 103). And I must question the
statement that modern theology leads along the road
which "explains the entire person of Jesus by the fac
tors of his environment, the earthly world" (p. 103).
Finally, when Jordan (p. 104) reckons as "the wholly
natural consequence" of the application of modern the
ology that "Jesus can not be the absolute guide to God,
the absolute revealer of God," he seems to me to in
troduce obscurity and to employ a confusing misuse, in
such a connection, of the word "absolute." By the test
of the mind of Jesus himself, which is the more impor
tant and necessary — that in the realities of life Jesus
serves as the highest and most determined guide to God,
or that we honor him in theory and in terminology by
applying to him the obscure predicate "absolute"?
translator's note: In Von Reimarus zu Wrede; eine
Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung, Tubingen, 1906;
Eng. transl., The Quest of the Historical Jesus: a Criti
cal Study of its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede, Lon
don, 1910.

io 3Ie0U0 3g Problem 
review is furnished by Gustav Pfannmiiller's
attractive work Jesus im Urteil der Jahr-
hunderte (Leipsic and Berlin, 1908), which
in light touches portrays the characteristic
pronouncements, sketches, poems, and pic
tures by the most diverse ages and men, giv
ing to each characterization its orientation in
a brief introduction. From this can one ob
tain a most lively impression of the varying
and multiform ways in which in the course of
time the person of Jesus has produced effects
and been understood, also how in the present
it raises a host of questions and confronts the
modern man as a very palpable problem.
Was Jesus really the conscious founder of
a new world religion, or merely the head of
a Jewish sect which had no influence, the ad
herents of which unduly emphasized him and
his cause or made of both something es
sentially different from what he himself
thought and determined? Did he look for
the realization of a transcendental and super
natural kingdom of the future, or was he con
scious of founding in his time and in this
world a spiritual kingdom of God? Was he
a Jewish rabbi of no greater significance than
many others, without originality or more

3[egug ag Problem

1 1

than ordinary power, or was he a religious
genius, an ethical hero, unique among men
in purity, and in warmth and spiritual
power? Was he a man whose life, altogether
against his initiative, developed from a beau
tiful idyl into a terrible tragedy, or was he a
hero whose whole activity and whose suffer
ing and death were the expression, by sheer
intensity of purpose, of a lofty and most inti
mately purposeful personality? Was he a
martyr to conviction, a hero and a revelation
of eternal truth, or a poor deluded enthusiast,
if not indeed an arrant deceiver? Was he a
rebel, or the victim of a foul judicial
murder? Was he normal physically and
mentally, a sound natural man, or was he an
eccentric, morbid individual affected by
monomania and hallucination? Was he con
sciously or unconsciously an adherent and
champion of a Buddhistic contempt for the
world and of asceticism, or an independent
historical phenomenon, having his own posi
tive aims and the might of a new world-con
queror? Did he belong in the category of
social reformers, of champions of the poor
and down-trodden, or did he teach on the
contrary a thoroughly individualistic view

i2  3[egug ag problem 
and art of life? Was he, or was he not, a
worker of miracles? Had he, or had he not,
messianic ambitions? Had he, or had he not,
a feeling for culture, for nature, for work,
for civic association, for family life? Did
he undergo during his public activity any
inner development, or did he remain the same
in purpose, views, and intentions? Was he
the mediator and expiator for mankind, or
only the religious-ethical leader, the head and
the antitype of a new mankind? Was he the
revealer of a rational religion and humanity,
or the messenger of supernatural truth? Was
he, in what he was and did, solely the prod
uct of the historical factors of his time and
of significance only for the distant past, or is
he in a certain sense the comprehension of
human totality, the universal, ideal man?
Does his unique significance apply only to
the ethical-religious, or does it extend over
all regions of life and history? Is he the ap
pearance in history of a special divine power
or person, or only a man, though the holiest
and greatest among men? Have the honors
attributed to him in the New Testament, the
essential attributes applied to him in ec
clesiastical dogma, any abiding cogency for

 3fegu0 a0 problem  13
the present? Is Jesus himself an obsolete
and dead bit from a foreign and distant past,
or is there a sense in which one may confess
"Jesus Christ the same yesterday, to-day, and
forever."* * It is permitted to mention but a few of the names
with which questions like the foregoing are connected.
Thus Johannes Weiss and Albert Schweitzer regard
the Kingdom of God, preached by Jesus, as belonging
to the future ; F. Naumann (in his Jesus als Volksmann,
Gottingen, 1894) regards him as a social reformer; Jo
seph Viktor Widmann (Der Heilige und die Tiere,
Frauenfeld, 1907) describes him as a martyr true to his
convictions; Houston Stuart Chamberlain makes of him
the Aryan ideal man with positive purposes in civiliza
tion, and the purveyor of a completed ethics (Arische
Weltanschauung, Berlin, 1905); Oscar Wilde (De pro-
fundis) looks upon him as the noblest and first of the
individualists, benevolent and imaginative; by Gustav
Frenssen, Hans von Kahlberg, and in a certain sense
also by Rosegger, Jesus is pictured as romantic and
extravagant, vacillating between mental abstraction and
action, conducted from idyl to tragedy; Max Kretzer
calls him "the conscience of society" and a living pro
test against the Christianity of history; by Eduard von
Hartmann, Ellen Key, Paul Heyse, Kalthoff, and Leo
Tolstoy he is regarded as an ascetic idealist opposed
to civilization; Soren Kierkegaard characterizes him as
sheer man, albeit the greatest who ever lived, yet pene
trated throughout by inner disharmony; Karl Gutzkow
and Eugen Losinsky see in him a thoroughly mediocre
and decadent individual, full of contradictions and fol
lies; the anonymous author of Finsternisse, die Lehre
Jesu im Lichte der Kritik (1896), and also Yves Guyot
and Sigismund Lacroix, consider him as religiously and

14  3[egug ag Problem 
Delicate and timid spirits who live in
calm retirement and ecclesiastical quiet, un
disturbed by the spiritual storms and tur
moils of the present, are not unlikely to be
terrified by these questions. Nevertheless
such problems are actually proposed and dis
cussed in public, and they are even more
numerous and more penetrating than those
already suggested. If we are to be just to
the present and would serve our contempor
aries, we may not act as if these questions
were no concern of ours, nor may we hastily
label as "irreligious" and "godless" those
who ask them and, perchance, answer them
in a manner that seems to us unlovely and
incomprehensible. Jesus himself was not one
to bind men to a mass of unintelligible for
mulas — that frank saying about "Lord,
Lord!" was uttered with ringing emphasis.
Indeed wp are told that a man who came to
him with doubts he pronounced "an Israelite
indeed, in whom is no guile" [John i. 45-48].
If we are rightly to decide and really to con-
ethically an abject and doubtful subject. The interested
reader who would gain in brief a knowledge of what
has been said on the subject is referred to Pfanmuller's
book named above (p. 10).

 3fegug ag Problem  15
vince, we must first understand those who
question and doubt.
Is it strange that the present age presents
such a multitude of questions concerning the
person of Jesus? Has there ever been a
period in the world's history when in so brief
a time so complete a revolution in the thought
of culture and in mental life has been
wrought as in the last century and a half?
Are not these uneasy gropings and agitations,
these searchings and essays after discovery,
a consequence of the inconceivably great
flood of new impressions and phenomena
which have poured out over mankind? Are
they not the other side, so to speak, of all the
liberties and acquisitions of which we are so
proud? Like the sea through a breach in
a dyke, these new questions have invaded the
hitherto so clearly delimited and restfully
situated preserve of the domain of the spirit.
Philosophy has experienced a very remark
able transformation, and theology has also
changed essentially its character. The criti
cal processes and the contemplation induced
by the scientific discussion of nature — in
practical results so rich — have undermined
tradition and broken it down, and a totally

_i6  3fegu0 30 Problem 
different set of preferences has set at work
enormous activities.
With the literary difficulties which inhere
in the earliest documents belonging to Chris
tianity there are associated difficulties of con
ception which theological tradition has im
posed, as well as religious difficulties inher
ing in the heritage from the past which have
too easily gained acceptance. Comparative
religion has rent the veil which had con
cealed so many related phenomena in the old
religions. Graves and ruins, sherds and rub
bish heaps have begun to tell the story of
primitive times. And as the horizon of our
knowledge extends and our methods become
keener, we grow in equal measure more con
scious of the limits of our understanding, the
relativity of our wisdom, and the incomplete
ness of our conception of the universe. It is
not always the passion for novelty or a funda
mental opposition to piety and to Christianity
which is responsible for criticism and for the
reaction from the traditional; often enough
the stimulus arises from an earnest striving
for the truth or from a conviction respecting
the right path.
It seems to me that consciously or uncon-

 3[e0U0 a0 problem  17
sciously the might of criticism and contradic
tion [of tradition] is threefold, (i) Ec
clesiastical instruction in doctrine, so far as
religious dogma is concerned, had for cen
turies the characteristics of public and of
ficial authority, a conception and a practice
which is even yet more in evidence than is
generally appreciated. Partisan attempts to
break the force of this, periphrasis and al
legorical minimizing, do not change the facts.
And the historical spirit with its criticism is
bringing this impropriety into sharper re
lief. The more authority was permitted in
earlier days to pronounce decision, the more
jealously and positively does the individual
now guard his independence and liberty; he
may even go as far as often to prefer the
absurd and the miraculous to tradition. (2)
It is also a fact that in spite of all the instruc
tion given, the formulas of church teaching
are not understood; the impression has
gained currency that as consent to a formula
prevails in the Church, submission to a train
of thought counts as faith. Now, as a matter
of fact, the so-called teaching of the Church,
by which is meant the officially recognized
body of church tradition, in all its parts and

i8  3[egttg ag Problem 
as a whole has much more meaning and right
than to the layman it appears to possess. But
nevertheless this can be made intelligible
only to one who has appropriated a consider
able sum of historical and philosophical cul
ture. And it must be conceded that the dog
matic teaching of the Church in the abbrevi
ated form usually employed in popular edu
cation has no inner unity, on the contrary it
betrays clearly the fact that it is a deposit
of different ages. Religious formulas as
formulas per se are objectionable; they are
welcome and useful only so far as they con
vey to the immediate understanding not
simple cognitions but religious values. (3)
There is now abroad an involuntary feeling
that it is contrary to sense and insufficient in
effect to attempt to comprehend in a formula
or a theorem the value of a personality. This
is not merely because personality can be ap
preciated only by living personalities and
may be variously comprehended according
to disposition, need, maturity, and point of
view; a further reason lies in the possession
by each personality of something elastic, free,
mysterious, something to which definite
measure may not be applied. Every per-

 3fegug ag Problem  19
sonality presents a problem; the larger and
profounder the personality, the more un
fathomable is the problem.
Hence it comes that difficulties multiply
with respect to the person of Jesus. Nothing
is to be said here of his existence before and
after his earthly activity. A mist hangs
over his birth, and obscurity over the years
of his growth to manhood. As an object of
historical investigation there is left only the
period of his public service, from his baptism
by John till his death. Of his form we have
neither description nor picture. Hundreds
of questions about his earthly existence are
unanswered and unanswerable. His story
was for years transmitted orally, and when it
was committed to writing it was no longer
completely harmonious and transparent. A
"Life of Jesus" in the exact sense of the
words is impossible, there is available only a
sketch of his public ministry: from this there
stand out with significance the traits which
portray his character. And how wonderful
is the result! This man, of whom we know
so little and with whom none of us was ac
quainted, is yet known by us all and familiar
to us all.

20 3fegug ag problem

II
Can it be that there was only a phantom,
an autosuggestion, a deceptive shadow, a
ghost, which deceived one generation after
another, and that Jesus never existed? In
the very recent past there have appeared cer
tain scholars who, like Bruno Bauer fifty
years ago, deny the existence of Jesus and
attribute Christianity as a whole to a spiritual
emotion of the masses or carry it back to
sheer myth. This is done by such men as
the Englishman John M. Robertson (Chris
tianity and Mythology, London, 1900; Short
History of Christianity, ib., 1901 ; Pagan
Christs; Studies in Comparative Hierology,
ib., 1903), the Frenchmen fimile Burnouf
(La Science des religions, 4th ed., Paris,
1885) and Polydore Hochart (Etudes d' his
toire religieuse, Paris, 1888), the American
professor of mathematics William Benjamin
Smith (Der vorchristliche Jesus, nebst
weiteren Vorstudien zur Entstehungsge-
schichte des Urchristentums, Giessen, 1906),

 3fegug ag problem  21
and in Germany the Bremen pastor A. Kal-
thoff (Das Christus-Problem; Grundlinien
zu einer Sozialtheologie, Jena, 1903; Die
Entstenung des Christentums. Neue Bei
trage zu Christusproblem, ib., 1904), Karl
Vollers of Jena (Die Weltreligionen in
ihrem geschichtlichen Zusammenhange,
Jena, 1907), the Marburg orientalist Peter
Christian Albrecht Jensen (Das Gilgamesch-
Epos in der Weltliteratur, Strasburg, 1906),
and finally Arthur Drews, the philosopher of
Carlsruhe (Die Christusmythe, Jena, 1909).
Obviously it is the duty of men profes
sionally qualified to examine from the very
foundation up the writings thus produced,
and to scrutinize their methods, premises,
and presumptive conclusions. The present
lecture is to be confined to a single example.
And since Jensen with his derivation of the
Gospel from the Gilgamesh epic has taken
appeal from the opposition of scientific pro
fessionals to a wider public in the Frank
furter Zeitung, (Feb. 19, 20, April 7, 1909)
and in Gunkel's Die Gemeinde, (1909, no.
19) has experienced a quiet and real refuta
tion, attention will be given to the work by
Arthur Drews named above.

22  3fegug ag problem 
With great practical learning and plausi
bility this author seeks to prove the thesis
that the Jesus of the Gospels as a man and
the founder of the Christian religion never
existed.* He asserts that for the last two
centuries before the Christian era Jewish
circles and sects (Therapeutae, Essenes, Man-
deans or Gnostics, and the Jewish apoca
lyptic writers are cited) had already been
worshipping a Jesus; this was not a man of
that name, however, but a deity belonging to
a sun-cult, a deity of light, or of fire, of one
taken from the powers of nature or of vege
tation who was constantly alternating be
tween death and resurrection. This Jesus,
the early Ephraimitic sun-god Joshua, is de
clared to be more or less closely identical
with the deities of the East-Asian or Indian
religions, with Mithra, Adonis, Honover,
Agni, and others. Bethlehem was named by
the prophets as the birthplace of the Mes
siah not merely because it was the native
place of David, but also because it was the
location of an old sanctuary of Baal, es
pecially of Adonis. The story of the flight
into Egypt is the same myth as is found in
* See translator's appendix at end of lecture.

 3fegug ag Problem  23
the tale of the flight of Leto and Apollo from
the dragon Pytho, in the Egyptian story of
Hathor, in the Assyrian narrative of Sargon,
and in the Indian story of the flight of
Krishna. The father of Jesus is said to be
a carpenter because of the fact that in the
early fire worship the deity is called into
existence from the heart of pieces of wood
which are rubbed together.* Other indica
tions of fire worship are found in the words
of John the Baptist that the Messiah would
baptize with the Holy Ghost and with fire
(Matt. iii. ii), as well as in those of Jesus
concerning the fire which he had come to
send and the baptism with which he was to
be baptized (Luke xii. 49-50). In the trans
figuration, according to analogies brought
from Further Asia and India, Elijah and
Moses signify the sun and the moon which
pale before the savior deity. Many incidents
in the life of Jesus are said to have their
source in Buddhistic circles. The Lord's
Supper is in form and meaning a reproduc
tion of the primitive sacrificial meal in the
* Translator's Note : — The Hindoo deity, Agni, is said
to be recreated each time fire is produced by the opera
tion of the fire-drill. Cf. E. W. Hopkins, Religions of
India, pp. 105-112, Boston, 1895.

24  3fegug ag problem 
fire cult of Agni, of the sacramental meal in
the cult of Mithra, and attaches also to the
early Hebrew placing of the shew bread and
to the mythical narrative of the divine priest-
king Melchizedek. Not a few particulars of
the history of the passion are derived from
the customs and usages, the processions and
human sacrifice of the Roman Saturnalia,
the Babylonian Sakka festival, the Jewish
Purim celebration, and the Persian ritual of
the procession of the beardless. Ethical and
religious details have been contributed from
Plato's description of the righteous man in
his "Republic" and from the book of the
Wisdom of Solomon. The cross is in no
sense a symbol original with and peculiar to
Christianity, but in primitive times a holy
symbol used by Hebrews and gentiles having
its connections with sun worship and being
a sign of life and of fire, and only in late
times and among the Christians did it come
to signify the means of producing a martyr
death. Similarly, the lamb as an emblem of
the Messiah is, like so many other details, to
be explained by means of Indian usage, hav
ing arisen from the ram of the Indian Agni,
and agnus Dei, "lamb of God," was origin-

 3[egug ag Problem  25
ally Agni deus, "the god Agni." The history
of the suffering and death of Christ are a
common possession of the religions of Fur
ther Asia; Christ, who was dead and arose
again, is no other than Tammuz or Mithra
or Attys or Melkarth or Adonis or the Cretan
Zeus or the Egyptian Osiris. By the cults of
those deities, in which a king or a priest or
a criminal or a dummy figure was slain [or
pretended to be slain] as a representative
sufferer, is explained the passion of Christ.
Isaiah's chapters concerning the suffering
servant, compared with the offering for
reconciliation, prove that the early Hebrews
already had the conception of a human or
divine scapegoat, while Psalm xxii. depicts
fully and uniquely the suffering of such a
man put to death at the observance of a festi
val. According to the representation which is
here detailed, all these items were taken by
Paul, who was the real founder of the Chris
tian religion and had no knowledge of a man
Jesus, and were worked together around the
name of the divine being Jesus Christ into a
cosmological redemptive religion, the ethical
side of which depended essentially upon the

26  31egug 30 Problem 
Hebrew books of piety and wisdom, the
representations of Seneca and the Stoa, and,
in part, Buddhistic traditions. Motives
which had their root in propaganda and in
practical and political considerations subse
quently led to emphasis upon the manhood
of Jesus and the exposition of this idea in the
so-called "historical Jesus." The Gospels, the
Synoptic as well as the Johannean, are in no
wise sources for history, but are merely the
legendary deposit of the faith of later Chris
tian communities; they can not prove the ex
istence of the human founder of a religion
named Jesus, of whom the secular history of
the period knows nothing at all. Drews sums
up his personal views of a real Christianity
in the words : "The life of the world as the
life of God; the painful development of hu
manity as the history of the divine passion;
the process of world-development as that of
a deity who suffers, contends, and dies in each
single creation in order to overcome the bar
riers of finiteness in the religious conscious
ness of men and to show the way therein to
a triumph over the entire world-sorrow —
that is the truth of the Christian doctrine of
redemption" (p. 188) . In his preface

 31e0U0 a0 Problem  27
Drews discovers the trend of his book when
he gives utterance to the following dogmatic
axiom: "While a 'historic Jesus' is regarded
as a 'unique' religious personality and the in
dispensable mediator of faith, the hope of a
'further development' and a deepening of
the modern religious view of the universe is
not to be fulfilled. Under the control of a
'book religion,' as Christianity is, no unpreju
diced science, no free development of
thought, no real culture in the sense of a con
formity of the thinking process to life is pos
sible" (p. xi.).
This volume I took up with anticipation
and at first read it with emotion. But the
further I advanced in it and the more fre
quently I read it, the calmer I became; I had
the sensation of having visited an exhibition
for the display of pieces of art of a mytho
logical and religious-historical character.
It is in no sense my purpose to waive aside
an examination and a synthesis of Chris
tianity based upon a comparative history of
religion, provided only it be undertaken in
a sober, thorough, and circumspect manner.
The present is most busy with the problem of
comparative religion. Impossible seems to

2*3  3fe0ug a0 Problem 
me denial of the fact that both the He
brew and the early Christian materials, in
certain parts and incidents (notably in those
parts which formerly furnished insurmount
able barriers to exposition), show traces of
the influence of Babylonian, Persian, and
other ideas of like character. Examples of
such passages are to be found in Ezekiel,
Daniel, the historical books of the Old Testa
ment, and the Revelation of John. But the
undertaking which Drews has taken in hand,
namely, to explain the totality of Christianity
by means of syncretistic cosmological myths,
meanwhile ruling its founder out of court,
is shattered as soon as it is begun, for the
single reason that it attributes incredibility to
history, reason, and religion. By means of
inconceivable infilterings of ideas, usages,
and myths from India and heathen Farther
Asia, it is asserted, in the dark stalactitic
caves of secret doctrine belonging to Jewish
sects there took form first the figure of Jesus
as a deity and the object of a cult, and after
that the Jesus of the Evangelists with all the
concrete details which gather around himl
And then, this stalactitic formation has been
for two thousand years regarded as a living

 3fe0U0 a0 problem  29
historic personality — but only — as Drews
hints — by obscurantists and simpletons 1
It is a very old custom in the exposition of
religious history to regard the gods either as
apotheosized men or as personified forces of
nature or of ethics. But sometimes neither
explanation will fit the case. There have
been cases where saga and legend, fitting in
well with some idea or symbol or usage, have
brought a personality to birth; but such cases
generally have to do with a dim and distant
past. Examples of this sort of thing are the
legend of St. Ursula and her 11,000 maidens,
and that of the popess Joan, which Dol-
linger's keenness tracked out (J. J. I. von Dol-
linger, Die Papstfabeln des Mittelalters,
Munich, 1863; Eng. transl., Fables respecting
the Popes in the Middle Ages, London, 1871,
New York, 1872). Sometimes the attempt is
made to deny the existence of historical per
sons, but this is only a fashion, a sensational
exploit. Within the memory of the living,
indeed only thirty years since, to Shakespeare
was denied the authorship of his works. One
is tempted to wonder why the opportunity
was not seized at the jubilee of Paul Ger-
hardt to show that the historical Gerhardt

30  3fe0U0 a0 problem 
and the poet of the Lieder were two entirely
different persons — something that would be
comparatively easy. Such tours de force
arouse attention for a short time, but they
soon fall into the oblivion which they merit.
There is another parallel both fruitful and
doubly instructive; it deals with the results
of a broadened horizon, and it also is con
cerned with a purely neutral subject which
in itself does not affect the conception of the
universe. This is the question of the origin
of German folk stories (A. Thimme, Das
Mdrchen, Leipsic, 1909). The brothers
Grimm, Johann Ludwig Uhland, and many
others regarded our tales as a primitive Ger
man possession, to be employed as a signifi
cant source from which to learn about early
German mental life and belief in the gods.
But in 1859, under the influence of belief of
a broad interracial relationship as possessed
by the German stories, Benfey proclaimed
his theory that these tales all had their origin
in India, and had been diffused abroad,
first finding entrance to Europe in the
eleventh century; so that the German
"Marchen" were neither ancient nor native,
neither holy nor popular in their sources.

 3Ie0U0 a0 Problem  31
As a consequence of this theory, the value of
the many sagas concerning the deities and
the heroes seemed to be lost so far as it per
tained to German history. Benfey's theory
lasted a few years, until under the force of
facts old and new it was broken down and
gave place to the treatment of Bastian, in
which the psychology of peoples was the de
termining factor. Hardly two decades have
passed since it was the fashion to seek in prac
tically all these tales a nature myth — e. g.,
in the tale of the Sleeping Beauty there was
discerned either the myth of Gerd* or a
myth of the seasons (cf. Linnig, Deutsche
My then-Mar chen, No. 16, Paderborn, 1883;
and B. Saubert, Germanische Welt- und Gott-
anschauung, Hanover, 1895). But the more
numerous the attempts by the contribution
* Translator's Note: — Gerd was, in northern myth
ology, the beautiful daughter of the giant Gymir. Once
she went out of her father's dwelling, and air and sea
became radiant with her beauty. Freyr saw her and
became sick with love. He sent his servant Skirnir,
mounted on the steed which could leap the flames that
encircled and guarded her father's castle, to woo her
with the aid of eleven golden apples, and the wonder
ful ring, Draupnir. But the maiden was won only
through powerful magic formulas, and was for nine
nights the consort of Freyr.

32  3[egug ag Problem  ___
of such material to clear up the confusion,
the more involved this confusion became
(cf. Thimme, Das Marchen, pp. 99 sqq.).
As a consequence students in this department
have become very cautious in treading upon
"the smooth and slippery floor of explana
tion of myths" (Weinhold, Einleitung zu
Loki). The experiences of those who have
labored in this department of scientific in
vestigation ought to serve as a lesson and a
warning to those whose field is the history of
religion. Drews has collected an incredibly large
and confusing amount of detail from the his
tory of religions and weaves it in and out
in variegated patterns. Throughout he dis
covers similarities and infers from these con
nection or even dependence. Of course this
must and will come under the test of profes
sional and scientific examination. But the
veriest layman can not avoid seeing in many
places how external and superficial, how
arbitrary and unsatisfactory, how labored are
the points of comparison which are sub
mitted. Indeed, where Drews often detects a
similarity or a suspected likeness, a sound eye
will in many cases perceive a much greater

 3fegug a0 problem  33
difference or even direct opposition. But
though the similarities be granted, out of a
hundred possibilities is there a single proba
bility or a single certainty? Still further,
Drews arrays supposition with a half proved
or unproved remark, puts one hypothesis
that is not thoroughly recognized but fits his
needs upon another, and then deals with the
whole as "facts." His exposition would have
altogether a different value if he had ad
duced real facts and compelling reasons in
the numerous passages in which he employs
such turns of expression as "the presumption
arises," "it may be taken as certain," "it
seems," "the conclusion follows," "we know,"
"we have reason to assume," "there is no
doubt," or where he strengthens his remarks
with the overworked "evidently."* With this
corresponds the method of Drews in dealing
with literature and sources. That in general
he attempts in the preface (cf. pp. ix., x., and
elsewhere) to render the theologians harm
less once for all, and that he questions our
honesty and candor, I here simply record.
* Exceedingly characteristic from this point of view
are pages 23-25, where, in crucial cases, Drews carries
on the entire argument in this way.

34  31egug ag Problem 
But this does not prevent him from citing
them when it suits his purpose; he uses the
liberal theologians at times where they have
advanced hazardous hypotheses and opinions,
although his general attitude toward them is
that of censorious scorn and ridicule; he ad
duces uncritically the Church Fathers where
he chooses, but where they do not fit into his
purpose he ignores them; he employs the
orthodox theologians when he needs to do
away with the liberals. He most delights in
citing with the emphasis of assured scientific
finality those who agree with his radical posi
tion — such men as Robertson, Burnouf,
Hochart, Smith, and the "good, honest"
Kalthoff (see above, p. 13) — and alongside of
these in critical passages he uses orthodox
worthies who, however, are not in general re
garded as authorities, as, for example,
Epiphanius and Grutzmacher (cf. pp. 23,
155)- In his haste this professor of philosophy,
Dr. Drews, has allowed some things to pass
which in noteworthy manner he has not cor
rectly or logically apprehended. Thus on p.
23 he writes: "the place Nazareth was first
invented as an afterthought in order to ex-

 3fegug ag Problem  35
plain in unobtrusive manner the expression
'Jesus the Nazarene,' and also to bring it into
agreement with the Gospels." But one at
once asks: how can this be? Either the
Evangelists invented this place (or knew of it)
in which case it did not need to be invented
as an afterthought; or it was later invented,
in which case the Evangelists could not have
alluded to it. Drews' statement is so self-con
tradictory that it is more difficult to put faith
in it than in the hypothesis that Nazareth
actually existed and that only by mere acci
dent mention of it does not occur in literature
earlier than the Gospels. In another passage,
Drews seeks to prove that the cross was among
the primitive Hebrews employed as a sacred
symbol. To accomplish this he remarks that
"according to some persons" it was the sign
which the Israelites made on the doors at the
exodus from Egypt, and that Moses' figure
presented it during the fight with the Ama-
lekites, while Isaiah, and Ezekiel, also men
tioned it in certain passages (p. 76). With
out further ado he proceeds to assume this as
a matter of fact thus: "We have met the
cross already in the Old Testament, where it
serves as a mark of recognition and a means

36  3fegug ag problem 
of distinguishing the pious Israelites from the
heathens, as well as a magical symbol" (pp.
20-21). As a matter of fact there is in the
Old Testament itself in the passages adduced
not a syllable that suggests the cross, and it
was late Fathers of the Church who read the
cross into these passages! Whether Drews
was conscious of this, or whether he knew it
and purposely kept silent concerning it, his
method is in any case unscientific and frivol
ous. A third offence against logic, of singular
character, is found in one of the most import
ant sections, namely that in which the author
seeks to prove that in pre-Christian times the
cultus of a deity "Jesus" existed (pp. 23 sqq.).
The proof of this is a shining example of the
method. Drews is not able to show with the
help of Epiphanius that the Therapeuta. or Es
senes had a Jesus who was the object of wor
ship as deity, but he naively continues : "After
Jesus, or after his ancestor Jesse, they named
themselves Jesseites (Jessaer)." The addi
tion of the clause "or after his ancestor Jesse"
is very significant; it does away entirely with
the conclusiveness of the sentence, for if there
is present only the possibility that the "Jes-
saer" named themselves after Jesse and not

 3[egug ag Problem  37
from Jesus, their name is no longer a proof
of the existence of Jesus as the object of wor
ship in pre-Christian times, and with this
go all the consequences which Drews infers
respecting the deity of the Nazarene. More
over, did Jesus as a deity and the object of
cultic worship have an ancestor?* It is fur
ther to be noted that Drews is unable to show
the existence within the circle of Jewish
apocalyptic writing of the name Jesus; he
therefore has recourse to the secret teaching
which he assumes contained it (p. 20). But
what a pity it is that we know absolutely
nothing of this secret teaching! And still
further, the hero Joshua, especially if he is
to be regarded as an early Ephraimitic sun
deity, is looked upon neither in the Old
Testament nor by pre-Christian Israelites as
a divine being named Jesus. The assertion
that in the book of the prophet Zechariah
behind the personality of the high priest
Joshua there appears such a divine being
"in messianic illumination" is very pretty,
but is in fact only idle fancy (pp. 21, 170).
* On p. 23 Drews remarks that the "Jessaer" "knew
nothing of Christ, that is, of a man of that name."
But the clause "that is, of a man of that name" is an
arbitrary addition and is not at all justified.

38  gfegug a0 probient 
Finally, that the Gnostic-Naassene hymn is
pre-Christian has yet to be proved.*
Thus there is a complete breakdown of the
means by which Drews seeks to prove the
central point of his theory, namely, the ex
istence of Jesus as the object of worship
among pre-Christian Jewish sects, and this
comes about by the combined force of fact
and logic. With this also the finely con
structed fabric by which this author seeks to
illustrate the origin of Christianity loses its
substantiality and it is altogether apart
from the enormous intrinsic improbabilities
which it presents to thinking men. Notwith
standing the artistic manner after which
Drews, like the fabled veteran soldier who
accompanied Peter on his journeys, places
together the different members of his finely
fabricated mannikin, the bones still lack
heart and life.
* All investigators have so far regarded this hymn
as post-Christian. The Naassenes appeal to a tradition
which James, the brother of Jesus, is said to have
passed on to Mariamne; they speak of the twelve
apostles and make diligent use of the Fourth Gospel,
which Drews dates after 140 A.D. Cf. Hippolytus,
Philosophumena, V. v.-vii. (Eng. transl., in Ante-
Nicene Fathers, v. 58-59, Buffalo, 1888).

 3fegug a0 problem  39
When one returns from Drews' book to
the writings of the New Testament, he has
the sensation of waking up from confused
and distracted dreams to the reality of life;
he seems to be placed not before cloud pic
tures, but before real significant men. The
engaging simplicity and naturalness of form,
the penetratingly spiritual content of the nar
rative, the collection in completely clear and
historical relations, the presence of an entire
series of uninventable and highly concrete
details, the whole eschatological temper, and,
above all, the uniform and original ethical-
religious tone, lift the narrative significantly
above the character possessed by myths and
mythological religions. The principal
Pauline letters, the genuineness of which is
conceded by Drews, are in time so close to
the days of Jesus that mythological explana
tion is excluded. It may well be that Paul
personally never saw the historical Jesus ; but
that he on that account knew nothing about
Jesus is pure assertion. Why does Paul, like
most New Testament writers, often alternate
in a manner altogether characteristic between
the use of "Christ" or "Jesus Christ" (used
when he is dealing with the dignity of Jesus)

4o  3[g0tig a0 problem 
and of the simple form "Jesus" (employed
when the matter under discussion is Christ's
historic work on earth) ? And why did not
the Jews hate and persecute the Essenes and
Therapeutae and Mandeans if these really
anticipated Christianity? Indeed, one may
ask why Paul himself persecuted the Chris
tian communities and why he was himself
later persecuted? Has not Paul in certain
passages (e. g., at the beginning of the
Epistle to the Romans and in the celebrated
parallel between Adam and Jesus, Rom. v.,
15; I Cor. xv. 22, 45) testified unmistakably
to the humanity of Jesus? Did he not have
dealings with James the brother of the Lord,
and did he not know of other brothers who
as married missionaries preached the Gospel
(Gal. i. 19; I Cor. ix. 5)? Since when has
the deity who is the object of a cultic wor
ship had human brethren?*
* In Rom. i. 3 Paul says plainly that Jesus Christ
"was made of the seed of David according to the flesh"
(i.e., as a man he was a descendant of David). Drews'
interpretation of this passage (p. 104) is void of mean
ing and linguistically impossible. In Rom. v., especially
verse 17, Paul draws a parallel between the man Adam
and the man Jesus Christ. In Gal. i., 19, cf. ii., 9,
"James, the Lord's brother," is to be understood natu
rally as "brother by birth," and not in the wider sense

 3[e0ug ag Problem  41
Drews lays considerable stress upon the
fact that in the secular literature of the first
century there is practically no mention of
Jesus. This point must be conceded. But
Drews employs neither secure logic nor a
method free from special pleading when he
attempts to draw, here as elsewhere, strin
gent inferences from the argument from si
lence.* No other than Voltaire, who surely
in this case is above suspicion as a witness,
has weighed this difficulty in all its par
ticulars and has gone on record thus : "Shall
the conclusion be drawn from this that there
never was a Jesus? Not at all; since men
after his death wrote both attacking and de
fending him, it is clear that he once lived.
of an adherent, as Drews would have it, having in mind
Jerome, who in behalf of his pet dogma, respecting the
perpetual virginity of Mary, would naturally not grant
that Jesus had brethren after the flesh. But proof is
furnished by I Cor., ix., 5, where "the brethren of the
Lord" are mentioned as a special group beside the
apostles and Cephas, showing that Paul had exact knowl
edge of several brothers of Jesus, also that he recognized
the humanity of Jesus.
* Cf. the remark of Usener in Archiv fur Religions-
wissenschaft, i. 9: "It would be a childish assumption
to hold as non-existent what we do not know." The
short references by Suetonius, Tacitus, and Pliny are
not contestible, as Drews remarks.

42  3fegug ag problem 
But it is no less evident that he lived so re
tired a life among men that none of the note
worthy have made mention of his person" (in
his Dieu et I'homme). And Rousseau has
written: "Are we then to dispose of the
Gospel history as an arbitrary bit of poetiz
ing? My friend, it is not possible so to
poetize; and the incidents from the life of
Socrates, which no one doubts, are less fully
certified than the facts which concern Jesus
Christ" (in his Emile, ou de I'education, 4
vols., Amsterdam, 1762, and often elsewhere;
taken from the "confession of a vicar of
Savoy"). Passing by the dicta of modern
philosophers like Lotze, Wundt, Paulsen,
and Eucken, who hold decisively to the his
toricity of Jesus, I cite in addition only the
pronouncement of the Positivist John Stuart
Mill, who in his posthumous Three Essays
on Religion . . . Theism (London, 1874) has
spoken somewhat like this: "Who among
his disciples or their converts had the ability
to conceive the words attributed to Jesus or
to invent a life or construct a personality like
that which confronts us in the Gospels?
Surely not the fishermen of Galilee, and just

 3[egug ag problem  43
as little Paul, and least of all the earliest
(post-apostloic) Christian writers."
It remains now to show by a series of ex
amples how arbitrarily, inexactly, and
wantonly Drews has used his materials. I
pass without further notice the remarkable
affirmation that the Peter of the Gospels is
the result of a myth and, like Jesus, is identi
cal with the deity Mithra, at the same time he
is the same as Proteus and Janus.* But it is
difficult to see how Drews, who is acquainted
with the missionary capabilities of Buddh
ism, can permit himself to propose as an
axiom without further justification the saying
that a propaganda is not an accompaniment
of an ascetic religion. And just as difficult
is it to understand how, in view of the parable
of the good Samaritan, he can affirm that the
concept of "neighbor" is in the New Testa
ment confined to the meaning of "a member
of the brotherhood of Jesus" and that "only
* Cf. pp. 168-175. How far the unruly imagination
of Drews carries him may be illustrated here by the
fact that, in order to make the identification of Peter
with Proteus, he combines the designation of Peter,
John and James in Gal. ii., 9, as "pillars" (of the
Christian community) with the "pillars of Proteus,"
which in the East correspond to "the pillars of Atlas" in
the West. And this pretends to be science !

44  ffigug ag problem 
much later was it transformed into the larger
humane sense which it bears in the present"
(PP- I37i 161). An affirmation made by
Drews is that in the Wisdom of Solomon
(xvi. 28) it is recommended that at the
break of day one pray to the rising sun (p.
66). He is challenged to make proof of this.
He declares that John the Baptist baptized
"in the name of" the Messiah that was ex
pected and so handed on down to his ad
herents the magical operation which, accord
ing to the belief of the secret sects proceeds
from the name of the redeemer (p. 25). A
challenge of the proof of this is in place
here also. For the support of his theory that
in the New Testament the cross serves as a
magical symbol Drews appeals (p. 81) to
six passages in the Book of Revelation, one
in the Epistle to the Galatians, and one in
that to the Ephesians, where mention is made
of a seal or of sealing (Rev. iii. 12, vii. 3 sqq.,
ix. 4, xiv. 1, xx. 4, xxii. 4; Gal. vi. 17; Eph.
i. 13). Drews may with perfect impunity
be challenged to show that in these passages
there is any references whatever to the cross.
In order to obtain a basis for showing a
parallelism between Janus and Jesus, our

 3[egug ag Problem  45
author affirms (p. 173) that Jesus in the
Fourth Gospel calls himself a "keeper of the
door." We would like to have the passage
pointed out in which this occurs. Another
declaration of Drews is the following (p.
49) : "As the significance of Jesus was fore
told by Simeon, who lamented because to him
it was not granted to live to witness the
wonderful deeds which the Savior was to
perform, so in the Buddhistic legend the
seer Asita perceived in spirit the greatness of
the child and broke forth in lamentation be
cause he was not to see the Perfect One in
his lordship and could have no part in the
work of salvation which he was to accom
plish." Again the challenge may issue to point
out the passage in the Gospel in which it is
reported that Simeon lamented at all, and
also that his lament had this basis. Once
more, the assertion of the following (p. 100)
is made on the ground that Antioch, Cyprus,
and Cyrene are given in the Acts of the
Apostles a special significance in the first
missionary operations of Christianity, com
bined with the fact that these places were
distinguished for assiduous practice of the
cult of Adonis: "The Gospel was conse-

46  3fg0U0 a0 problem 
quently in its original form nothing but a
Judaized worship of Adonis. The earliest
missionaries of whom we hear did not at
tack the faith of the Syrian heathen, they
simply affirmed that Christ the Messiah, the
object of worship of the Jewish sects, was
Adonis: Christ is the Lord."1 A final chal
lenge may here be given for the production
of proof of the foregoing assertion.3
"Translator's Note: — Of course, the half truth which
probably Drews has in mind is that Adonis is the Greek
form of the Semitic word Adon, Hebrew Adonai, found
often^n the Old Testament, and there translated "Lord."
That the Greek Adonis is not native to that people
is one of the assured discoveries of modern times;
this deity can, with certainty, be traced back to the
Babylonian Tammuz, one of whose titles, Adon, the
equivalent of the Old Testament form just cited, passed
over into the Greek world as the proper name of the
adopted deity.
' Drews is under the necessity also of showing how,
out of the sensual and lascivious cult of Adonis de
veloped the Christian religion so exacting in the matter
of ethics. A few more examples of Drews' argumenta
tion may be furnished here. The "Son of Man" of Dan.
vii., 13, is (p. 9) interpreted as a "superearthly being
representing the Godhead," notwithstanding the fact
that the original significance of the phrase is "the
people of Israel," as is shown by Dan. vii., 27. Zech.
xii., 10, according to our author, is concerned with a
deity, for whom lamentation arises; but this interpre
tation cannot stand, and the passage is better explained
in an entirely different manner in accordance with II

 3fe0ug a0 Problem  47
For our purpose it is sufficient to set the
structure built up by this investigator in a
critical light and to disclose the pretended
method of proof. "If thou hadst but kept
silence, thou wouldst still have been a
philosopher." Although it was repugnant to
me to use up valuable time with such discus
sions, the nature of the case appeared to make
it necessary. To put the matter in another
way: if Drews permits himself to take such
Chron. xxxv., 24-25. Again, without giving the grounds
for his construction, Drews connects the vicarious suf
fering of the Servant of Yah weh (Isa. liii.) with the
scapegoat. He seems not to be aware that in the
Hebrew celebration of the atoning sacrifice the scape
goat, upon which the sins of the people are laid, is not
sacrificed, but is driven away into the wilderness.
Moreover, in exegesis by the Jews of pre-Christian times,
the suffering servant of Isaiah liii. was not identified
with the Messiah. Similarly, the entire interpretation
which is placed upon the twenty-second Psalm must be
pronounced thoroughly arbitrary. Entirely untenable,
also, is what is said of Isaiah lx. on p. 42. When
Drews adduces as the source of the origin of the his
tory of Jesus' passion, the feast of Purim, and the pro
cession of the beardless, he is under the obligation —
altogether apart from other improbabilities — of making
clear why the parts in the action are assigned in contra
dictory fashion, as his exposition would lead one to ex
pect. In connecting Luke xii., 49-50, with the worship
of fire (pp. 57-58) our guide overlooks the fact that
Jesus sends the fire (i.e., he is active), but that he is
baptized with the baptism (i.e., he is passive) ; when

48  31e0U0 a0 problem 
liberties in matters connected with the Bible
which is accessible to all, what liberties will
he not take when he is dealing with the more
recondite sources which have to do with
Gnosticism and with the history of other re
ligions? For it is to be remembered that in
these latter cases the language is often ex
tremely difficult, the expression obscure, the
text uncertain and mutilated, the dating pre-
this is observed, the entire comparison fails. On p.
39 there occurs a mistranslation of Isaiah vii., 1 5 :
it should read not "that he may know," but "until
he know," and the resulting meaning is altogether dif
ferent from what Drews would assume it to be. Again,
on p. 65 is an arbitrary affirmation to the effect that
in Heb. vii., 3, Melchisedec is significantly described as
an old deity. But the epithets which there are applied
to Melchisedec are fully explained by the character of
the tradition concerning his personality. It is also
affirmed (p. 66) that Christians adopted the celebration
of Sunday, deriving it from heathen ceremonial. The
author does not appear to know that the earliest pas
sages in which Sunday is mentioned as a day of especial
importance for Christians do not use the expression
"day of the sun," but designate the day as "the day
after the Sabbath," or as "the day of the Lord." On
p. 158 Drews speaks of a yearly ecclesiastical con
tribution of Jewish Christians in behalf of Jerusalem,
and compares with this the contributions collected by
the Apostle Paul, — a comparison which is remarkable
enough. To these examples of the method of Drews
many others might be added, but the foregoing must
suffice.

 3fe0ug ag Problem 49
carious, the tradition variant, and the mean
ing ambiguous. If then I have been able in
so brief a time and without a larger meausre
of learning to show in the work of Drews a
superfluity of inaccuracies and errors, what
will be the verdict of the scholars learned in
the technical departments, who are in a posi
tion to follow his propositions step by step?
There is much better work for us to do than
to engage in a scuffle with such opponents,
with fanatics whose hypotheses have in their
own eyes become dogmas. Ill
Accordingly there remains to us on firm
grounds the personal Jesus as a historical
reality, and also as a problem — a problem
which is imperative. To the comprehen
sion and solution of this problem we have
the privilege of making some contribution.
But just here it may be that we shall hear
some one say: Why do you not remain
in the paths which were opened by the Chris
tian Church hundreds of years ago and have
ever since been traveled by it? Why do you
not speak of the divine and the human nature

50  3fegug ag problem 
of Jesus, of his twofold state in his exalta
tion and his humiliation, of his threefold
office as prophet, priest, and king, of his
nature as Son of man and Son of God, of his
significance as a sacrifice, and the like?
There is no internal necessity, considering the
matter in itself, why we may not do this. In
that case we should advance a section out
of Biblical theology, something from the
history of dogma, and selections from sys
tematic theology and ethics, we would seek
to make intelligible the Biblical series of
thought and the development of ecclesiastical
dogma, and square ourselves with orthodoxy.
But with full realizations of what we are
doing and for reasons that are weighty we
this time decline to take this well-known way.
For we have the impression that these tracks
are far too well trodden and these series of
ideas and conceptions are too thumb-marked
to be effective in making the modern man
regard them as worthy of real consideration.
If the screw is too often used and turned in
its socket, it becomes loose and ceases to grip.
Similarly, for one kind of people the dog
matic pictures and conceptions, so often re
peated and officially advocated, have be-

 3[egu0 30 Problem  51
come tiresome and for that very reason are
from the outset worthless and unfruitful.
For another kind of people, those who advo
cate and press these ideas, the danger is im
mediate that they will not be profoundly
affected by these familiar thoughts, that on
the contrary they will in dangerous fashion
fall into the quiet of stagnation; where they
merely listen to formulas they make them
selves contented and regard the problem not
only as solved but as rightly solved. We on
the other hand are fully convinced that, in
a sense, Jesus is not at all comprehended
through a theoretical recognition of those
ecclesiastical trains of ideas, and still further,
that such trains of ideas are neither suitable
nor absolutely necessary in order to make
clear the significance of Jesus. The essential
is the thing itself, not the means of exposi
tion. In fact, we mean to say that those ecclesi
astical dogmas and those Biblical representa
tions are in no way so simple and immediately
intelligible as people are accustomed to as
sume. Those representations, concepts, and
series of ideas were all given out and
related to the person of Jesus at cer-

52  3fegug a0 problem 
tain definite periods and at those times
their application was timely, natural, and
illuminant. At a time when people
knew of priests and sacrifice as some
thing within their own immediate experience,
these representations afforded an adequate
means of comprehending the significance of
Jesus. When men's thinking ran in the cate
gories of Platonic thought, there developed
the doctrine of the two natures of Christ.
When the deification of the human race was
regarded as the aim of salvation, the doctrine
was formulated that in Christ human nature
and divine had become one. When the Ger
man system of law was a living force, Anselm
endeavored by means of that system to make
the divine humanity of Christ understand
able. Similarly, in every age what Christ
is and what he stands for must be brought
home to the intelligence by means of the
trains of thought and the conceptions which
seem to be the simplest, most natural, and
most significant TO THAT AGE. It is in
this way that the understanding of the Gospel
fits itself into the universal consciousness. On
the other hand, it is a matter of continually
renewed experience and observation that cer-

 3fe0ti0 a0 Problem  53
tain representations, concepts, and trains of
thought have proved illuminating and con
clusive to the intelligence of an earlier time,
but to a later period, the genius of which was
different, these same representations, etc.,
furnished only difficulties and hindrances.
Every such representation is in the last
analysis inadequate, a feeble and transitory
form for an inexhaustible content. The con
sequence is that such thought-series, belong
ing to a past that is foreign, requires as a pre
requisite explanation, interpretation, transla
tion, and application or adaptation. The
earliest Christians attempted to convey to
their contemporaries in a way that should
be immediately comprehended the value of
the person and work of Jesus, which was to
themselves an immediate and lively intui
tion; they therefore represented him as the
true high priest, as the completely efficacious,
unique, and well-pleasing sacrifice. The
men of that time had immediate knowledge
of the significance of priest and sacrifice
(and that method of setting Jesus forth had
meaning). But for us it is necessary to ex
pound laboriously to youth and congregation
what it was to be priest, sacrifice, prophet,

54  3le0U0 ag problem 
and the like, and in the process we are
hemmed in by all sorts of difficulties; only
after having accomplished all this can we
begin to apply those conceptions to Jesus
with the prospect of conveying at least some
thing of what was intended to be conveyed by
the expressions used. The evil of it is that
out of these figures and conceptions dogmas
have been created as though their application
to the person of Jesus was unavoidable for
purposes of redemption and in themselves
conduced to a right apprehension of the facts.
This is an exceedingly dangerous error. For
to me the significance of Jesus first becomes
really clear when I have connected it with
my own peculiar, firmly fixed, immediate
conceptions of value and am able to express
it (in such terms) ; and this was the condi
tion of things in primitive Christianity.
It is worth while to consider how many and
how various are the meanings which are con
veyed by the conceptions applied to Jesus,
how subject to controversy and how ambigu
ous are the series of ideas employed. One
may realize for himself how the teaching of
the Church simply puts together and adds up
the incongruent doctrinal constructions of

 3[egug ag problem  55
various periods, and in doing this has not
asked a single question respecting the inner
unity and compatibility of the constituent
parts. From the individual doctrines may be
gained a worthy meaning; but in their ag
gregate they present difficult riddles and
offer an unclear, composite, and lifeless pic
ture which resembles an old mosaic which
has been often patched up or restored. Ex
perience of this fact is often repeated in the
processes of instruction and preaching, in
apologetics and in missionary work; the
ready-made dogma gives no assistance, for
the introduction to the intelligence calls
always for the use of means which are the
simplest, the most natural, and the most ap
plicable to the circumstances.
In what way, then, shall we go about the
task of bringing to men of today a realiza
tion of the significance of Jesus? It is pos
sible to apply the method of chemical analy
sis, setting forth the person and teaching of
Jesus in all its components as they are dis-
coyered — indicating what is Platonic, what is
Stoic, what is rabbinic, apocalyptic, ascetic,
mystical, Buddhistic, and so on. Such an un
dertaking might be valuable, but it would be

56  3legug ag Problem 
uncertain and might, easily lead astray. The
person of Jesus is not an example in arithme
tic, nor is it an object of natural history; the
analysis of it would therefore give no clear
exposition. Or one might set Jesus in cer
tain categories which are definite and re
garded as important by the modern con
sciousness, and seek by comparison to gain
an evaluation — might attempt to make him
understood as a theologian, or teacher, or
speaker, or founder of a religion. By this
process surely many points of view worthful
in themselves would be gained; but there
would inevitably appear to the consciousness
more of what Jesus was not or did not ac
complish. He was neither prince, nor politi
cal economist, nor builder of roads, and just
as little was he theologian or professor of a
revealed philosophy. The method which
comes closest is an exposition along lines
ethical and religious, the first concern of
which is with his real manhood, and then con
siders how far in Jesus there is given and
guaranteed the truly good. Or shall we
choose the most exalted expressions of lan
guage as a vehicle by which to make Jesus
understood? As a rule these are obscure and

 3[egu0 a0 Problem  57
express far less than they seem to say. Shall
we then speak of him as critically as we can?
That would be more circumspect, but in itself
is insufficient. A purely speculative treat
ment forgets often the serious reality, while
a purely historical investigation does not do
justice to religious power. One may express
the being and value of Jesus in intellectual
or esthetic terms; but all purely theoretical
or artificial treatment of the problem will re
main one-sided and incomplete.
In order to discover the correct way we
must combine religious warmth with scientific
soberness. We come to the task with the
knowledge that comprehension of a per
sonality, especially of a personality like that
of Jesus, cannot be exhausted, that as a matter
of fact it may exhibit very varied grades, ac
cording to the situation in life and the
spiritual maturity of the individual. On the
other hand, we must emphasize the reality
that in order to obtain the valuation of a per
sonality, it is not necessary to secure a docu
mentary and all-embracing knowledge of the
entire life. How often de we bestow our in
terest and our confidence, even our love, upon
those of whom only a few very limited acts

5_8  31*0110 a0 problem 
and words are known to us! We are con
tented therefore to indicate the direction and
the definite particulars by means of which
one may form an independent judgment of
Jesus. We shall consider him first as teacher,
next as personality, and finally as force.
These three words — teacher, personality,
force — correspond to the historical fact and
to the aim of Jesus himself. As a peripatetic
teacher Jesus exercised his activity, he was
self-consciously a personality of entirely
unique character and as such has become
known to others, while an immeasurable
spiritual power has continued to stream forth
from him even until the present. And these
three conceptions correspond exactly to
modern methods of thinking, particularly
where the object is to understand and to esti
mate the value of a man. On the one side
they are limited historically and scientifically,
on the other side they are defined with refer
ence to ethics and religion. Each of these
conceptions is in itself clear while it yet en
closes the most momentous problems, is
limited and yet inexhaustible, is easily under
stood and yet incalculably profound, is undi
vided and concentrated and none the less

 3(egug ag problem  59
capable of the most diversified content. If
our purpose carries through, we shall come
to a living understanding of Jesus as teacher,
personality, force. But be it said here — our
path leads away from theoretical considera
tion of the subject to practical experience.
The value of teaching can be authenticated
only through effective, patient action; the
value of personality, only through personal
devotion; the value of force, only through
practical experiment. If Jesus is to be for
us not a circumstance occasioning stumbling
but a fruitful experience, he must become a
problem not for the head alone but also for
heart and life. Here, as everywhere in the
natural and spiritual life, it will be found true
that if there be present only a germ of being,
having really the power of life and under
standing, and if that germ be carefully fos
tered and patiently cherished, life and under
standing will grow of itself. From doubts
and problems there well emerge a religious
certainty that will prove settled, forceful, and
victorious.

60 3IC0U0 a0 problem

TRANSLATOR'S APPENDIX
The book by Drews, together with his de
fence of his conclusions by lectures and in cur
rent periodicals, has caused a very consider
able commotion throughout Protestant Ger
many and Switzerland. In the neighbor
hood of Berlin alone about fifty-five popular
meetings have been held to protest against
both the matter and the spirit of his presenta
tion. In part these meetings have been di
rected also against "liberal theology" (for
which the authors of these lectures stand),
although it is noted in answer that the "liberal
theologians" are almost to a man the oppon
ents of Drews. The literary side of the battle
is noteworthy, for a flood of works and
articles is issuing from the press (recalling
the "Babel und Bibel" controversy of 1902-
03), of which those under the following titles
are noteworthy:
A. Drews, Die Petruslegende, Frankfort,
1 9 10; D. Chwolson, Ueber die Frage, ob

 3le0U0 a0 problem  61.
Jesus gelebt hat, Leipsic, 1910; P. Jensen,
Hat der Jesus der Evangelien wirklich ge
lebt? Frankfort, 1910; idem, Moses, Jesus,
Paulus. Drei Sagenvarienten des babyloni-
schen Gottmenschen Gilgamesch, ib., 1910;
M. Maurenbrecher, Von Nazareth nach
Golgotha, Berlin, 1909; G. Pfannmuller, in
Literarisches Zentralblatt fur Deutschland,
May 28, 1910, cols. 705-708; H. Weinel, Ist
das "liberale" Jesusbild nviderlegt? Tubin
gen, 1 9 10; J. Weiss, Jesus von Nazareth,
Mythus oder Geschichte, Tubingen, 1910;
H. Windisch, in ChristUche Welt, 1909, and
in Theologische Rundschau, May, 1910; pp.
163-182; H. Zimmern, Zum Streit um die
" Christusmythe." Das babylonische Ma
terial in seinen Hauptpunkten dargestellt,
Berlin, 1910; A. Bohtlingk, Zur Aufhellung
der Christus mythologie, Frankfort, 1910; W.
von Schnehen, Der moderne Jesuskultus, ib.,
1910; P. Rohrbach, Geboren von der Jung
frau, ib., 19 10.

3Iegug ag Ceacber
BY
PASTOR W. VEIT

II
JESUS AS TEACHER
It is our task to deal with Jesus as teacher,
that is to say, to consider how he employed
the word. Particular attention is for a very
brief space asked to the fact that Jesus used
the word as the instrument by means of which
to exercise his religious influence upon men.
This appears to be, at first sight, a matter of
course. Nevertheless, that which appears so
self-evident, namely that religion should be
stimulated by the word and through it pro
duced, was absolutely not the original order of
things. Under primitive conditions, religion
employed entirely different means to disclose
itself to men. It worked through sacred of
fices, cultic ceremonies, slaughtered rams and
oxen, the sweet odor of incense, priestly gar
ments of variegated pattern, drums, trumpets,
flutes, and harps. And this method of work
ing and of existing was not confined to its be
ginnings ; religions are ever longing to return
65

66  3fegug ag Ceacber 
to these beginnings, they display a natural
tendency ever to become again cultus, sacra
ment, priesthood, church. As a consequence,
those men who would extend religion through
the word, meanwhile passing these other
means by, are going against the normal move
ment of religions ; they accomplish an ethical
action in swimming contrary to the stream of
development. To this class belongs Jesus,
and so his activities will be understood
through the word. He is one of those re
markable men who, when religion is under
discussion, do not picture to themselves
temple, altar, tapers, incense, the savour of
sacrifice, a host of priests and train of cere
monies ; on the contrary, he calls men to place
themselves at his feet: "Come, and I will
speak with you."
These men who conjoin religion and word
fall into two groups ; those who are conscious
that in so acting they are accomplishing some
thing noteworthy, and those who do not give a
thought to the noteworthiness of their action.
The first class, who realize what they are do
ing, necessarily become critics of the forms
and means of religion which have been and
are customary. They make war upon temple,

 3[egug ag Ceacber  67
priest, incense, church. Jesus does not be
long to this group, but to the naive class who
do not reflect upon such matters. He feels
no necessity to become an iconoclast, to
throw down altars, to close the temple. He
can indeed make his entrance therein. When
he perceives that prayer in such a place is
made impossible because of the traffic done at
money-changers' stands and stalls where doves
are sold, he can pick up the lash and purify
the place from a religion of traffic. But just
as naturally he can speak with entire calmness
of the fact that there will be a time when no
stone of the temple will remain upon another,
and that day has for him no terrors when
neither at Jerusalem nor at Gerizim men
will offer their prayers, when no longer priest
nor temple shall exist. For all true prayer to
God is in spirit and in truth; this kind of
prayer needs none of those paraphernalia.
But he cannot think of the time when the
union of word and of religion shall be
severed. Temple may fall and priesthood
pass away, heaven and earth vanish, but his
word shall not perish. That was his con
sciousness, so he valued his word.
With this introduction we arrive at the

68  3[egug ag Ceacber 
particular matter which is the object of our
investigation,* namely, How did Jesus em
ploy this instrument of the word? And we
start from the form which he used. The
preaching of Jesus expressed itself in three
fold form: (i) he proclaimed the kingdom
of heaven, (2) he expounded the laws of his
people, (3) he spoke in proverbs and in par
ables. These three characteristics of style,
preaching of the kingdom of heaven, exposi
tion of the law, and proverbial method of
speech, were not invented by Jesus but were
adopted by him. He used the methods of
address which were customary among his peo
ple in the propounding of religious truths.
But these three forms of employment of the
word in preaching have greater significance
than that which they have as methods of style
used by Jesus. As a general fact, form and
content are in closest union. So it is with
Jesus; every method in style employed by him
is bound up with a definite complex of frame
* In order to avoid raising expectations which the
following performance will not satisfy, it is here ex
plicitly noted that the theme does not call for an expo
sition of the teaching of Jesus ; what is in mind is an in
vestigation of "Jesus as teacher," that is to say, the
genius and method of his preaching.

 3[egug ag Ceacber  69
of mind and view, a wholly determined type
of piety. Whoever uses a style of this char
acter can not help combining with it the con
nected aggregates of frame of mind and view.
There consequently resulted the complicated
phenomenon that Jesus expressed what he
had to say not in new forms, words, thoughts,
opinions, but in the methods of expression,
with the same concept-material, under the
forms customary to the type of piety, which
were already in existence and in use in the
region. Explanation of this fact might be
based upon psychological and pedagogical
grounds. It might be said that Jesus must
follow this method in order to be understood
by his hearers, must speak a language which
was current and suited to the capacities of
the people. The religious language em
ployed among the Hebrews was the language
of the expectation of the Messiah, exposition
of the law, and apothegmatic declarations.
Such an explanation would be correct, only
that the mentality of Jesus himself must be
taken into the account; for Jesus had for his
own thinking no other language; the modes
of expression and views which were current
were those which he normally employed.

7o  3fegttg ag Ceacber 
And such is the usual course of things, for
even the greatest genius does not create every
thing new. Such a one takes the heritage
from the past, adds to it something new, and
— what is of the highest significance — welds
the whole into new forms. Of creation in the
mental world there is in the absolute sense
none. Mental life is ever historical life, and
history is only the confirmation, enrichment,
and reconstruction of the mental treasures of
the past. It is our task to follow out in what
we may have to say this interesting process
in the work of Jesus, to note how he took up
into his nature the mental heritage of his peo
ple, enriched it through his nature, and re
constructed it in that nature ; we have to con
sider how he turned about the old threads,
spun new ones, dissolved old connections and
supplied others.
This condition of things, the fact that Jesus
inserted a new woof into the web, already
existent, of the religion of his folk, and that
this woof bore the stamp of his own origin
ality, leads to a further fundamental observa
tion. It may have been noticed that in our
discussion we carefully avoided the expres
sion "teaching of Jesus" and substituted for

 3fegug ag Ceacber  71
it another: "how did Jesus employ the word?"
"Teaching" is used to convey the idea of a
settled and closed circle of completed views.
Of the existence of such a "teaching," accord
ing to the confirmed observations already
made, there can in the case of Jesus be no
affirmation. We may not picture to ourselves
a new and completed temple of learning
erected by him and installed in the landscape
of the mental life of his people; the appro
priate figure is that of a seed which he sowed
in the soil of this mental life, which seed took
up into itself the material of that soil and
transformed it into higher forms. The
"teaching of Jesus" is a living process which
even up to the present has not ceased to be
active. The method of Jesus has continued
in process of expansion, diffusing itself from
people to people and stretching on from age
to age. We have to delineate, in this dis
cussion of the preaching of Jesus to the He
brew people, the beginning of an endless de
velopment, to set forth the first operations
which the appearance of Jesus started into
action. Consequently there is not to be ex
pected something that is final, something
which can be placed under strict and sharply

3[egug ag Ceacber

defined categories; we are not to make a col
lection of the teaching of Jesus arranged
under so many captions and in a definite
number of paragraphs. Our task is the much
more interesting one of discovering how a
great man and a pious began the work of in
fluencing the mental and spiritual history of
mankind. It is ours to exhibit beginnings
which have a wide outlook for the future,
because we are to deal with something that
has life, and nothing that has life is finished.
This living process of the working of Jesus
upon the heritage of the past we shall follow
out in the three lines of preaching of the
kingdom of heaven, exposition of the law,
and employment of apothegmatic sayings.

PREACHING OF THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN
Our Gospels are at one in reporting to us
that Jesus entered upon his ministry with
the message: "The kingdom of God is at
hand." This proposition concerning the im
minence of the kingdom of heaven (or the
kingdom of God — the expressions are synony-

 3[egug a0 Ceacber  73
mous) was, as we have already stated, not
newly created by Jesus, it had a history be
hind it which reached through centuries.
Many souls, great and small, had put forth
their religious announcement to men in this
form. Immediately before Jesus, John the
Baptist had injected new life and a new con
tent into it; he had rendered the old thoughts
and tendencies and stimuli instinct with new
life and motion. But among all the great
achievements which were his the greatest is
that through his preaching of the nearness
of the kingdom of heaven he stirred to action
the soul of the carpenter of Nazareth. As
the continuator of the work of John, and as
his disciple and scholar, Jesus still further
diffused this message of the proximity of the
kingdom of God. The message was the same,
and yet — how different it became as he voiced
it! As it came from John this message involved
the following particulars: (i) The preach
ing of the kingdom of heaven is the announce
ment of an immediately impending conflict
between divine and demonic power with the
possession of the earth as the stake; (2) this
conflict is to end with a victory for the govern-

74  3fe0U0 30 Ceacber 
ment of God, and this, as a new ordering of
all relations, came from above and from the
outside upon the earth and to men; (3) the
proclamation of these imminent events was to
effect a decided alteration tn the relations of
mankind; (4) in order to produce these ef
fects there were employed the mighty motives
of fear and of hope. Now what was it that
issued, as Jesus employed it, out of this mass
of thought and stimuli which, as you perceive,
was the source of a hot, glowing, heroic re
ligious intensity? In the first place, there was
a harking back both in method and in content
A considerable part of the work of Jesus
took the form of the preaching of repentance
and judgment, which employed as material
the old series of thoughts, conceptions, and
disposition. Those parts of the proclamation
of Jesus naturally strike us as strange; but
then, that whole conception of the essence
and task of religion which is bound up with
the idea of the kingdom of God is in its great
ness and intensity strange. It has a foreign
ring when Jesus speaks of seeing the devil
fall from heaven, when he tells of the twelve
thrones from which his disciples are in the
future to judge the world, and when he re-

 3legug ag Ceacber  75
employs that old system which thinks of a
judgment and a reward which are objective.
But with this world of judgment and divine '
government goes at once extensive alteration.
Jesus does not do away with the world, but
he, so to speak, removes it a bit farther away
from itself. This kingdom of God — so runs
the formula to which Jesus comes at last —
will come to realization at his second advent.
Then the Son of man is to be seen sitting at
the right hand of power and coming with the
clouds of heaven- He does not yet appear
in this form in this his earthly existence.
When curiosity seeks to know when the long
expected event is to occur, he closes its mouth :
"It is not for you to know the times or the
seasons, which the Father hath put in his
own power" [Acts i. 8]. We are all aware
that things which withdraw into remoteness
and are viewed from afar do not operate any
more with the same immediateness, efficiency,
and overwhelming force. So is it with the
erection of the government of God which is
to complete itself with the accompaniment of
external signs. It loses something of its im
mediate puissance, somewhat is missing from
the acute interest in it. One might perhaps

76  3fg0U0 a0 Ceacber 
without shocking the sensibilities introduce
here a comparison with the ideal future state
of social democracy. In this there is an ideal
the realization of which is longingly looked
for, the immediate attainment of which men
await, yet it gradually withdraws into the
more distant future and thereby loses, as we
are aware, much of its stimulus, color, and
interest. But above all, by this withdrawal
into the distance, there arises between the
present and the distant future a free space, a
sort of limited stage upon which events are
to occur which in some way or other must
work themselves out; indeed through these
events social democracy is actually to realize
itself by means of the ever stronger practical
co-operation in the same fellowship, which,
according to the theory, is of value in propor
tion to its thoroughness. It is exactly this
way with the expectation entertained by Jesus
of the kingdom of God, only that with him
it is not external facts which have postponed
the supreme event and have created a limited
stage in the shape of an intermediate state.
As he viewed it, the case was more like this :
there was something in the essence of the
idea which aimed to work out its accomplish-

 3Ie0U0 a0 Ceacber  77
ment, which needed room in which to be able
to work, and hence proceeded to create the
room which was so necessary to it by patiently
pushing to the rear the side scenes of the end
of the world until it had made the space re
quired for its own complete working out.
However, all that in the mean time makes
toward the establishment of the kingdom
through Jesus and his disciples is also by
Jesus denominated "the kingdom of heaven."
A fact which makes his preaching of the
kingdom of heaven difficult to understand
is that at one time those events which are con
nected with the end of time are included and
designated under the term "kingdom of
heaven," while at another time whatever is
the result of his operation between the present
and the emergence of the final period is so
called. Still (in accordance with the method
of Jesus), whatever is now enacted upon the
stage of life detaches itself, although it is
designated by the same name, from that early
world of thought which is conserved by Jesus.
Here four points of variation stand out,
and they, moreover, form a connection with
the four chief points of the representation
mentioned above as setting forth the old idea

s

78  3.C0H3 ag Ceacber 
of the kingdom of God. (i) There rages
on the limited stage existing between the
present and the time of the end a consuming
conflict, and the two powers which fight are
the same as are to lead the world-battle at the
end of time — God and the devil. But it is
to be noted that the object of the conflict is
different; the strife is for the possession of
the souls of men. Wherever the soul of man
is won from delirium, sickness, need, sensu
ality, selfishness, and past guilt, there a victory
is won for the kingdom of God. From this
point of view it was that Jesus could say in
his great defence before the Pharisees, refer
ring to the two demoniacs who had been healed
by him: "If I cast out devils by the Spirit
of God, then the kingdom of God is come
unto you" [Matt. xii. 28]. For his opponents
this was not sufficient. When the subject of
discussion was the kingdom of heaven, they
desired to see more than a couple of maniacs
restored to sanity, a couple of paralytics walk
ing about, or a couple of converted Magda-
lens. The disposition of Jesus was entirely
different; for him all importance attached
to those two souls, in exuberant pictures he
portrayed for us the consuming interest in

 3fegug ag Ceacber  79
heaven in the contest for the individual souls,
and told how the halls of heaven were flooded
with jubilees when one such victory had been
gained. To save souls from maniacy, need,
and guilt and to unite those saved souls in a
new fellowship of souls is the kingdom of
heaven realized.
(2) Hereupon falls away another char
acteristic of the early conception of the king
dom of heaven, namely that it comes from
above downward, suddenly, with a crash, and
establishes itself on earth by a miracle. Yet
Jesus did not combat this conception — indeed
all this is to eventuate; but in the meanwhile
there unfolds in the midst of this earth which
is devoted to destruction a new existence, a
new eon. The new comes unheralded and of
itself. In the souls of men who are saved
and blessed it begins to grow, just as the mus
tard seed grows in the ground and as the
leaven develops in the baker's trough. Thou
mayest even — he once said — go peacefully to
thy home, mayest eat and drink, sleep and
arise ; even then in the soul it grows and con
tinues to grow. There is a new principle
there, the kingdom of heaven is realized.
When Jesus sees men ever looking with long-

8o  3[egug ag Ceacber 
ing for the day of judgment and of the state
which comes in the future, he can call to
them: "the kingdom of God cometh not with
outward show; neither shall they say Lo here!
or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God
is already within you" [Luke xviii. 20-21].
For already the sower has gone forth to cast
his seed not in the wide world but within, in
the hearts of men; and although much fell
upon poor soil, yet there was that which fell
on good land and bore fruit, so that there
ripens in the meantime a fruit unto eternity.
In place of the world-revolution from without
comes the development of the soul from with
in.
v (3) Development of the soul — you feel that
with this phrase we have arrived at a pro
cess the conception of which does not coin
cide with the old thought-series of a divine
realm which suddenly breaks upon men.
To the thought of a divine realm thus sud
denly coming in upon men there corresponded
the idea of a sudden rapid and total change
in the life of the soul, also the thought of
repentance in its original sense of a sudden
and instantaneous single act. It was that
repentance which John preached, and the

 3fegug a0 Ceacber  81
same is found to day in the preaching of re
pentance common to the usual form of piety
which has to do with the imminence of the
end. This piety which is intent upon the
immediately imminent kingdom of God has
no time to lose, it cannot wait, may not allow
the soul to develop and unfold; its cry is:
"Today, if ye will hear his voice, harden not
your hearts ; already is the axe laid at the root
of the tree." While words similar in tone
spoken by Jesus can often enough be found,
yet in the midst of this old world of stormy
conversions in the eleventh hour another
world establishes itself, the world of peaceful
and constant care and fostering of the soul.
It is probable that not many passages from
our sources can be cited in proof of this quiet
work directed upon the soul, for it is an ope
ration which does not fit in well with literary
purposes. But reference may be made to the
activity of Jesus exercised upon his disciples,
to the scenes between him and Mary of Beth
any, to the retrospect upon his life-work
which issued from him on the Mount of
Olives; with such evidence present, one may
well feel that the activity of Jesus is not cor
rectly described if the account is limited to

82  3fegug 30 Ceacber 
his work as a preacher of repentance having
in view the end of things.
/ (4) In a similar vein a last remark is to
be made concerning the motives which Jesus
sought to disengage in the heart of man to
the end that he might win a hearing for his
message. The incitement employed by the
I older preaching of the kingdom of heaven
was hope and fear. The preacher of repent
ance allowed the terrors of the impending
judgment to permeate his sermons, and with
the use of more or less vivid coloring he in
stilled in the soul of his audience alarm lest
they come under the terrible penalty imposed
by that judgment. Or, on the other hand, he
conjured up another series of pictures which
presented the sweet joys of eternal felicity or
the satisfaction which comes through the all-
availing righteousness of God, setting forth
the condition when once and for all evil shall
be punished and good rewarded. Now Jesus
did not at all eschew the use of this material.
He could picture vividly the anguish of hell ;
in describing the state of eternal blessedness
he was in general more reserved. He can
without hesitation employ as a motive the ex
pectation of reward, and can adduce as con-

 3fe0ti0 30 ceacber  83
solation for sacrifice made in the present the
hundred-fold indemnification which is to be
received in the kingdom of God. But when
the subject is actively brought to his con
sciousness, he shrinks from including religion
in the scheme which involves external reward
and punishment; and so, when he has gained
entire freedom, he is heard using quite an
other tone and emphasis. Then expected
recompense is transformed into a feeling of
blessedness that is already present; man is
thus early blessed in that and because he has
living experience of his God. To be sure,
this line of thought is first clearly brought
out by the Fourth Gospel, where it is made to
appear that the judgment is already a past
event, that "eternal life" has even now come
to realization in the soul. The Gospel of
John, then, exhibits the pearl disassociated
from the sands of the earlier expositions ; the
words of the first three Gospels do no more
than show this pearl glimmering among the
sands. What shines out through this declara
tion of Jesus is that out of the heaven which
is awaited in fear and in hope there develops
the heaven which every one prizes in his own
soul as a choice possession. Religion is no

84  3(e0U0 30 Ceacber 
more the suspense between hope and fear; it
is experience, it is the happiness of experi
mental knowledge.
The new conception of the kingdom of
heaven which is substituted for the older one
consists of salvation of the soul, communion
of souls, development of soul. Under the in
fluence of its brilliancy the old background
is totally forgotten, and after one has looked
upon it, he himself reflects something of the
brilliancy and beauty of this new true king
dom of heaven — a fact which may be verified
by the words of Jesus.*
I may not turn away from this exposition
of Jesus' preaching of the kingdom of heaven
without drawing a conclusion which to me
seems especially important for the under
standing of Jesus in the present day. It re-
* I recall, for instance, how in the representation of
blessedness under the figure of a festal meal the em
phasis is placed no more upon the completeness and
splendor of the joys of the table, but upon the much
more subtle happiness which arises in the spiritual
fellowship with the other members of the circle present.
One may remember, also, how in the parable of the
rich man and the beggar, Lazarus, and also in the
narrative dealing with the distinction made at the
eternal judgment between the sheep and the goats the
stress is placed upon matters quite other than is the
case when apocalyptic is employed.

 3[e0U0 30 Ceacber  85
lates to the question: In what department of "
life has Jesus something to say which im
mediately interests us? And I may annex
this discussion to the account of an event,
small in itself yet already celebrated, which
occurred on Friedrich Naumann's journey in
the orient in 1898. Naumann thus reports it
in his Asia (Berlin, 1899) : "It was a day on
the stony road from Nablus to Jerusalem
when a fellow traveller propounded the ques
tion whether Jesus, who, so far as we know,
travelled this route twice, walked or rode.
Paul rode, and Jesus made his entrance to
Jerusalem seated upon an ass ; so either mode
of travel is a possibility. Either method
whether he went on foot or rode, is alike little
compatible with the fact which till now we
had before us — the road itself made the dis
tinction. Jesus travelled or rode on such a
highway without doing anything to improve
it. Whoever supposes that before now that
road should have been made better would
come to another opinion if he should reflect
sufficiently upon the stone. The Jesus who
up to the present time has been known to us
lived in a land that had been put in order.
In such a land he longed for the adjustment

86  3(g0ti0 30 Ceacber 
of relation between rich and poor by means of
the spirit of brotherhood. That he lived
where the first essentials of social progress
were lacking, and that he did not discuss the
necessity of such progress, became of signifi
cance to me as soon as I began to read the
New Testament with the eyes of a traveller
in Palestine. I then lost something which
had been of great value to me — the idea of
an earthly helper who saw all kinds of earthly
needs." Many who are here present will know how
everything seemed with Naumann to fall
with a crash, even more than he himself
realized and expressed in those words —
nothing more nor less than his entire Chris
tian-social past, the whole of Jesus as he had
known him. Many now before me have
themselves experienced that crash of destruc
tion when, under the stress of scientific knowl
edge, they came to know that they must sacri
fice the conception of Jesus hitherto held by
them, of a Jesus to whom nothing human was
foreign, who could offer help for every need
and was ready to make answer to every ques
tion — when they found that they must dis
place it with the idea of an austere Jesus, in-

 3fegug 30 Ceacber  87
tent upon one side only, who had no interest
in man except that he is a soul. Had Jesus
no word for social progress, for the further
development of human fellowship, no word
for the inherent worth of the family, of law,
of the State, art, science, culture? Sharply
and distinctly comes to us the answer from
the Gospels — not a word. In respect to a
whole series of questions which burn in the
soul of the present Jesus remained mute; he
neither felt them nor, for part at least, had
he the wish to feel them. He knew but two
things, God and the soul, souls and their
God.* If he spoke of fellowship, he had not
in mind that of a legal character such as meets
us in the State, in business, in the different
strata of social life, in the life of the handi
crafts, marriage, the family, and the like. He
felt the opposition between the two kinds of
* In order to avoid misunderstanding it should be
emphasized here that from the conception involved in
the formula "God and the soul" (in the singular) there
results no necessity to take in the entire horizon of
Jesus' vision. Souls were not for him monads of ex
clusive constitution; they were marked by the social
instinct. But Jesus had interest only in the finer
threads of the communion of souls that become united;
not in the joint life which results from legal and
social relations, which issues out of legal regulation.

88  3fegug 3g Ceacber 
fellowship ; he knew that "the princes of the
Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and
they that are great exercise authority upon
them. But it shall not be so among you"
[Matt. xx. 25-26]. From his point of view
things assumed value according to their in
fluence upon the soul and as they had bearing
in this particular case upon this individual
soul, according as they harmed or aided the
soul. Hence it follows that for Jesus neither
family nor calling, neither State nor law,
neither production nor consumption, neither
progress nor retrogression in civilization had
interest in itself. One thing is needful: "Seek
ye first the kingdom of God and his righteous
ness; and all these things shall be added unto
you" [Matt. vi. 33]. "Your time, your inter
ests, your power," he taught his disciples, "are
not to be given to things which belong in
such categories as the matters already men
tioned. Take no thought for your life, what
ye shall eat; nor yet for your body, what ye
shall put on, and render to Caesar the things
that are Caesar's." The disciples of Jesus have
something better to do than to waste thought
upon questions which concern the warrant for
taxation and politics.

 3fegug 3g Ceacber  89
We are not concerned here and now in set
tling the question whether we must, can, or
may continue in the line here directed by
Jesus — that is a question demanding its own
consideration. Nor may we stop here to dis
cuss the reason for this "one-sidedness" of
Jesus. Our present purpose is to learn what
Jesus was and in what respects he is strange
to us. The result is that what Jesus had to
say did not cover the whole range, did not
comprehend the wide circle of human de
mands and operations. His words fathom the
depths; and the new thing which he added
was precisely this, that he circumscribed the
area of religion and limited its content so that
there were to be considered in religion only
two concerns — God, who was yearning for
souls, and souls, which were created with a
Godward design. II
EXPOSITION OF THE LAW
The second method used by Jesus in his
proclamation of his message to men was the
exposition of the law. The Gospels are
studded with notes to the effect that Jesus

90  3fc0U0 30 Ceacber 
taught the people. This instruction of the
people is therefore sharply distinguished from
his preaching of the kingdom of heaven — a
fact which comes out in the vocabulary by the
use of two different words. This teaching of
the people by Jesus was nothing else than the
elucidation of the law, an activity which was
the life task of the rabbis. It is common
knowledge that by his contemporaries Jesus
was greeted as a rabbi, i. e., expounder of the
law, and was so rated by them. Many of his
expositions are lost, but enough material re
mains to furnish a picture of this kind of
work. We are under especial obligations to
the Evangelist Matthew for furnishing a very
excellent collection of the expositions of the
law by Jesus, which collection, as you know,
is the first part of the so-called Sermon on the
Mount (Matt. v. and the first part of vi.).
The type of piety which employed as its
particular province the matter of the law and
its exposition is from the very beginning of
an altogether different character from that
which proclaimed the kingdom of heaven.
The preaching of the kingdom of heaven
transported a man from the present into the
future, it induced in him the fiery heat of

 3fe0U0 30 Ceacber  gj_
highest stress, it pointed out the salient
features of the world drama, it set him face
to face with the great — Either, orl The piety
which dealt with the law was soberer, more
matter of fact, an everyday concern, exhibit
ing more of the martinet. It was not con
cerned with fiery ardor and great distrac
tions; it looked upon everyday life with its
thousand varied situations and questions. Re
ligion came into the life of man as a regulat
ing force; its verbal expressions addressed to
mankind were: "Thou shalt, and thou shalt
not." Religion become practical addressed it
self neither to feeling nor to thinking, for it
had no time for either of these, having to con
trol the entire activity of man both in doing
and in omitting to do. In order to accom
plish this great, immeasurable task, it
wrought out a fine-meshed net of individual
prescriptions of such close construction that if
possible no single situation in life, no indi
vidual "case" should remain unconsidered.
In this way religion became casuistry. It
struck a treaty with jurisprudence, and the
holy books, which decade by decade became
thicker, compare exactly with the Corpus
juris. From jurisprudence it borrowed the

92  3fg0ti0 30 Ceacber 
motives which it would set in motion in men ;
it operated with the means of the law — pun
ishment and reward. No other people re
duced this legalistic piety to the degree of
virtuosity which was wrought out by the Jews
at the time of Jesus. * Unfortunately the time
at our disposal forbids that we stop to adduce
examples of this.
Now this style and this type of piety was
not left unemployed by Jesus. Indeed, at
first glance it might appear as though he was
but one of a long series of rabbis who there
at the Sea of Gennesaret patched up and
made ever smaller in its mesh the spiritual
net for the peasants and fishermen of Galilee.
Since from his lips too fell time and again
the legal sounding "Thou shalt, and thou shalt
not," even at his hands religion seemed to be
* Translator's Note : — The attempt to cover all the
possible contingencies of life by appropriate legislation
is not peculiar to the Hebrews, and they have not car
ried it to greater excess than highly developed religious
life has prompted among other peoples. One may adduce,
as a few examples of this, the Apastamba, Gautama,
Vasishtha, and Baudhayana of Brahmanism, the Pati-
mokkha, Mahavagga, and KuUavagga of Buddhists, and
the Shayast la-Shayast of Zoroastrians. These are all
accessible in English translation in the Sacred Books
of the East.

 3fe0tt0 30 Ceacber  93
but the advance to men of a new law. As
with the rest of the rabbis, it appeared as
though he too considered that everything de
pended upon right performance without ref
erence to feeling and perception. "Not every
one that saith unto me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall en
ter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that
doeth the will of my Father which is in
heaven" [Matt. vii. 21]. And if the question
is raised, What is that will? from him as
from the rabbis we receive series of pre
scriptions of single duties. He tells us
what man must do when he prays, what
he must avoid when he fasts, how he
must carry himself when he gives alms, what
his course of conduct should be after accept
ing an invitation, how he is to act when as
saulted, or when his wife is untrue to him,
or when a lawsuit is in process, or when a
loan has been made. All this belongs to the
very framework of a piety which is legalistic
and in the exact spirit of the rabbis. And yet
— legalistic as is the ring of all this — it is in
fact the opposite of legalistic, it is really
the dissolution and annulment of legalism in
religion. This was felt by those simple peas
ants of Galilee at the first exposition of the

94  3fe0U0 30 Ceacber 
law by Jesus. In our oldest source it is re
lated that, on that first sabbath when Jesus set
forth the law to them in the little synagogue
at Capernaum, they left the place with the
impression: He preaches not as the other
rabbis, but as one who (to translate verbally)
has authority in himself. They perceived the
new spirit which employed the old method
and the old conceptual material, and they ex
pressed the difference in the method of Jesus
from that used by legalistic piety, employed
though this latter was by Jesus both in form
and style, going to the root by saying that
Jesus was one whose authority was internal,
and by noting the internal and firm assurance
which streamed forth from him in his words.
In legalistic religion what occurred was the
strongest possible self repression of the per
sonal individuality of the expounder of the
law, whose business it was conceived to be to
suppress his own feelings and sensations, his
personal will and desires. There was an ex
ternal authority with which he dealt, to which
he was bound to listen for the conclusions
which were to be applied to the individual
cases and situations of life. The requirements
thus enunciated became thenceforth govern-

 3(e0U0 30 Ceacber  95
ing authority. The authority was everything
and the man by whom it was uttered was
nothing: "Let justice be done though the
earth perish 1" All this meets in Jesus a trans
formation. He worked from within outward,
started from his perceptions, from his own
ethical judgment. The organ which gov
erned his own action or restraint from action
lay in his own breast. Whenever a perplex
ing question arose concerning the right
method of action in this or that case, Jesus did
not have punctilious recourse to a law book
to turn its leaves for a certain paragraph,
that through exposition and application of
the prescription found there he might offer
the advice suitable to the matter in hand. In
such a situation he searched in his own breast
and there with incontestable and primal cer
tainty discovered the form of conduct. If
this inner authority harmonized with external
authority, well and good; if there was dis-
sidence between external authority and his
inner voice, Jesus did not hesitate, even were
that external authority the highest known to
his people — the law of Moses — to oppose and
overrule the external for his own inner certi
tude: "Ye have heard that it was said to

96 31*0110 30 Ceacber
them of olden time, . . . but I say unto you."
The suffrage of this "I" annulled the suffrage
of Moses. Everything legalistic ceased to be
when the subject demanded boldly a place
above all objective authority, and instead of
the "thou shalt" of prescriptive law there
came into expression the "I must" of inner
necessity. But, it is asked, is it not a fact that Jesus
displaced the old law by a new one which
was enacted by himself, so that he did away
with the law of the scribes and substituted for
it the Christian law? In that case we have
but changed lawgivers; instead of Moses
Jesus has come forth. Those among you who
have read church history are acquainted with
the fact that very early it was assumed that
this change had taken place, and that the
preaching of Jesus was applied as a "new
law." But the only thing accomplished by
this was to assert but a very coarse power in
the words of Jesus. Those words can be ap
plied to almost any other purpose than to act
as stones in such a structure, as paragraphs
in a new law book. Objectively taken and ap
plied, one command of Jesus often enough
opposes another, one prescription undoes

 3fe0U0 30 Ceacber  97
what was formulated on an earlier occasion.
Understood as legalistic instructions, the de
clarations of Jesus are incomplete, discon
nected, discordant, even contradictory; they
lack unity and logical conclusiveness, and in
stead of making clear the path of man, they
lead him from confusion to confusion. Used
as laws, they are a host of discords and dis
harmonies. But these declarations lose in
stantly the semblance of disconnection and
contradiction when one ceases to look upon
them as legal maxims and finds the true unity
which lies behind them. Then not only does
each word ring out in pure and clear tones,
but when the apparently discordant declara
tions are taken together there is built up a
wonderful accord, and the whole of the
preaching of Jesus, so far as it has been trans
mitted to us, swells out into a mighty, ravish
ing harmony. For there really is such a
unity, with which all the particulars are in
accord. This unity does not inhere, however,
in an objective legislative corpus, but in the
subject of the promulgating personality. That
man is well on the way to an understanding
of the words of Jesus who recognizes in them
the projections of the soul life of Jesus upon

98  3[e0U0 30 Ceacber 
the background of human happenings. With
this we arrive at the central point of the
present discussion and to make this more in
telligible I may be permitted the use of a
figure. The sun radiates its light upon the
world spaces by reason of its own inner
power, but the operations of this light come
into recognition in its particulars because of
the phenomenon that it falls upon objects and
bathes them in its own being. The one light
radiates these operations of its own in the
form of the most varied tones and colors, and
comes to our eyes in infinite shadings and
plays in gradation. What we see are the
operations of the one light; but the variegated
world of objects on which it falls so affects
it that here there meets the eye a brilliant
red, there a soft green, yonder a blended
white. What falls on the retina is a combina
tion of the illuminating light and the illumin
ated object. It is just this way with the words
of Jesus; they are a reflection of human life
in the light of Jesus' discernment. They
show us what operations in his soul were
called forth by the events of the world about
him, by the acts and the omissions of men.
It is this which makes his words sound so

 3fe0ti0 30 Ceacber  99
different at different times. This variation
arises from the circumstances into the center
of which his being came, these circumstances
calling forth from him appropriate expres
sions corresponding to reflections of light in
the world of illumination. Hence it comes
about that the voice of Jesus can at one time
be heard saying: "He that is not with me is
against me" [Matt. xii. 30]. That is the way
it speaks when the time is one for decision.
But at another time, when intolerance and
narrowness are to be checked, it may be
heard saying: "He that is not against us is
on our part" [Mark ix. 40]. It can take into
account a piety which places affected cere
monial commands above the simple and
natural obligations of children, and can com
mend those obligations as the most beautiful
bloom of filial piety; but when mother love
and motherly indiscretion pass due bounds,
from it may issue the sharp utterance : "Who
is my mother and who are my brethren; he
that hateth not father, mother, brothers, sis
ters, is not worthy of me" [cf . Matt. x. 37, xii.
48; Mark iii. 33; Luke xiv. 26]. This
method of Jesus can enforce the lesson: "I
say unto you, That ye resist not evil ; but who-

ioo  3fe0tig 30 Ceacber 
soever shall smite thee on thy right cheek,
turn to him the other also" [Matt. v. 39] ; and
in another hour it can meet the unrighteous
blow with the remonstrance: "If I have
spoken evil, bear witness of the evil; but if
well, why smitest thou me?" [John xviii. 28].
Logically these are contradictory; it seems
like the reed in the wind if the measure ap
plied is objective teaching. But all these con
tradictions blend into harmony in which one
tone supports and strengthens another if only
a man has learned to recognize them as the
irradiations of a unitary soul life upon the
varied discrepant world of reality. For this
varied contradictory life brings it about that
today that is false which yesterday was cor
rect, that here I smite and there I heal, that
one I must forgive and another I must pun
ish, that what for that one is an inner crav
ing is for me a damage to the soul ; that which
poisons me may be another's healing medi
cine. Life is so many-sided that we cannot
embrace within prescriptions a life-line of
conduct. The fish slip through the meshes
of the casuistry, or else the net becomes so
confining that it cuts off the breath and makes
free motion impossible. And how assured

 3fegug 3g Ceacber  ich
Jesus was of this as he spoke of the unen
durable burdens of legalism and of the un
natural constriction of all mental life (and
spiritual) which comes about through casu
istry! Was he the kind of man to substitute
a new net for the old one?
Of course, the answer is negative. What
he did is this : he sent forth his being in rays
upon the world that girdled it, he exhibited
the reaction of his being upon the surround
ing reality, he showed how his being valued
the action and non-action of men. And then
he said: "Go thou and do likewise. Work
thou and make thy decisions from within out
ward. The robes of external restraints with
which thou clothest thyself have no value.
From within outward must thy whole being
be projected: a good tree can produce only
good fruit and an evil tree only evil fruit.
Therefore from within outwards become
new." And in accomplishing this he will
help us. But this help will not come by our
making ourselves casts from him as the model
and by externally imitating that which he
said and did under totally different stimuli
and amid essentially different circumstances.
What is required is that freely, like the artist,

io2 ^3fegug 3g Ceacber 
we shall mould the masterpiece of our soul
after the pattern and antitype of his being.
To create unfettered and independent person
alties that should carry within themselves the
measure of their own action or non-action,
that, like himself, should be exalted above
y" submission to the yoke of an external author
ity, this was his aim. And that you may ac
complish this he would give assistance by
the irradiation of his own being. It
may be that in your actions you con
travene the tenor of the words of Jesus
and even yet maintain their spirit;
-" for the letter kills and the spirit makes alive.
When we turn the leaves of the Sermon on
the Mount, the words of Jesus do not have the
effect of paragraphs from a law book which
bids and forbids, commands and enslaves,
threatens and punishes. Out of them gleams
upon us an ethical ideal which does not con
strain but allures and invites, which does not
enslave but draws us upward, which does not
punish but blesses. Indeed, there is more than
this; above the ideal we are introduced to a
concrete man of flesh and blood like ourselves
in whom this ideal has taken shape in clear,
sharply defined form. So this human-histori-

 3fegug 3g Ceacber  103
cal form emerges before struggling, fighting,
suffering humanity and utters the word which
no law and no doctrine can speak, which only
an untrammelled personality may utter to
other personalities: "Come unto me, all ye
that labour and are heavy laden, and I will
give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and
learn of me; . . .for my yoke is easy, and
my burden is light " [Matt. xi. 28-30].
Ill
THE EMPLOYMENT OF THE PROVERBIAL
METHOD
The third means used by Jesus in the at
tempt to bring his preaching home to men is
the proverb. And this form often develops
into the parable by means of materials drawn
from the events and observations occurring in
and made upon human life. There come to
memory an entire series of such short say
ings by which Jesus succeeded in blocking out
a situation with lightning quickness or hewed
through an involved knot with sharp spirit
ual blade. In order that we may have before
us material suited to the purpose of our inves
tigation, I may recall to your memory a few

io4  3fg0U0 30 Ceacber 
such short sayings, chosen altogether arbi
trarily. When the disciples were plucking on
the sabbath ears of corn in order to satisfy a
natural need, Jesus defended them against the
charge of sabbath-breaking with the proverb :
"The sabbath was made for man, and not man
for the sabbath" [Mark ii. 27]. When the
pious in the land scorned him for his asso
ciation with the children of the world, he ex
hibited the heart of the purpose for which he
came into the world better in a single line
than could have been done by a long exposi
tion : "They that be whole need not a physi
cian, but they that are sick" [Matt. ix. 12].
When some would constrain him and his
disciples to an external religious observance
which was in direct opposition to the dispo
sition of their minds (they would have Jesus
and his disciples fast while their mental atti
tude was one of joy), he convinced every
soundly constituted and clear thinking man of
the correctness of his and his disciples' posi
tion by the simple words : "Can the children
of the bridechamber fast?" [Mark ii. 19]. On
other occasions he did not spare the use of
irony; such a case is furnished when the ex
planation was wrung from him by holy earn-

 3[e0U0 3g Ceacber  105
estness concerning what constitutes real de
filement of our being, which proceeds from
the lower lusts and quagmires that have their
origin in the heart of men: "But to eat with
unwashed hands defileth not a man" [Matt.
xv. 20].
Here we seem finally to have parted com
pany with those difficult and wearying inves
tigations which were necessary when we were
studying the preaching of the kingdom of
God and the exposition of the law, in which
we were compelled to distinguish between the
transient shell, through which we had to make
our way, and the sweet kernel which then was
disclosed to our view. The proverbs of Jesus
ring so fresh, so immediately human, they seem
to us to have nothing of the manners of a
past that is two thousand years away. And
this feeling is justified. We have had occa
sion previously to cite the words: "He
teaches not as the scribes teach," and once
more their appropriateness is evident. For
how freshly does varied and real life flow
through the proverbs and parables of Jesus I
We have left far behind us the dusty rolls and
narrow spaces of the scribes, and we let our
selves be led by Jesus to field and meadow, to

n

106  3[e0U0 30 Ceacber 
blossoming anemones and singing birds, to the
sprouting seed and the click of the sickel.
And how grateful are his descriptions of the
life of man, neither distorted into a world-
weary pessimism nor painted with the pencil
of adornment that is world-intoxicated! In
realistic truth flows before us the stream of
events, of human passions, conflicts, defeats,
and victories, and — a new and surprising pic
ture — upon its waves it carries the ship of
piety. Religion has obtained an entirely new
vehicle; it uses no more the phantasy of ex
pectation of the kingdom of heaven nor does
it employ now the law book of the rabbis ; its
new carriage is the reality of life itself. Who
has not experienced the witchery of this pic
ture and has not gladly fled ever away from
the ambiguity and artificiality into which our
piety so often falls to-day, coming with joy
into the simplicity and naturalness of the
proverbs and parables of Jesus?
But even here where all is so immediately
felt, so present, so modern, we must grant to
history its rights. More than he guesses who
is not familiar with the history of religious
methods and religious views do the proverbs
and parables of Jesus wear the robes which

 3[e0u0 30 Ceacber  107
belong to those times. Many a time, even to
day, does this show itself in glimpses to him
who watches, and this is especially true of
the conclusions which Jesus draws in his pro
verbs. These sprang up upon the ground of
rabbinic logic and psychology. But beyond
all this, the entire religious view of things
which spreads its illumination from the
heart of Jesus' proverbs and parables is
throughout not a new thing. One might form
ulate the fact somewhat this way: religion be
comes something intelligible and in accord
ance with reason. In the proverbial wisdom
of his people, which in the days of Jesus al
ready had a long history behind it, the prac
tice was assumed and ever more widely dif
fused of conceiving religion as something
which corresponded to sound human under
standing. There are extant a whole series of
Jewish writings which belong to the times im
mediately before and after Jesus which
preach a religion that illumines the under
standing and does no violence to the intelli
gence. They call it rationalism. By some
this rationalism has been prized as the great
est step in advance made by religion. Here
prospered the religion which made its way

io8  3fe0U0 30 Ceacber 
from the lower regions of human motives,
coming at last to the clear daylight and strik
ing a treaty with the light-forms of reason
and science. Others, however, regard ration
alism as religion in its deepest poverty: re
ligion has lost its mystery! All the shallow
places into which the reason can sink is filled
with the rumble of conceptions, and every
stone of stumbling over which the understand
ing can trip is cast aside. All is smooth and —
flat. Religion under rationalism changes into
mere prudential maxims: "do right and fear
none," and "what thou wouldst that others
should do unto thee do thou also unto others."
Is then the preaching of Jesus in his prov
erbs and parables rationalism? In form, yes!
He can sum up the content of all religion
(law and prophets) in the saying: "All that
thou wouldst that men do unto thee, do thou
unto them." He can, especially when face to
face with the affectation and ambiguity of the
religion which was all about him, call as wit
ness sound human understanding and can take
the natural perceptions of men as a court of
appeal for the decision of such ethical and re
ligious questions as are upon the car
pet. But again we shall misunderstand Jesus

 3fe0U0 30 Ceacber  109
if we look upon him as nothing more than an
advocate of the rationalism that then was cur
rent. All that he said and all that he claimed
is logical and natural, provided that his pre
mises and antecedents be granted. But those
who do this do something quite non-rational,
at all events something which soured human
understanding, as it itself claimed, had not
done up to that time. I recur again to the ex
amples already cited, which were collected al
most at random. Of course the physician is
for the sick and not for the sound. But the
important thing, the new and the "irrational"
in the saying, is that religion may not be com
pared to jurisprudence, but is related to the
healing art; so that the juridical categories of
requital, punishment, satisfaction and all the
rest of such things are not in accordance with
religion. If what Jesus said was so rational,
how does it come about that with his advent
these conceptions did not fall away finally
from religion and that the natural tendency
of religion even under Christianity is ever to
fall back into the old juristic bed? It is cer
tainly absurd and impious to act against one's
own experience, to do that for which there is
absolutely no inner prompting (as, for ex-

no  3[e0U0 30 Ceacber 
ample, to fast under the conditions noted
above) . Yet it is a fact that we are not to-day
free from this inconsistency; how often both
within and without the Church do men so
conform to current practice that the "ra
tional" voice of Jesus may be heard exclaim
ing "thou playest the hypocrite." Once
more — could there be a more natural figure of
the methods of religious propaganda and mis
sions than that of the sower. Nevertheless,
we have already caught sight of the fact that
men continually seek to propagate religion
through means that are entirely different; they
work through sacrifice, priests, incense, can
dles, sacraments, miracles, artificial construc
tions, and even through unethical coercion.
Is the parable of the sower then really so ra
tional? Finally, how completely human and
grateful to our feelings is the knowledge that
the sabbath is made for man and not the re
verse, that religion would fain be not a tyrant
over us but a friend to us. And yet over
and over again we have the experience that in
the world consideration is paid only to a
church that is dressed up in finery, fitted up
with pomp, authority, and temporal power,

 3fg0U0 30 Ceacber  in
while Jesus' method of homely service re
ceives only disrespect and scorn.
I trust that the examples alleged have made
clear the most important point, namely, that
the proverbs of Jesus take the form of max
ims of wisdom which call forth the agreement
of the reason, but that in truth their primal
application is not to the understanding or to
the reason, but to the will. The religion
which Jesus preached has absolutely nothing
to do with rationalism or with its opposite,
supernaturalism; for its intention is to pierce
to the center of things in the heart and con
science. For in the will-life of man there is
seated an enemy much stronger than he could
possibly be were he found only in the life of
the understanding. Here is entrenched a
natural power which is to be overcome; out
of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murder,
adultery, fornication, theft, false witness,
slander. This contest with our idleness, sen
suality, and selfishness is not to be compared
in difficulty and obstinacy with the strife
about the sensibleness and reasonableness of
religion; unless you are born anew, you can
not enter the kingdom of heaven. The task
of religion is not to satisfy the understanding

ii2  3fe0U0 30 Ceacber 
nor to act contrary to it nor to twist it out of
shape; its aim is to renew hearts. Whoever
has found, as Jesus found, this as the content
of religion, for him the distinction between
rationalism and supernaturalism has become
a mere shadow.
Such a one has moreover found stronger
stakes by which to fasten in the soul of man
the cords of religion. They penetrate far
deeper into the inner self than where reason
and science and thought have their seat in the
mental life. If one fastens religion to the
stakes of reasonableness and understanding,
there often arises a storm in the life of the
soul in which the lines part and the stakes
break. Jesus placed it much deeper, indeed —
in most "irrational" manner — in the very
place where the arch-fiend of religion has his
dwelling place, in the will and the heart. The
most potent impulses to piety lie not outside
man but in him. Never did religion stand
forth before us in so great might, so impos
ingly, so immediately, as when Jesus put aside
all other motives and helps and appealed sim
ply to the conscience, and never did ungodli
ness appear more wretched in our sight than
when it characterized Jesus as unscrupulous.

m  3Iesug 3g Ceacber  113
But never did Jesus present more realistically
the imposing force of religion than when he
permitted his voice to manifest itself as the
voice of our own heart. What is the
source of the immediately convicting power
of the parable of the prodigal son? Sim
ply that Jesus interprets the voice of
the heart, which expresses itself in the
conduct of the father, as also the voice
of God. It is a dangerous but a noble piety
which makes men venture to say : "What thy
heart says to thee, that says thy God." A
higher nobility than this can none confer upon
man. In the organon of the personal life God
reveals himself most completely and most in
timately. Here man becomes the container
of the divine and here the divine becomes the
content of humanity. Here God and man be
come one in the last analysis, and as the dem
onstration to us of this unity of God and man
emerges the God-Man, the personality Jesus.
My friends, I have attempted to point out
to you three lines which the preaching of
Jesus followed. Still one task remains to be
performed. In what does the unity of these
three lines consist? I hope meanwhile that it
is not necessary to point out that these are

114  3fggug 3g Ceacher 
not three lines which run parallel or which
diverge, but rather three circles which coin
cide. True, these three circles are each of
them drawn with entirely different materials
— expectation of the kingdom of heaven, ex
position of the law, and practical or pro
verbial wisdom ; but they have the same cen
ter, the personality of Jesus, and they enclose
the same space, human soul-life. Along those
three lines and in each case Jesus permitted
his own soul-life to stream forth into the soul-
life of others. The material source of the
light which penetrates from soul to soul is
varied. But who concerns himself with the
material source of the light while that light
pours itself as a flood about him? What to
us, in themselves, are presentation of the king
dom of heaven, exposition of the law, max
ims of wisdom? Nothing! But they become
all in all when through their oscillations the
soul of Jesus comes into contact with ours.
And that this might occur was the purpose of
his mission and the content of his preaching.

We have reached the end. Is this irradia
tion of his own soul-life through the medium
of the word, as Jesus accomplished it, religion

 3fegtt0 30 Ceacber  n£
or is it something else? Possibly the question
causes astonishment. But it is very old, as
old as Christianity itself. The first accusa
tions brought against the content of the
preaching of Jesus, in the Roman-Greek
world, alleged impiety and the annihilation of
religion. Those who brought the charges
had a delicate sense of what the preaching of
Jesus was and signified. If religion is an
aggregate of holy ceremonies, or a collection
of laws, or a system of doctrine, or the dis-
heartenment of human wisdom and experi
ence, then is the preaching of Jesus the end
of all religion, the death hour of which struck
when he began to speak. But if religion is the
soul-life of men which nourishes itself upon
the divine soul-life, it follows that Jesus
struck away from religion the unnatural
fetters and bonds with which priests, politi
cians, legalists, and the worldly-wise had en
chained it and ever seek to enchain it. Thus
Jesus really disclosed what religion is, and
his message becomes not a religion which
stands beside or above other religions, but re
ligion itself.

3Iegug 30 pewonalitj?
BY
Head Master H. Schuster

Ill
JESUS AS PERSONALITY
When on a preceding evening the discus
sion concerned Jesus as teacher, it was said
that, in order to comprehend thoroughly the
apparently inconsistent expressions in the
preaching of Jesus, it was necessary to hark
back to the unitary spiritual consciousness
out of which the words sprang. Out of the
object of that evening's discussion — Jesus as
teacher — issues naturally the object of this
evening's concern — Jesus as personality.
And the question arises — is this in general
a task within the range of accomplishment?
Within the limits of the old dogma it is not.
It is possible to describe the characteristics of
a personality only when the personality is that
of a man; one cannot describe the personality
of a being who is God. A characterizing de
scription of God is a conception both absurd
and presumptuous. Consequently the theme
of this evening involves the recognition of the
no

i2o 3le0U0 30 Per0onalttg 
complete manhood of Jesus; and, further,
the old ecclesiastical doctrine of the two na
tures of Jesus — as man and as God — is, so far
as we are concerned, in quiescence. It is not
for us to divide the one person of Jesus into
two halves which exist side by side, and to dis
cuss one of these halves with the prevision al
ways that it is but one of the two, while the
divine nature belongs to the whole being.
Such a procedure was possible in a time which
had not yet developed a firm scientific psy
chology; but for us such a "mental reserva
tion," such a proviso, is not allowable.
And yet, there was, all unconsciously, in
this crude psychology of the doctrine of two
natures a true and significant thought. Every
consideration of a great personality conducts
us into abysses where our scientific measure
cannot apply. Every ethical personality, to
say nothing of the heroic and the prophetic,
transcends time and the entanglements of
cause and effect, rooting itself in the eternal.
The deeds of a man, even of the greatest, are
finite and incomplete; his thoughts, so far as
they are expressed in words, as also his teach
ings, may be within reach, can be thought over
again, perhaps may even be thought out and

 3[e0ti0 30 per0onalitg 121
their content completely exhausted. But
what lies behind all these, the great person
ality itself, is full of mystery and of profound
depths, inexhaustible, unfathomable. And so
it is that the task of biography is in the case of
a great personality one which is never fully
accomplished. To take an example, are we
really to believe that in Bielschowsky's Life of
Goethe * we possess the final work on that
subject? By no means, for even though no
new sources should be discovered, the task
of portraying the personality of Goethe would
ever remain uncompleted; each generation
would see in the portrait of this wonderful
man new riches, new truth, new value.
If then in the portrayal of any character the
scientific task is endless by its very nature,
that is true in the case of Jesus in special
measure. And there are two reasons for this,
a subjective and an objective reason, one exist
ing in the nature of the case and the other in
ourselves. One difficulty lies in the sources.
Our first three Gospels (and they alone come
into consideration) speak to us only of the
short period of the public activity of Jesus;
* A. Bielschowsky, Goethe, sein Leben und seine
Werke, 2 vols., Munich, 1896-1905.

122 3fe0ti0 30 Per0ortalitg 
of the period of his development they report
practically nothing. There is extant not a line
from Jesus' own hand; there is available only
the written fixation of the oral tradition of
his words and deeds, set down quite late, about
a generation after his death. And this tradi
tion is derived from a community which wor
shipped Jesus as superhuman and exalted
him to the heights of deity. If one is to draw
a picture of the personality of Jesus, there is
required, consequently, a very difficult inves
tigation of the sources. Of course, such an
investigation is out of the question here and
now; I can only ask you to believe that the
omissions or the affirmations over which you
might wonder rest not upon frivolous conceits
but upon mature and oft considered bases.
The second difficulty lies in ourselves. Can a
son furnish an objective characterization of
the father whom he honors and loves? To be
sure, an adequate representation cannot be
drawn without the presence of love and admi
ration, which alone give what stands first and
is most necessary — appreciation of the object.
Nevertheless, for a scientific presentation
there is required a certain aloofness and the
cool temperament of sober criticism, And

_  3Ie0U0 30 Per0onalitg 123
what is the consequence? Not that others can
more correctly portray Jesus than we who are
his disciples, since without the religious feel
ing, such as his disciples possess, a prophet
cannot be rightly appreciated. But we must
concede that we are not in a position to fur
nish a scientifically competent characteriza
tion, we can only attempt a picture of the
principal traits. This last is both needful and
possible. It is needful, provided that the per
son is really of greater importance than his
work and his words. The task is, moreover,
possible. For the chief traits in the character
of Jesus are in the first three Gospels marked
out with sufficient clearness to the practiced
eye. May it be our good fortune at this time
rightly and effectually to point out these prin
cipal traits.

We should at the outset briefly recall that
Jesus was complete man, and also a child of
his times and his nation. By this is not meant
merely that he deeply loved his people, that
he felt himself under a stress of duty that was
owing to them, if indeed he did not conceive
himself as limited to their service alone: we

124 3.E0U0 3g pergonalftg 
intend to convey the idea that his spiritual
method derived significant traits from the
Jewish mind. Jewish-oriental in essence is the
lively fancy with which Jesus portrays the fu
ture. Among the best certified words of Jesus
is his utterance at the last supper : "I will not
drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, un
til that day when I drink it new with you in
my Father's kingdom" (Matt. xxvi. 29).
Thoroughly Jewish and utterly unhellenic is
the paradox which comes out in the figurative
language of Jesus, often highly exaggerated
and passing far beyond the measure of what is
distinctly possible. You may recall the saying
about the beam in the eye, of the camel in the
needle's eye, of the ten thousand talents which
the servant owed to his master. Entirely Jew
ish also is the emotional, vivacious method of
perception which takes in a matter at a single
glance, and the unsystematic method of
thought which proceeds from the basis fur
nished by such observations. It is an idle
question whether Jesus, whose origins lay in
Galilee, which was only half Jewish, had
Aryan blood in his veins, as Chamberlain *
* Translator's Note. Possibly H. S. Chamberlain,
Arische Weltanschauung, Berlin, 1905.

 3fegug 3g pergonalftg 125
thinks he has proved. For this hypothesis
there are no external proofs from the ethno
logical side. If psychology be taken into ac
count, Jesus is surely to be reckoned a Jew,
but with the reservation that he, like most
great men, burst the narrow bounds of race
and belonged to humanity at large.
Much more important and indeed more
fruitful is the question concerning the general
spiritual method of Jesus considered with ref
erence to his temperament. There have been
times — and these are not wholly past — when,
both in literature and art, he has been set forth
only as the passive sufferer, as the gentle and
gracious, the man full of fervent, tender,
yielding love, as the "lamb of God" and the
"bridegroom of the soul." This representa
tion is not only one-sided, it is directly false.
While Jesus unquestionably had an insuper
able ability to endure suffering and a won
derful might of love, these are but indications
of his force, and force is the sum of his being.
If we were to classify his genius under one of
the four recognized temperaments, that genius
would be called choleric ; powerful, impetu
ous, royally-ruling emotion, incorruptible, in
superable, steel-tempered energy of will —

126 fegug 3g pergonalitg 
these are the qualities which sum up his being.
This force reveals itself most instantaneously
when he meets opposition. Let one read Mat
thew xxiii. with its chain of fulmination of
woes against the scribes of Pharisees, who are
described as hypocrites, blind leaders of the
blind, whited sepulchres, and poisonous vi
pers! How like a swollen and foaming flood
from a mountain torrent do these sentences
pour forth upon his opponents, bringing heart
anguish and driving the blood from its chan
nels. But this man can not only rebuke and
scorn, he can strike not only with the club,
he wields a scintillating, biting blade which
leaps forth with lightning quickness and with
deadly certainty finds the joint in the oppo
nent's armor. What a surpassing presence of
mind and spiritual agility speaks forth in the
verbal combats of his last days! One can
hardly call Jesus a learned man, in spite of
his profound knowledge of the Bible and of
the exposition of the scribes ; but he was more
than that, he was a man full of mental and
spiritual might and keenness.
A few examples may here be adduced from
those last days. According to Matt. xix. 3 sqq.,
the Pharisees came — him with a delicate

3fegug 3g Pergonalitg 127
^ — . _ . . —
question : "Is it lawful for a man to put away
his wife for every cause?" The question was
one which had produced a continuing debate
between two schools of rabbis ; one school al
lowed every minutia to be valid ground for
divorce, the other would permit divorce for
adultery alone. The problem now was — how
would Jesus decide this "Either — or," with
which school would he align himself? But,
dear people, he goes with neither school, and
his reply must surprise you: When God cre
ated man and woman, it was for union he cre
ated them; what therefore God hath joined
together, let not man put asunder! The an
swer is, in general — no divorce at all, on
grounds either great or small. But the oppo
nents are not yet conquered ; on the contrary,
they suppose that Jesus has entrapped himself.
Now they can put to him the malicious query
— and with a misleading air of innocence is it
advanced — "Why did Moses then command
to give a writing of divorcement, and to put
her away?" Ah, but go softly! You triumph
too soon, for he, with one stroke, hews through
your snare and pierces you to the heart. "Oh,
yes; Moses permitted it; do you not know
why? Because of the hardness of your hearts.

128 3(egug 3g Pergonalftg 
But that is not the order in the creation of
God; and even yet ye are not prepared for
the great thoughts of God."
Nor did the Sadducees, the distinguished,
rich, worldly priests, fare any better. These
were people who were destitute of both
warmth and force of soul. They had no faith,
they could only make sport of the faith of
other people. Could there be a finer object
for their sport-making propensities than that
newly risen belief, so dearly loved by the
masses, in the resurrection of the body? They
knew how crude a form this belief took among
the people, how it was held that with flesh and
bone, with skin and hair, the populace ex
pected to arise from the grave. Now this su
perstition was certainly shared by that se
ducer of the people. So they said: Come
now, let us make him the jest of the mob, let
us impale him on the stake of laughter. And
they came with their tale of the woman who
was in succession the wife of seven husbands,
and asked whose wife she was to be in the
resurrection. Oh fie, ye weakhearted fools!
With your blundering wits ye have dug a
pit for yourselves. The Pharisees were able
to return with a second assault, but ye are

 3fegtig 3g Pergonalftg 129
undone at a stroke. With a single wave of the
hand are ye shaken off. "Ye greatly err, for
ye know nothing of the power of God, who
creates something new, something beyond the
horizon of your knowledge. When they arise,
they will neither marry nor give in marriage,
for they will be as the angels of God."
Still another example may be adduced in
order to show how diversified his method was.
Jesus had purified the temple, and the others
had been compelled to submit, though they
did so in impotent wrath and with gnashing
of teeth. But they screw up their courage and
put the question: "By what authority doest
thou these things" (Matt. xxi. 23). But to
this question no answer is vouchsafed! To be
sure, there was not needed a moment for re
flection in order to reply: "By the authority
from the Divine which inheres in all proph
ets, by the authority with which Amos once
burst into that brilliant festival of sacrifice
at Bethel. You know the story, you read in
Holy Scripture and know how to preach edi-
fyingly upon it; you have canonized and
mummified the story, so that it is no longer
a living voice in your ears or a living form
before your eyes." So he might have an-

i3Q 3[g0U0 3g Pergonalitg 
swered, and in similar vein he had replied on
another occasion (Matt, xxiii. 29 sqq.). But
here he gave no reply; for this company an
earnest answer which they could not under
stand would be sheer waste. Therefore in
complete calmness — and what bespeaks more
the consciousness of force than such a calm?
— he put to them a question in return: "I
will gladly answer you, but you must first an
swer a question for me. How was it with the
baptism of John? Was it of divine authority
or did it come by human presumption?" A
tormenting question, a puzzled silence!
"What shall we say? If we say: Of God,
he will ask: Then why did ye not believe
him? If we say: Of men, we have the peo
ple to fear, since with them John has the rank
of a prophet since that creature Herod be
headed him. What shall we say?" And
what did they say? Why, what but that emp
tiest of answers: "We do not know." And
can we not see the scorn on the lip of Jesus
as he retorts : "Ye do not know ! Well, then,
neither do I tell you by what authority I do
these things."
If in this story there emerges a deliberate
irony as one of the weapons of Jesus in his

 3fegug 3g pergonalftg 131
contests, it is not a solitary instance, for this
form appears elsewhere. Thus: "There is
joy in the presence of the angels of God over
one sinner that repenteth, more than over
ninety and nine just persons that need no re
pentance" (cf. Luke xv. 7, 10). Did Jesus
really mean that the merciless Pharisees,
against whom the saying was coined, were
righteous people who did not need repent
ance? Moreover, with irony is con; ' -^d hu
mor. Recall the parable of the supper that
was declined. "I have bought five yoke of
oxen, and I go to prove them. ... I
have married a wife, and therefore I cannot
come" (Luke xiv. 19-29). Far more vigor
ous, but also more bitter, is the humor which
comes out in another passage that is less
familiar. The "dear public," as Luther jest
ingly named it, is not contented with its
prophets. John (the Baptist) was a gloomy
ascetic who neither ate nor drank, and he cer
tainly had a bad devil ; then there came the
Son of Man who ate and drank like other
people, and, pshaw! how commonplace! "He
is a glutton and a drunkard, a sinner and com
panion of publicans." This is the report of
Jesus, and now comes his opinion; "Where-

132 3[egug 3g Pergonalftg 
unto shall I liken this generation? It is like
unto children sitting in the streets who fall
into dispute over their games. One party
makes a play and the others do not join in,
and so they begin to make reproaches: 'We
wanted to play at marriage with you and
piped for you, but you would not dance;
then we would have played at a funeral, and
mourned for you, but you would not weep.'
Who can do the right thing for such chil
dren?" (Matt. xi. 1 6 sqq.).
Irony and humor are two of the most sig
nificant signs of a spontaneous, easy superior
ity. And this quality manifests itself in act
as well as in word. Mention has already
been made of the purification of the Temple.
This was an unusually bold act. What made
it possible for this layman with his twelve dis
ciples to take control of the Temple enclosure
in spite of the host of priests, Levites, and the
whole police force of the Temple? Such a
resuk was possible only because the royal will
of Jesus bore along with it the mass of the
people. It set in motion an irresistible ava
lanche ; and this was the cause of the fury and
the terror of the rebuked priesthood, and of
the secret, nocturnal treachery by means of

 3fegug 3g Pergonalitg 133
which alone they proceeded to apprehend
him. Of this power of Jesus over the people the
Gospels furnish repeated descriptions which
show the never ending wonder. It is quite
clear that in this matter legend has had its
play, as for example in the story of the mir
aculous feeding. But even this narrative pre
sents in distorted form a real trait of Jesus'
greatness. The impression made upon the
people, as reflected in the traditions embodied
in the Gospels, seems to have gained its
strength from two particulars — his preach
ing and his works of healing. He preached
mightily and not as the scribes. These dab
bled and fussed with the letter, they tor
mented and pressed the tradition. But Jesus
spoke out forcibly, with the living word, as
one who carried authority; no foreign law
bound him in its meshes, he created all from
his own breast. He even, when occasion
arose, with unexampled boldness set his single
person against the entire sacred past: "Ye
have heard that it was said to them of old
time, . . . but I say unto you" — so run
the turns throughout in the exposition of the
law in the Sermon on the Mount. Is not in

134 3fggug 3g Pergonalitg 
this the word of the psalmist fulfilled : "Thou
shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's ves
sel." But it was not the choice of Jesus to
be dashing in pieces, healing was his delight.
And after we have abstracted from the ac
counts whatever a grateful and wonder-seek
ing generation has added, there remains ever
the picture of a man of singular energy of
soul, of mysterious nervous power, who could
so act upon other weak but trusting souls
and organisms as to bring from the very cen
ter of their beings the stimulus to health.
Especially in the case of those most unfortu
nate of all unfortunates, the deranged and
mentally ill, who then by all the world, and
even by themselves, were regarded as "pos
sessed," did the saving might of this glad
some victorious personality manifest itself.
But the most marvelous of results is that
which he wrought in his disciples. We pass
by the fascinating power of attraction by
which he drew these people to himself, so that
they renounced house and calling and wife
and relations in order that they might follow
him who had not even where he might lay his
head. We have in mind, above all, that mi
raculous power with which he bound to him-

 3fegug 3g Pergonalitg 135
self these men beyond and after his death —
the infamous death of a malefactor. Here
is truly a wonderful might, so far beyond the
power of conception that it was believed pos
sible to explain it only by means of physical
appearances and of instruction received from
him as risen from the dead. If for us this
naive method of accounting for the fact is no
longer possible, there remains as explanation
nothing but the continued operation of the
power of Jesus which he had in life, account
ing for the courage and the inspiration in con
sequence of which the disciples saw their ex
alted Lord in ecstasy and through which they
became witnesses courageous even to death.
But then, indeed, the power of this personality
rises first into regions of incomprehensible
majesty. But of the nature of this power the best has
not yet been said. While the force of a moun
tain torrent is most evident to the senses as it
foams and boils among the rocks and bould
ers, to the thoughtful observer it reveals itself
as mightier when in ordered and measured
flow it passes the millrace and releases a thou
sand new forces. Similarly in the case before
us; the power of Jesus in conflict is signifi-

136 3[egug 3g Pergonalitg 
cant, and when it was needful to employ that
power in this way, he did not scruple so to do.
But it was not because he preferred this use.
He was most fond of comparing his activity
with the inoffensive and beneficent work of
the sower. And was he not the sower par ex
cellence, and is not the seed he cast still grow
ing, even in places where its increase is not
noted or is even denied? There is hardly any
thing more characteristic of the entire method
of Jesus than that his whole desire and effort
were directed to the creation of positive value.
In spite of the radical opposition to him, be
cause of which he had to deal at close quarters
with what was mouldering and untrue, Jesus
was nothing less than a critic and enlightener.
In general, he did not content himself with
pronouncing everything false as false and
proving it to be such; his passion was for
sowing and building, creating and stimulating
others to create. He was in the ranks of men
whose work of criticism is carried on with the
desire to install good in place of evil, the true
in place of what is false; and he had a glori
ous faith that the good would carry its own
evidence of value and must of itself gain the
victory. Like all great spirits, like a Luther

 3fegug 3g Pergonalitg 137
or a Goethe or a Bismarck, Jesus was funda
mentally conservative — if by "conservative"
we understand the disposition that still has
confidence in the past and does not regard
itself alone as wise, that retains an abundance
of piety and reverence, and that above all
loves what has true value even though it be
hoary with age. "A teacher who is really
ready for the kingdom of God is like a house
keeper who brings forth from his stores both
old and new."
If I were to illustrate fully this deliverance
concerning the conservative, productive
method of Jesus, I should have to reproduce
the whole of the preceding lecture. For it
shows how Jesus had introduced a creative
fullness of new great thoughts within the in
teguments of old forms. Do you recall that
story of the Sibylline Books at Rome? The
narrative tells how to a legendary king of
Rome there came an aged woman who urged
him to buy nine prophetic books; but the
king thought the price too high and dismissed
the woman. She came to him a second time,
having, meanwhile, burned three of the books,
and offered the remaining six at the original
price. When she was again dismissed, she

138 31egug 3g pergonalitg 
burnt three more, but even then demanded
for the three remaining the same sum as for
the original nine. The king was astounded at
her persistence and resolution, and paid the
price. Thenceforth in every need these holy
books were consulted, and upon them de
pended Rome's power. Is not the case we are
discussing similar? How few of the words of
Jesus have come down to us, but how mighty
is their operation, and still their influence
spreads and deepens. What is there in the
world comparable to this carpenter's might?
Is this mere chance, or is it proof positive of
the creative power which was enclosed in his
personality? II
In complete naturalness and correspond
ence with this mighty force there existed a
strong and even superhuman self-reliance.
This quality has already been before us in the
preceding discussion and with great signifi
cance. In order to represent to ourselves this
royal self-consciousness we need but to recall
that phrase: "But I say unto you." Not at
all inconsistent with this self-reliance are the
testimonies to the condescension of Jesus to

m  3fg0U0 30 Pet0onalitg 139
the small and lowly, and this is true of his
well-known saying: "for I am meek and
lowly of heart." Indeed the contrary is the
case; for it is only where a stronger and
nobler stoops to condescension that one can
find true meekness. The ^weakness of the
weak is no virtue.
Even though it be by chance, there is yet
to be seen a profound significance in the fact
that the Evangelist Matthew (xi. 27 sqq.)
unites with the words of Jesus respecting his
meekness those words expressing the most ex
alted self-reliance : "All things are delivered
unto me of my Father: . . . neither
knoweth any man the Father, save the Son,
and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal
him." There is manifested here, as in the set
ting up of his words over against the Old Tes
tament, the consciousness of a last and conclu
sive revelation from God. He completes the
old age and introduces a new one.
But the particular thought which comes to
expression in such words is Jesus' conscious
ness of messiahship. Here we touch upon a
difficult and much debated problem. A re
cently deceased theologian of brilliant critical
power and most scrupulous thoroughness ad-

i4Q 3fe0U0 30 Per0onalttg 
vanced in a learned book the thesis that in
general Jesus never designated himself as
Messiah, and that the reports to that effect
were importations into the tradition having
their origin in the faith of the primitive
Christian communities. This theory may now
be regarded as wholly untenable. It is prac
tically beyond doubt that Jesus felt that he
was the Messiah and that at times he so ex
pressed himself. And this fact should not
surprise us, after a sober consideration. Since
he had the assurance that to his people he was
bringing the final and conclusive word of
God, that he was more than one of the proph
ets — more, for example, than John the Bap
tist — what form of expression would this self-
consciousness be more likely to take than the
old form of the thought of the Messiah, so
familiar to his people? Granted that this
form lacked comprehensiveness and fitted ill
the tremendous content which it had to bear,
it is to be remembered that the same is true
of the idea of the kingdom of God — concern
ing which one of the former lectures treats —
and that it does not coincide wholly with the
message of Jesus. But if Jesus was man, en
tire man, if he was a pious Jew who loved his

 3fe0tig 30 Per0onalitg 141
people and had grown up with the Holy
Scriptures of that people, is it not perfectly
natural that without special determination he
should relate to himself the old idea of a king,
anointed by God and the Holy Spirit, who
was to bring to his people the golden age in
the kingdom of God? Yet he had not re
flected much upon this; he had not formu
lated for himself a theory of it. His interest
lay not in the person or in the significance of
the idea ; he was concerned with the mission
which was entrusted to him, to rouse his peo
ple and prepare them for the coming king
dom of God. So it appears that at the begin
ning, while he was engaged in a fruitful and
victorious activity and a fair success made no
especial reflection necessary, only seldom did
the thought flash forth in him that he was
chosen of God to become king in the kingdom
of God and the Messiah of his people. Only
towards the end of his life, when opposition
to him grew and he foresaw that collision was
inevitable and then external defeat, does it
seem that he really took up into his conscious
ness the Messiah idea as related to himself,
and particularly that form of it which is
found in the Book of Daniel: the Messiah

142 3fg0ti0 30 Per0onalitg 
was to come on the clouds of heaven and was
to set up the eternal kingdom of God.
With this thought that he was to return
after death in messianic lordship he was able
to confirm faith in his mission. But even yet
it must not be assumed that he had formulated
any definite theory, that there was already
created the doctrine of a suffering and exalted
Messiah. Least of all may we assume that
Jesus was conscious of the distinction between
his own idea of messiahship and the crude na
tionalistic conception of it which was current
among the masses, and that he shrewdly said
to himself : If you avow yourself as the Mes
siah before the people, they will immediately
think of a worldly king who is to break the
yoke of the Romans, while your thought is
that of a king of hearts; therefore, as a prin
ciple of pedagogic wisdom, keep your mes
siahship concealed from the masses of the peo
ple and take care that it be brought home,
with a correct conception of it, only to the
inner circle of the disciples. Such a popular
and normal method of considering the subject
is altogether too refined and subtle for Jesus
to have followed, and it contradicts the noble
and naive originality of his nature, He did

 3fe0ug 3g pergonalitg 143
not live in a world of reflection and self-con
templation, he lived entirely in his work. We
may say that the Messiah idea was only a
make-shift. He instinctively perceived how
little this old theory contained which was in
harmony with his own being and will. And
so — that is, not because of a calculated peda
gogical aim — he held aloof from the Messiah
idea as long as he could, though without defi
nite intention of so doing; then, toward the
end of his life, when anxiety for the issue
and condition of his work beset his soul, he
seized upon this idea as one which possessed
the requisite firmness and security. With the
thought of the Prophet Daniel's Son of Man,
who was to return, he saved faith in his divine
mission, he preserved faith in himself and his
work. Thus the messianic faith of Jesus is
by no means to be explained away from a his
torical point of view, but it is not to be re
garded as really essential. The personality
and the preaching of Jesus can be set forth
in its permanently worthful essentials without
touching upon the problem of his messiahship
at all.
With the foregoing, considerable contribu
tions are made to the correct understanding

144 3fegug 3g pergonalitg 
of the question whether the mental processes
of Jesus were normal and sound. To laymen
it will, perhaps, seem astonishing that such a
question is raised at all ; and yet, it is not al
together arbitrarily that the matter has come
up. As suggesting it, reference has been made
not only to the superhuman self-reliance
which is in evidence in the messianic declara
tion, but also to the many series of highly
emotional excitements which come to light so
frequently in the preaching and healing ac
tivities of Jesus. Not only did his eager op
ponents raise the cry that he drove out devils
by the aid of Beelzebub, the chief of the
devils; even his own relations, mother and
brethren, regarded him as out of his senses
and would have taken him forcibly to his
home while he was engaged in teaching. The
direction of Jesus' activity was certainly often
uncommon and startling, and exceedingly
great mental exertions recorded themselves in
elementary outbreaks of emotion, such as the
cleansing of the Temple. If Jesus were to be
estimated by an average of present day
preachers and teachers, he would appear to be
an inconceivable phenomenon ; but, then, who
would dare assert that we should measure a

 3[egug 3g Pergonalitg 145
great genius by the average drawn from or
dinary quiet citizens? In profound sympathy
with the greatness of genius Conrad Ferdi
nand Meyer has said of Luther: "His mind
is the battlefield of two ages; I do not wonder
at all that he sees demons." How would the
young Goethe and Bismarck appear if they
were to be measured by the standard of or
dinary pikemen? Would they appear men
tally unsound, psychopathic? Then the ques
tion resolves itself into logomachy. Of course
the mental life and the external performances
are "unnormal," but the question is whether
they are subnormal or supernormal. It would
not be worth while long to dwell upon this
question were it not that it gives us welcome
occasion to bring into the foreground the sane-
ness and compact harmony of the mentality of
Jesus. Already there has been occasion to remark
how unstudied, how naive in the best sense
of the word, the genius of Jesus is. He makes
the same impression upon us as is made by an
unspoiled and magnificent scene in nature;
he is mighty and, at times, terrible, like nature
at large, but withal clear, simple, restful, se
rene, and sure of himself. In Jesus there is

146 gfegug 3g Pergonalitg 
nothing of self-examination, self-observation,
self-analysis— those processes of which the
modern man is so fond. His genius is through
and through virile, forceful, simple, true,
objective. His objectivity is that of the great
epic poet who tolerates nothing but a clear
and true reflection of nature and men. This
will become entirely obvious if, with quiet
and collected mind, we contemplate the par
ables of Jesus. Are they not in fact an un-
blurred and undimmed reflection in which
can be seen the entire broad activity of his
period, the growing of the flowers, the life of
animals, the doings of men whose sphere of
life ranges from the hut to the palace, all of
which may be recognized as portrayed with
wonderful fidelity and distinctness? This will
perhaps become yet clearer to us if we com
pare Jesus with genius of quite another char
acter. Note, for instance, how intricate and
artificial is the course of thought and method
of proof employed by the rabbis, the theolo
gians of the time, and how refreshingly sound,
on the other hand, is the intuition of Jesus.
In the last lecture there were brought strik
ingly before us the logical element, the trait

 3fegug 3g Pergonalitg 147
of lucid rationality, the evident independence
in the thought of Jesus. It is worth while to
dwell a moment on this, since in it there is
found one of the most significant proofs of the
truth and soundness of his mental genius. You
will recall the story already rehearsed in
which the Pharisees brought against Jesus the
charge of being in league with the devil.
Much as they wished it, they could not deny
the power which he had over the evil spirits,
by which the people of that time supposed the
unfortunate insane to be possessed. But they
were unwilling to permit this undeniable fact
to pass for what it actually was as seen by the
uncorrupted mind, that is, for proof of Jesus'
equipment with the Spirit of God. Conse
quently they excogitated the quaint theory
that the prince of the devils assisted him in
driving out the demons! To this there must
be added what is implied in the charge of the
Pharisees, i. e., that it was through such spe
cious demonstrations that he was able to se
duce the hearts of the people. But this finely
spun theory was torn to shreds by Jesus with
firm hand when he simply appealed to the
people's natural common sense: How can it

148 3fegti0 30 Per0onalitg 
be that one devil drive another out? A king
dom that is divided against itself falls apart
(cf. Matt. xii. 22-30).
Or it is possible to compare Jesus with two
men who were in close relations with him,
who were his disciples and scholars — Paul
and Augustine. Towards Paul especially we
all have, I hope, a feeling of profound admi
ration, and in many respects doubtless we are
conscious of a relationship to him — more so
than of a relationship to Jesus. For his strug
gling, fighting, brooding, provident, yearning
genius, his passionate eagerness for the end
which floated before his mind's eye, make
him more flesh of our flesh and blood of our
blood than the corresponding qualities in the
entire unswerving purity and assurance of the
being of Jesus. Yet, do we not at times gather
the impression from Paul that his nervous and
excitable genius causes in him a heat and an
exaggeration beyond the normal ; that now
and again, of course with entire subjective
honesty, he overstresses and builds theories
which so far resemble those constructed by
the general mass of men who have not passed
through the crucible of conversion, that they
are not able to stand before the trying fire of

 3fe0U0 30 Pet0onalftg 149
simple verity? An impression similar to this
is made, only much deeper, by Augustine. Is
not the disposition which he portrays in his
confessions as his during his youth at times
thoroughly unsound? Or are we not to take
as earnest the reproaches he brings against
himself to the effect that as an infant at the
breast of his nurse he fought against giving
nourishment to his foster-brother? * Is not
this the air from a hothouse blowing strong
upon us? On the contrary, when we come
into the companionship of Jesus, we breathe
at once the pure and fresh air of nature and
truth. He knew well how weak, and even at
times evil, are the children of men, but he
never felt the necessity arising in some theory,
to falsify fact by exaggeration. "If ye then,
being evil, know how to give good gifts unto
your children" — so at one time runs his deliv
erance, and by it he briefly and strikingly out
lines man's being as it really is, a mixture of
good and bad. In his preaching he issues a
call to repentance, to a change in character;
but he never makes this change to be a pure
* Translator's Note. Confessions, I., ix. 1 1 ; Eng.
transl. in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2 ser., i. 48,
New York, 1892.

150 3fe0U0 30 pergonalitg 
miracle which arises in the grace of God, as
do later dogmaticians; quite the reverse, since
he reveals a beautiful confidence in the nature
of man as created by God and possessing a
will to do good, and then makes appeal to that
will. This sense of reality and of verity in Jesus
exhibits an innate repugnance to all religious
unveracity. There was nothing against which
Jesus more passionately fought or which he
hated more than every kind of religious hy
pocrisy. And this hate was no less evident
when hypocrisy existed in its most refined
form and hid itself so as not to be detected by
most men. Who were the opponents against
whom he was ever thrusting? The Phari
sees. But they were not all clumsy and con
scious hypocrites; on the contrary, that type
had but few representatives among them.
Still, they were in immediate danger of that
which menaces all religion, especially all ec
clesiastical religion, namely the danger of not
marking the difference between an ideal
which was a creature of the will, imagined,
carried about for exhibition, and the reality
of their own performances, together with the
danger of exchanging pious forms of one sort

 3fegug 30 Per0onalitg 151
or another for the essence of piety. A fact
which may be established in these times by
various examples is that the more ecclesias
tical in type piety is, the greater danger there
is of the lie or the half-lie. "It is a miracle
if a priest be saved" is a saying ascribed to
Chrysostom. Every station has its own inher
ent dangers, and hypocrisy is the fundamental
menace which assails the religious condition.
Jesus recognized this and fought it with un
relenting pertinacity. This sense of reality
and truth is a most beautiful confirmation of
his own saying, that the disciple is not above
his master, and is proof positive of our affir
mation of the soundness of his being.
A quality of this soundness of Jesus may be
pointed out in what we may call the Hellenic
serenity of his mind. Can we not find in his
mental make-up a characteristic trace of that
beautiful, distinctive, joyous serenity which
plays around the mouth of the divine Plato
as represented in a certain celebrated antique
bust? The man who composed the diversified
parables, whose eyes rested with delight upon
the lilies of the field and the birds of the heav
ens, who laid his hand in blessing upon the
heads of little children, who submitted to

152 3fe0u0 30 per0onalitg 
anointing at the hands of woman, who re
fused for his disciples the demand that they
fast on the ground that fasting at the marriage
festival is untimely — and the days of associa
tion with him were days of joy like those of
the marriage season — he possessed in reality
a large share of the serenity of soul which de
pends upon complete inner harmony. We do
not forget that there were times of inner stress
and storm. And in saying this we have in
mind not merely the history of the tempta
tion, nor the prayer and struggle in Gethsem
ane, we think above all of that significant say
ing reported to us by Luke (xii. 49-50) : "I
am come to send fire on the earth ; and what
will I, if it be already kindled? But I have
a baptism to be baptized with; and how am
I straitened till it be accomplished!" In this
we look upon a mighty agitation, upon the
holy impatience of a soul in fight and tribula
tion in behalf of the kingdom of God. How
ever, taken as a whole the impression Jesus'
life makes is that of a totality of peace, a final
and conclusive power. His soul life was like
the ocean, the surface of which is at times
tossed and stormy, but its unmeasured depths
remain in unruffled calm. »

3fe0U0 30 per0onalitg 153

III

An American scholar who has rendered
great service in the investigation of the psy
chology of religion,* in the book in which he
describes the variety of religious experiences,
makes a distinction between natures which are
"once-born" and those which are "twice-
born." By the latter he means the natures of
those men who have lived through a distinct
(psychological) break and who through con
version, a sort of rebirth, have attained to
their religious faith. Men who have not ex
perienced such a break, but have developed
gradually and uninterruptedly into a condi
tion of firm religious belief, are said to belong
to the once-born. This American has a very
distinct liking for the twice-born and is of the
opinion that the great geniuses in the relig
ious realm belong to this class. In this he is
* Translator's Note. W. James, Varieties of Religious
Experience, New York, 1902; cf. pp. 80, 166, 363, 488,
for references to "once-born" and "twice-born" men.

154 3fe0U0 30 Pet0onalttg 
not wholly astray, and can call as evidence
of his contention the names of such men as
Paul, Augustine, Francis of Assisi, Luther,
and many others. Yet I must observe that he
overlooks, for instance, a Schleiermacher and
a Zwingli, who do not belong to this class. If
we apply this classification to Jesus, all that
we know of him shows that he belonged in the
category of once-born. Even though he did
submit to the baptism by John, which he as
a pious Jew regarded as a divine ordinance,
and even though through this he received the
impulse to his own public ministry, yet all the
evidence bears against the supposition that his
baptism had the significance of a break or of
conversion. It is no new discovery, has long
ago been made the subject of remark, that in
the words of Jesus there is never the lightest
trace of a scar which indicates an old wound
of the soul. How entirely different is it with
Paul — to select a conspicuous example. Many
years after his conversion, near Damascus,
long after he had become the most fruitful of
missionaries and had many times over made
good the losses which he had caused the com
munity by his persecution, the scar of this old
wound still burned so severely that he doubted

 3ie0U0 30 Persoiia?tiu 155
whether he was worthy to bear the name of
apostle [I Cor. xv. 9].
You will notice that we have already passed
from the question of the soundness and har
mony of the soul-life of Jesus to the question
of his sinlessness. It is an old conviction of
Christianity, which appears many times as
early as in the New Testament, that Jesus was
the one among all men who was uncondition
ally sinless. Does this question permit of an
answer? At any rate it is not answered by
reference to the saying reported in the Fourth
Gospel: "Which of you convinceth me of
sin" (John viii. 46). For outside of the fact
that the Evangelist John, so far as we can see,
is continually putting his own words and
thoughts into the mouth of Jesus and therefore
is not competent as a historical witness, a re
mark of the kind just cited naturally of itself
carries no force of conviction. However, we
were justified in saying, as we have, that
among the numerous affirmations of Jesus
there is not one which bears a trace of recol
lection of past sins. No conclusion follows on
this point from consideration of the fifth pe
tition of the Lord's Prayer, for there is no
proof that Jesus ever employed it himself in

156 3fg0ti0 30 Per0onalitg 
the way of seeking forgiveness for guilt. But
if the question be whether Jesus claimed sin
lessness as a quality, as the Fourth Gospel de
scribes, our answer is that we can hardly be
lieve it. For while he had a lively conscious
ness of a gap between himself and most men
(we may cite once more the saying: "Ye,
then, being evil" Matt. vii. 11), his percep
tions told him also in as emphatic form of a
gap between himself and God. A young man
addressed him as "Good master" — in He
brew the expression is practically equivalent
to "perfect" or "absolute" — and he declined
the attribute with the words: "No one is
good, but God alone." In the reverence which
he regarded as due to God alone and in his
humility he would not permit a predicate to
be applied to him which belonged to God
only. And yet he could himself instruct his
disciples: "Be ye therefore perfect, even as
your Father which is in heaven is perfect"
(Matt. v. 48).
Shall we then affirm that he was sinful as
we are? Surely not. But it seems to us that
the question is falsely phrased. What we must
ask about is not the sinlessness of Jesus, but his
ethical perfection ; we must apply not a nega-

 3fegug ag Per0onalitg 157
tive norm but a positive. The problem of the
sinlessness of Jesus has its basis in a nar
row-minded and Pharisaic point of view. A
distinguished scholar has aptly and in brief
form described the method — or rather lack
of method — of the Pharisees in the statement:
"Not to do good was their ideal, but to escape
sin." The aim of Jesus was altogether differ
ent. In looking at men he was not in search
of their faults, for he knew that none was
faultless, but he sought for their excellences
and decided according to the good that he
found in them. "Therefore all things what
soever ye would that men should do unto you,
do ye even so to them" (Matt. vii. 12), and
"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the
least of these my brethren, ye have done it
unto me" (Matt. xxv. 40) are the norms ac
cording to which decision is to be given at the
final judgment. Perfection — that is what the
question amounts to; did Jesus claim perfec
tion? But we have seen that Jesus expressly
refused this predicate. How could a man
who narrated to his disciples the story of his
temptation, who passionately prayed in Geth
semane for voluntary resignation to God's
will, describe himself as perfect? But when

158 3fe0ti0 30 Pergonalitg 
we find a man with whom we dare not at all
compare ourselves exhibiting such humility,
shall we not in silent admiration revere him
as possessing in this quality the most exalted
of his perfections.
And so we can afford to dismiss the old
vexed question of the sinlessness of Jesus, and
may apply ourselves to a problem which
springs out of that, in itself attractive and also
productive of unusual compensation; we may
describe the inner freedom of Jesus on its
various sides. The root of this freedom is
ethical self-conquest. The inner freedom of
Jesus is first of all ethical, that is, the freedom
of a will which is regulated by the purposes of
God and is supreme above the claims of the
lower nature. That this lower nature made
claims, imperious claims, is certainly indi
cated by such deliverance as: "If thy right
eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from
thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of
thy members should perish, and not that thy
whole body should be cast into hell" (Matt.
v. 29) ; such a saying indicates one who has
experienced the claims of an earthly nature in
his own person, but also one who with a
stronger will has overcome the stormy will of

 3[e0u0 30 pet0onalitg 159
besetting passions. It is the declaration of a
man who has bound the strong man and taken
his weapons away. So that there is presented
to us a victor who teaches us, in the exposition
of the law which is contained in the Sermon
on the Mount, the completed ethics of a moral
disposition. Forth from the bitter root of a
relentless severity toward himself he has made
to grow the beautiful flower of freedom ; and
from this stock we see issuing ever new riches
of bloom and fruit.
In his feelings Jesus was originally thor
oughly a Jew. The Gospel of Matthew
(x. 5-6) reports a saying of Jesus in which he
directed his disciples: "Go not into the way
of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Sa
maritans enter ye not: but go rather to the lost
sheep of the house of Israel." It is altogether
possible that this saying is genuine, and that
the Jesus who later adduced as examples
worthy of imitation the faith of the Roman
captain and the charity of the Samaritan was
at first under the limitations of the inborn
prejudice in favor of his own people. We are
in possession of a narrative in which, accord
ing to the most probable interpretation, it is
possible to see how Jesus overcame this na-

160 3fg0U0 30 Per0onalitg 
tional prejudice. It is the well-known story
of the Canaanitish woman (Matt. xv.
21 sqq.). You remember that Jesus at first
refused the help sought by the woman for her
sick daughter: "It is not meet to take the
children's bread, and to cast it to dogs." But
to this there came the reply: "Truth, Lord:
yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from
their masters' table." Thereupon Jesus
yielded: "O woman, great is thy faith: be
it unto thee even as thou wilt." As usually
explained, this story is an example of the
Christie method of teaching; he was intent
upon trying the woman's humility and faith.
To me such a method of teaching, dangerous
as it is, does not commend itself; it is more
natural and more delicate to take the story as
it reads; Jesus permitted himself to be per
suaded by the faith of mother love! That he
needed to be persuaded, that a national preju
dice was there which had to be laid aside,
entirely accord with the temper of the Jews of
that period. And the true greatness revealed
in this story is just this, that the hard shell of
national prejudice was burst apart by the
voice of humanity. We may be permitted
here a comparison. If Luther, at Marburg,

 Jesus 30 pet0onalitg 161
had brought himself to the point where he
could lay aside his old prejudice against the
Swiss (whom he regarded as "fanatics" like
the Anabaptists), and had been persuaded to
take the hand of brotherhood there offered,
how different, at any rate as men see it, would
have been the course of the Reformation and
of the German people! Here at least is ex
emplified the axiom that a disciple is not
greater than his master.
For the development of religion the discon
nection of Jesus from this spirit of narrow
nationality is of great significance, for only in
that way could Christianity arise out of Juda
ism ; but for an estimate of his personal value
much more important is his relation to the re
ligious traditions of his people, to the official
cult and to the law. The Gospel by Luke
reports for us the well-known episode of Jesus
in his twelfth year visiting the Temple and
there uttering the characteristic saying : "Wist
ye not that I must be about my Father's busi
ness?" From a historical point of view this
saying may be questioned; but it belongs to
that class of utterances which carry a typical
verity. As a pious Jew Jesus clung with
reverential love to the sanctuary of his peo-

1 62 3fg0ti0 30 Pet0onalitg 
pie; under the spur of inspiration he once un
dertook the cleansing of the Temple, and out
of noble wrath spoke the accents of an ardent
love. Nor did he despise the service of sacri
fice. To be sure, he cited from the prophet
Hosea the lovely dictum that mercy is better
than sacrifice (cf. Matt. ix. 13). But in the
Sermon on the Mount he gave the following
admonition: "If thou bring thy gift to the
altar, and there rememberest that thy brother
hath aught against thee; leave there thy gift
before the altar, and go thy way; first be
reconciled to thy brother"; and he immedi
ately continues : "and then come and offer thy
gift." (Matt. v. 23-24). It must be granted
that he combatted Pharisaic religiosity, which
fulfilled with exaggerated pedantry the ex
ternal legalistic duties, tithing mint, anise,
and cummin ; and he insisted upon the duty of
doing the real will of God in works of right
eousness, mercy, and truth ; but he continued
with the injunction : "These ought ye to have
done, and not to leave the other undone"
(Matt, xxiii. 23). We have already re
marked that Jesus was essentially of a conserv
ative nature, full of piety and veneration; he
was no radical innovator or revolutionary.

 3fe0ti0 30 Per0onalitg 163
Where the old was no hindrance, where in it
he found aught of blessing, he let it stand un-
assailed. It was only where through attention
to cultus and law the fundamental commands
of God were broken, when these were seized
upon to hinder him — as, for example, when
men tried to prevent his healing on the sab
bath — that with a sovereign power of perfect
ness he set himself without concern above all
commands, whether they arose in the tradi
tion of the scribes or came from the Old Tes
tament itself. It never came into his conscious
ness that he hereby cut at the very roots of
cultus and law; he had come not to destroy
but to fulfill. This position, which seems ex
ternally to be fundamentally opposed to the
traditional religious plan of life of his people,
is no evidence of a weakness that is without
principle; it rather announces an inner free
dom which is without limits. By disposition
he stood wholly above mere things ; he needed
no theory of the passing of the law, and he
had no need to spend himself in conflict with
the law. His method, to live and to work,
is in its inner essence so unlegalistic, so lim
ited only by reverence for God and love to
men that he did not think at all of law, and so

164 3fe0ti0 30 Pet0onalitg 
lived entirely untroubled, in accordance with
the commonplace ordinances of the law — for
these were the customary and the usual among
his people and in his youth.
How precious a thing is that inner freedom,
the character of which is that its possessor is
wholly uncompromised either by old preju
dices or by novelties of doctrine: a freedom
by which he possesses liberty — not after the
manner imparted by an unintelligent and fa
natical rationalism which presents only a cari
cature of liberty and, in fact, makes him a
slave to its theories, but — in the sense of that
just freedom which seeks and loves the good
wherever it is to be found ; a freedom which
is not acquired by obstinacy or by convulsive
effort, or must ever obtrude itself even to the
degree of offensiveness, because otherwise it
cannot maintain its own faith in itself ; a free
dom which, contrary to that last described,
possesses an assurance founded in serenity be
cause of which it can easily dispense with ex
ternal expression. In order to obtain an ex
ample of this royal freedom for purposes of
comparison it is necessary once more to have
recourse to Luther. That is a really precious

 3fe0U0 30 Per0onalitg 165
letter which he indited to Buchholzer, provost
of Berlin, when the latter made objection
arising in scruples of conscience over the use
of ecclesiastical vestments and processions
which the Elector Joachim wished to retain
in accordance with his cautious method of
introducing the Reformation: "Provided
your master will permit you to preach the
Gospel more effectively and to administer
both sacraments according to the institution
of Christ, in God's name go with him and
carry a silver or a golden cross or wear an ec
clesiastical hat or cape, of whatever material
it may be made. And if your master is not
satisfied with one hat or cape, then put three
of them on, just as Aaron the high priest put
on three coats, one over the other. And if he
is not content with one circuit or procession
that you make with accompaniment of bells
and singing, then go seven times around, just
as Joshua did with the Children of Israel at
Jericho." It does not concern us here to
discuss the practicality of this advice with ref
erence to the future development of the
Church. We are here regarding the person
ality, and it must give us exceeding great joy

1 66 3fe0U0 30 per0onalitg 
to recognize in this saying of Luther the great,
broad, free method in accordance with which
Jesus looked at things.
In connection with this matter of inner free
dom belongs the much debated problem of the
position of Jesus with reference to asceticism.
The question may be put in this form : Was
Jesus an ascetic and the spiritual father of the
later monastioism? Or was his type of piety
that of a Luther, which belonged in the world
and took delight in it? Jesus was unmarried,
had no house and no possessions, often encour
aged a like scorn of these things in his dis
ciples, and at times gave impressive warning
of the danger of riches. But he none the less
accepted the hospitality of rich men, even of
taxgatherers, the capitalists of the period and
men in the service of the Romans, he blessed
children, and had women among his follow
ers. From these two points of view, to some,
even of our contemporaries, he appears as a
gloomy ascetic; but by some of his contem
poraries he was scolded because he was "glut
tonous, and a wine bibber, a friend of publi
cans and sinners" (Matt. xi. 19). What shall
be our decision in this matter? At any rate,
not that much-loved phrase: "The truth lies

 3(e0U0 30 pet0onalitg 167
midway." The truth does not lie there in this
case (indeed, seldom is that its position), it
lies far above the level of those contrary opin
ions. The one side takes particular account of
Jesus' exceedingly earnest sense of reality,
through which he recognized the danger of
wealth, and of the thorough-going self-denial
with which he put his whole personality at
the service of his calling. The other side mis
construes the stability of his inner freedom,
won by means of the sternest self-discipline,
and forgets that through this stability he
could dare things before which an excellent
[but lower] form of piety must shrink. Or,
was it not a terrible thing that Jesus should
turn with preference to the lawless stratum
of the people, that he did not shun association
with publicans and harlots? You do not for
get the story of the woman who was a great
sinner. Jesus was at table with a distin
guished Pharisee. There came up from be
hind a woman who was known in the city as a
harlot, whose purpose was to prove her grati
tude to the Master, who had received her, by
kissing his feet and anointing him. How ma
liciously glitter the eyes of the fine table com
panions, how busily pious are these compan-

168 3fe0U0 30 ' Per0onalitg 
ions as they chatter to each other in whispers:
"This man, if he were a prophet, would have
known who and what manner of woman this
is, and would not have permitted it" (cf. Luke
vii. 39). He knew better than did the others
who it was that touched him — a sinner, a great
sinner, certainly, but a soul that had changed
its course, that was seeking God and what was
good! Who might hold aloof from her? Is
it not fact that the sick need the physician,
and not the well ? IV
It was this inner freedom which made pos
sible such intercourse with those proscribed
by society. But this freedom is not the im
pelling cause to such a course of conduct; it
has already been remarked that Jesus did not
belong to the half-free who must at any price
manifest their freedom externally and strik
ingly. The impelling cause was nothing e'se
than love. And with this we come to the por
trayal of the traits which rightly have ever
been regarded as the crown in the picture of
Jesus, but can be seen in their fullest glory
only when they are viewed with his force
forming the background. The love of a weak-

 3fe0U0 30 Pet0onalitg 169
ling may often be touching, but that of the
strong grips and overpowers. Truly bound
less is the love of Jesus; it makes no halts
before the hedges which a narrow conscience
impels the pious [of a certain class] to rear.
It, like all real love, seeks not its own, but
ever the welfare of another, and consequently
it turns in its application to those who most
need it — those exposed to danger physical or
ethical. To those who were in physical need,
to the sick, Jesus turned with merciful help
and healing; he did not perform works of
healing that he might work miracles and so
arouse faith. On the contrary, he declined
with brusque severity to perform signs and
wonders : "They have Moses and the proph
ets; let them hear them. ... If they
hear not them, neither will they be persuaded,
though one rose from the dead" (Luke xvi.
29-31). The entire and rich work of healing
wrought by Jesus comes well under the head
ing: "He was moved with compassion for
the people" (cf. Mark vi. 34).
Jesus differed from those who possess a hy-
perspiritual religiosity in that he did not re
gard or neglect the physical as of no account;
but, of course, his especial concern was for lost

170 3fe0U0 30 Per0onaIitg 
souls. His calling was to win souls for the
kingdom of God, and the love with which he
followed his calling was, in accordance with
his very constitution, practically boundless.
Nothing is lost which will let itself be saved.
In the justly celebrated yet seldom fully
grasped parable of the prodigal son, this lim
itless love finds wonderfully vivid expression.
Is it not a love that is measureless, overa-
bounding, untrammelled by pedagogical lim
itations, which the father brings as he comes
to meet his lost son? He does not wait to hear
his story, does not listen to his confession, does
not even stop to convince himself that the re
pentance of the son is genuine and likely to
endure. For all of this there is no time ; his
heart is filled with love and with joy because
he has once more the son who was lost and
was even believed to be dead. How petty,
how poor, in comparison is the love and the
forgiveness in the exercise of which the pious
often think that they are accomplishing some
thing great and good! But in this limitless
love of Jesus there is nothing soft or senti
mental ; it is at times almost austere and bit
ter. How impressively rings out in the story
of the adulterous woman the brusque sentence

 3[e0tig 30 per0onalftg 171
with which he dismisses her: "Go, and sin
no more" (John viii. n). And how severe
are the demands which he makes upon the
easily stirred, light-hearted, though excellent
disciples when they would follow him! To
the one who would first say farewell to his
family he said: "No man, having put his
hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for
the kingdom of God" (Luke ix. 32). An
other, however, with whom his riches were
too important a thing, notwithstanding other
excellences, he commanded: "Go and sell
that thou hast, and give to the poor, . . .
and come and follow me" (Matt. xix. 21).
And of this youth it is said that "Jesus behold
ing him loved him" (Mark x. 21).
Once more, how delicate and tender, how
full of understanding of human individuality,
is this great yet austere love. Is there any
thing finer in the Gospels than the exceed
ingly unostentatious narrative of the anointing
of Jesus in Bethany? There was a woman
who loved and admired Jesus, and she was un
der the necessity of doing something to relieve
her heart of its burden of love. And so she
emptied on the head of Jesus a vessel of pre
cious ointment, the costliest that she had,

172 3fc0U0 30 Per0onalitg 
which she had brought for the purpose.
"What extravagance!" murmur the disciples;
"this ointment might have been sold for three
hundred pence and given to the poor." Cer
tainly, that might have been done. And if
Jesus had been asked in advance whether this
homage were right, he would probably have
answered along that line. But the thing was
done and could not be changed. That it hap
pened to himself made no difference; but may
not the needs of the heart claim their rights?
Shall the joy of that woman, who knew no
other way of satisfying her affection, be taken
away after the deed was done? Jesus is not
the man to blame that which was prompted
by childlike innocence of heart. So he takes
the woman under his protection against the
paltry calculation of the disciples: "Let her
alone, why trouble ye her? she hath wrought
a good work on me. For ye have the poor
always with you, and whensoever ye will ye
can do them good; but me ye have not al
ways" (Mark xiv. 6-7). At no time does
Jesus seem greater to me than under this
testimony to his genuine manhood.
Finally, this love is thoroughly ethical in its
nature. By this is meant that it is not regu-

 3fe0U0 30 pet0onalitg 173
lated by calamity, or sympathy, or antipathy,
or by the ties of blood, or by individual neces
sities, but, like all love of the highest type,
by regard for the real well-being of another.
It has already been said that the life of Jesus
exhibited the influence of a strong natural
feeling. The man who blessed little children,
designated marriage as a union ordained of
God which might not be dissolved, and in his
parables portrayed often the happenings of
family life, was certainly bound to his own
people by the ties of natural affection. And
yet, when mother and brothers and sisters
would hinder his work, he cut loose from
them with the austere saying : "Who are my
mother and sister and brother? They who
do the will of God." A feeling of natural
sympathy connected him especially with
three of his disciples, Peter, John and James,
who were his nearest confidants. They were
with him during the severest crisis of his life,
during his period of prayer in Gethsemane;
and at that moment there fell from his lips
that penetratingly touching word of yearning
for human companionship: "Could ye not
watch with me one hour?" (Matt. xxvi. 40).
And yet he would not show impartiality even

174 3fe0U0 30 Pet0onalttg 
to these three. When John and James came
to him with the request that they might hold
the places of honor at his right and his left
when he came into his kingdom, he repelled
the covetousness of the request with the
words : "The cup that I drink ye shall drink,
and with the baptism that I am baptized
withal shall ye be baptized; but the places on
my right and my left is for them for whom it
hath been prepared — by God alone" (cf.
Matt. xx. 23 ; Luke xviii. 39-40) . And when
Peter, with a human weakness that is easily
conceivable and in well-meant solicitude,
would have Jesus take care of himself and
avoid the course that led to the momentous
conflict, he was repelled with the severe re
buke: "Get thee behind me, Satan: for thou
mindest not the things of God, but the things
of men" (Mark viii. 33).
In this perfected love there is made mani
fest perfect fidelity to his calling. It makes
little difference whether we say of Jesus that
he was wholly intent upon serying men in love
with reference to their real weal, or whether
we phrase his activity as that of one devoted
with single eye to the calling which was his.
For his calling was, as he indicated in speak-

 3Ie0U0 30 Per0onaIitg 175
ing to Peter, that of a fisher for men — he
would win human souls and have them realize
everlasting life. For this calling he re
nounced all — house and home, wife and mar
riage. The mysterious saying of Matt. xix.
12: "There are eunuchs which made them
selves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's
sake," that is, men who have made a renuncia
tion for the sake of the kingdom of heaven,
may have been a modest and reserved method
of alluding to his own course of self-denial.
Yet he made renunciation not for renuncia
tion's sake; he did it in order that with all
his power he might dedicate himself to his
calling. And what this calling was is repre
sented by the word "service": "The Son of
man came not to be ministered unto, but to
minister, and to give his life a ransom for
many" (Matt. xx. 23). Through him vol
untary service was ennobled and received the
stamp of the work which was most excellent
and most worthy of men — and this definition
of work is one the realization of which has yet
to be learned by many peoples.
To this fidelity to calling belongs also a one
sided concentration upon just this vocation.
It has already been remarked that Jesus

176 3fg0U0 30 Per0onaIitg 
showed no activity which was directed toward
the social, cultic, artistic, or scientific side of
life; that of none of these things, so far as
they were cultivated in the life of the Jewish
people, he had an understanding, can, how
ever, hardly be affirmed. One would rather
be able to say the opposite, namely, that a
man who in his parables manifested so many-
sided a sense of the reality of all the relations
of life, as we have learned was the case with
Jesus, whose spiritual and mental life was so
forceful and so broadly sympathetic, must
have possessed both on his own account and in
relation to his earthly task a deep knowledge
of human life. In that case the concentration
upon his earthly calling just noted is not the
consequence of mental poverty or narrowness ;
it is, on the contrary, a voluntary limitation,
an indication of the power which purposely
circumscribed itself within the individual
task before it, it is a sign of self-sacrificing
fidelity to vocation.

From this point of view of fidelity to call
ing there belongs, now finally, what is to be
said concerning the death of Jesus. I am

 3fe0u0 30 Per0onalitg 177
aware that you are accustomed to regard the
death of Jesus from another angle of vision,
considering it as an evidence of love. In a cer
tain sense that is quite true. But when we
examine the matter closely, we see that this
motive was only indirect, and we come nearer
the whole truth when we regard the death of
Jesus as a proof of his fidelity to calling. It
has been a necessity heretofore to suppose that
Jesus knew that his death was to come, knew
it long before, and believed that this death
was the one means available for the redemp
tion of men, and that love to lost man de
manded that he suffer that death. That was
also the idea of primitive Christianity, and
Paul impressed this interpretation strongly
upon the dogmatic theory of the vicarious sac
rifice of Christ whereby guilty man was saved
from the curse of sin. This thought was so
self-evident to early Christianity that it col
ored significantly the narrative of our evan
gelists, as that narrative dealt not only with the
suffering, but even with the life of Christ.
But we, or at least the majority of us, are in
agreement that this method of construing the
matter, by which the Jewish or heathen
thought of sacrifice was attributed to Jesus,

178 3fe0u0 30 pereonalitg 
is no longer possible for us because it sinks
out of sight under the pure exaltation of faith
in God as Jesus preached it. One may as
sert with great assurance that Jesus knew
nothing of such theories. When in the
parable of the prodigal son or of the roguish
servant, he promised forgiveness in answer to
the beseeching prayer, he certainly did not
do so with the quiet reservation that this for
giveness would be made perfect only through
the sacrifice on Golgotha. On the contrary,
God is as royally merciful, as unreservedly
free as the father or the master in the para
bles. If this be true, it follows that one may
not assert that Jesus deliberately determined
to die out of love for men and in order to their
redemption. And the right view of the case
is even yet quite significantly exhibited in the
Gospels even under the later dogmatic cloak
ing of the facts.
Indeed, during the last days of his life Jesus
was apprehensive of conflict and feared that
in this conflict he would lose his life. But he
was not willing to avoid this conflict, for by
so doing he would have had to renounce his
calling. He who preaches a religion which
is thoroughly out of accord with the cultic or-

 3fg0u0 30 Per0onaIitg 179
der already established, and is unlegalistic,
must either overcome priests and scribes, who
are the representatives of the established re
ligion, or be overcome by them. That the lat
ter was the more likely to be the issue of the
unequal combat, Jesus doubtless, at the last,
quite fully realized; but that he willed it
cannot be thought. The entry into Jerusalem,
the purification of the Temple, the contest
with his opponents are but the last mighty ef
forts to gain the victory for his side. The
prayer in Gethsemane : "Father, if it be pos
sible, let this cup pass away from me," loses
its true and normal meaning, its affecting and
thrilling significance, if Jesus had a definitely
determined theory in fidelity to which he both
must die and determined to die. It must be
denied that he willed his death as a necessary
part of his labors. He hoped and believed
that his death would in some way work out for
good to his own ; and at the last supper, when
he took leave of his disciples, by a symbolical
treatment he gave expression to this belief.
But it was by way of faith, that is, sheer con
fidence in Almighty God, whose wonder
working ways he did not fully comprehend
but foreboded.

180 3fe0U0 30 Per0onalitg 
It has been a cause of much wonder, indeed
some have taken offence at the fact, that in
Gethsemane Jesus trembled and shrank from
his fate, that he three times prayed for the
passing of the cup from his lips. And the
offence has to these same people seemed the
greater when they compared his course with
that of martyrs of the Church, many of
whom, according to unimpeachable tradition,
went to their death with joyous enthusiasm.
Were not here the disciples greater than the
master? Not at all. They had what he had
not, what indeed he first won and acquired
for them — the confirmed assurance that
through the cross the crown is gained. They
traveled a known road, he had first broken the
way; he was the Winkelried* who broke the
path for his people.
Let us now state the case as it was : Jesus
had come with the commission to preach the
kingdom of heaven which, so to speak, stood
* Translator's Note. Arnold Winkelried was the tra
ditional Swiss hero of the battle of Sempach, July 9,
1386, between the Austrians and the Swiss. He led the
Swiss phalanx, gathered in his own breast the lances of
a group of opposing foemen, and thus made an opening
for his compatriots, who split the Austrian ranks and
gained a complete victory. Consult A. Schweitzer, Eine
Studie zur Schlacht bei Sempach (Zurich, 1902).

 3fe0U0 30 Pergonalitg 181
before the door and was intended for his peo
ple. The longer he worked the greater were
his hopes, not only to proclaim this kingdom,
but to see its realization and to become its
king. But what became of these hopes [to
ward the last]? The political and religious
leaders of the people persecuted him with
deadly hate. The attitude of the populace
was throughout fickle; and his disciples —
to be sure they loved him devotedly, but
how little they understood him and how small
was their power! They lay overcome with
sleep while he was battling for his soul; for
his soul, not for his physical life, for faith
in himself and his work, for his moral exist
ence for which there was pledged not the
smallest forfeit and which depended wholly
on faith and hazard. Moreover the figure
of Jesus does not shrink if we abandon the old
theory of his sacrificial death; contrariwise,
it then seems to present itself in wholly heroic
size. Now the act of Jesus becomes a deed
of faith without a parallel, the deed of a faith
shown by an individual most unique ; it hoped
when apparently there was nothing for which
to hope, it dared where there was no pledge
as reward for daring, but only the voice of

1 82 3fe0U0 30 Per0onalitg 
God within his own breast, to which obedi
ence was to be given. This act raised faith
as a standard for a new humanity, and thus
Jesus became the beginner and the fulfiller
of faith. This victory of faith ever remains
an object of wonder; it would be simply in
conceivable could we not grasp it as the sum
mit of a life devoted to constant obedience
grounded in faith.
May we dare to say yet a word regarding
the faith of Jesus — that is, not on his doctrine
but on his personal religion? Shall we suc
ceed in hitting upon the right thing, in saying
that which shall reach the measure of the
greatness of the fact? First of all let it be re
marked that the whole genius of Jesus, so far
as we have hitherto portrayed it in its energy,
saneness, truth, inner freedom, love and fidel
ity, is not intelligible apart from the root and
source of its being, the life and being of God.
Jesus can be no more fundamentally misrep
resented them by regarding him as an enlight-
ener and preacher of morality while at the
same time overlooking his faith in God. And
this faith in God became so active in his entire
being and life from the one fact that he was
so single-eyed. The truism is once more met

 3fe0U0 30 pet0onalftg 183
that the greatest thing is ever the purely plain
and simple. "Above all things to' fear God,
to love him, and to trust him" — this classical
definition from Luther's catechism sums up
the case. The religion of Jesus rests upon the
sure foundation of fear of God, veneration
of the Almighty Judge before whom we must
give account for every idle word, who knows
every thought of our heart. Every breath of
his being he drew with constant reverential
thought of this Judge, and this fact accounts
for the purity and fearlessness of his being.
"Be not afraid of them which kill the body,
but are not able to kill the soul; but rather
fear him which is able to destroy both soul
and body in hell" [Matt. x. 28]. But this al
mighty Judge is at the same time a merciful
and gracious Father, full of illimitable love
for all his creatures. For this reason it is
that we may love and trust him. And so, why
care for body and life? He clothes the lilies
of the field, feeds the birds of the heaven, he
knows the number of the hairs on our heads;
hence there is due him a boundless confi
dence, and to love him with the whole heart,
mind, and strength. Yet in this love of Jesus
for God there is nothing that offends feeling

184 3fegug 3g Pergonalitg
or sentiment, it is ever sound, vital, creative.
He has bound fast together love of God and
love of man ; he knows no love of God that is
not confirmed in love of man. Most surely
Jesus enjoyed the love of God with a feeling
of assurance, joyousness, and peace such as
no man had before him. But his religion, his
piety, did not proceed from this enjoyment as
did that of the mystics. He enjoyed love to
the accompaniment which was soundest and
most true, that of unremitting toil for God's
cause: "My meat is to do the will of him
that sent me, and to accomplish his work"
[John iv. 34].
The power for this unwearying activity he
received in prayer. Most frequently the
Evangelists report that Jesus prayed. That
this was a purely human prayer, a reaching
out of the weak hand which required help
toward the strong and supporting father-arm
of God, is shown with striking significance by
the struggle in Gethsemane. But his whole
life was carried along on the wings of prayer.
How characteristic is the incident reported
by Mark in his first chapter! Jesus had
worked the entire day in Capernaum under
great stress, healing and preaching. The

 31egug 3g Pergonalitg 185
next morning he arose before sunrise, went to
a solitary place, and prayed. When his dis
ciples found him, he took them with him to
new activity with the words : "Let us go into
the next towns, that I may preach there also:
for therefore came I forth." Prayer was not
with him, as with the mystics, a matter of
gratification ; it was a catching of the breath,
a re-creation of strength, in order to new ac
tivity, to new work in the service of God, for
God's work.
God's work, not Jesus'. In spite of the
strong self -consciousness of Jesus, which
comes out in his messianic faith, the funda
mental sentiment in the mind of Jesus was
that of religion, of reverence before Almighty
and Eternal God, which was so strong that he
spoke of himself as connected with man and
not with God. The Evangelist John has well
characterized the result of the work of Jesus
in the beautiful saying: "I am the way, the
truth, and the life" ; but Jesus would not him
self have employed such an expression. It is
not forgotten that he unconditionally required
that they who were his disciples should con
fess him : "Whosoever shall deny me before
men, him will I also deny before my Father

1 86 fegug 3g Pergonalitg 
which is in heaven" [Matt. x. 33]. But he
had no theory which required that men con
fess him as a means of coming to God. On the
other hand, he bound men to do the will of
God alone. He expected men not to say
"Lord, Lord!" but "to do the will of the
heavenly Father," and they who fulfilled
God's will were to him as mother and brother
and sister. So to that woman who, in an out
break of the feelings of a mother, felicitated
the womb that bare him and the breast which
gave him nourishment he returned the an
swer : "Yea rather, blessed are they that hear
the word of God, and keep it." Possibly this
is the greatest thing that can be said of the re
ligion of Jesus, that with unconditioned rever
ence he ever placed God before himself —
God, to whom he belonged body and soul.
* * *
You heard in the first lecture that it has
once more become the fashion to question the
historical existence of Jesus, and to regard
the Gospels as the retort into which went the
social and religious streams of thought and
impulses of the civilizations which existed in
the Mediterranean basin, Can you believe

 3fegug 3g Pergonalitg 187
that a picture such as we have concerned
ourselves at this session to trace out could
have been fabricated from such indefinite and
unpersonal streams of thought? Could any
thing whatever be so fabricated and invented?
There remain yet many intelligent men and
women who openly confess that they are not
able to avow faith in such a miracle of chance.
Their open confession is: We prefer to re
main old-fashioned people, in all humility
and confidence believing in the personal Al
mighty God and in the man Jesus Christ, the
highest earthly revelation of the Eternal God
and the captain of our faith.

3Iegug 30 JForce
BY
PASTOR E. FOERSTER, TH. D.

IV
JESUS AS FORCE
The two lectures to which you have listened
immediately preceding the present one, aimed
to give an answer to the question : Who was
Jesus? It is the firm conviction of my friends,
and also my own, that it is possible to appre
hend the original nature of this wonderful
man ; and the freer from prejudice and from
attachment to theories a man is when he
comes to the tradition, the better. Deficient
and incomplete though the sources are which
contain the reports, shot through with legend
ary elements and interwoven with fabulous
details as they are, it yet is possible to answer
the one question to which everything really
comes — what did Jesus really will, and what
was his character? We are not to be misled
because in a search of this sort the dilettanti
bestir themselves and apply to the search their
uncritically furnished inventive faculty or
because they succeed only in confusing the
191

192  3f£0ti0 30 Jforce 
problem, or in hewing through it with hastily
prepared tours de la parole because they have
not patience and self-denial to bring to the
solution (qualities without which it is not pos
sible to discover truth). We are happy and
proud to be able to say that, thanks to earnest
and rigorous labors which have been going
on for more than a century, since the days of
Lessing — and this principally on German soil
— we of to-day know Jesus better and under
stand more completely the original meaning
of his sayings than has been at any time the
case since the second century. The joy we
feel in this eminence of German theology we
expect to bring into emphatic expression. And
we commiserate the people who feel no glad
ness arising from this great accomplishment
of science, whether because the result does not
agree with their own prejudices and wishes,
or because they value only such results of
scientific inquiry as permit of transmutation
into terms of technical advance, esthetic pleas
ure, or political power.
But, is perchance this scientific gain a dam
age to personal force of life? What science
has presented to us is and remains a greatness
that belongs to the past. Yes, it is just this

 3fe0U0 30 Jforce  193
which, in the course of our labors, Jesus has
rightly become. The deeper we delve the
more we must perceive that exactly this grea*
form is indissolubly bound up with a distant
past and a region very remote. There can be
no other result. If we treat earnestly the
thought that Jesus is a historical person, it
goes without further remark that he belonged
in the train of the general development of civ
ilization, that from its impulses and limita
tions he drew the material of his thoughts and
that which went to form his character, that
thence came the questions which were his to
answer, the horizon which circumscribed his
mental picture of the world, and innumerable
other things which conditioned his being. No
man is original in the sense that he is inde
pendent of the heritage of the past. The con
tent of an individuality is ever already pre
pared before the personality itself becomes
manifest. Only of Almighty God may pious
faith dare to think and to perceive that he
created the world out of nothing — of him
and of no one else. But of Jesus Paul penned
the profound saying that he was sent "in the
fullness of time." From that of which the
time was full did Jesus create his inner life.

194  31e0U0 30 Jforce 
The way in which he rejected some part of
this ready material, took another part, put it
together and developed it — that was his own,
it was He.
It was especially the second lecture in this
course which put prominently forward the
connectedness of the thought- world of Jesus
with the views and interpretation of things in
his time. You will permit me just as strongly
to emphasize the other side of the case,
namely, that Jesus was a historical personality.
Included in this thought is not merely that he
was a debtor to the time that had passed be
fore he was born, but also that he had no part
in the time that has gone by since his appear
ance. A historic personality remains fixed in
its place, but the stream of events flows unin
terruptedly forward and carries with itself
the sons of men. They cannot remain fixed
with any personality, wish it though they may.
New knowledge, new tasks, new experience
are ever eventuating, of which the man of the
past knows nothing. And what a welling full
ness of new life has been presented to hu
manity in the last centuries of its develop
ment! How the world and time have ex
tended into immeasurability! This enlarge-

 3fe0U0 30 JForce  195
ment and enrichment have gripped upon our
personal life in its depth, have transformed it,
have made questions to obtrude, have pro
duced tensions, in all of which our closest in
terests have become involved. We have come
to see the world as an unending existence
which we comprehend as a continuity under
the reign of law. Consequently, the question
arises to torment us, how it is that within this
immeasurable, perhaps purely mechanical
collection of causes and activities the personal
life, the individual will, and the eternal pur
poses permit of maintenance. We live in a
time of unlimited "becoming," we have an
outlook into abysses of time behind and be
fore; we are able to regard man and humanity
as nothing else than a passage way and a
bridge to unknown possibilities. The obliga
tion to coming generations, to all that is yet to
become, is the potency which defines our
thought and action. Moreover, the most sig
nificant thing of all is that we have ourselves
become a problem to solve. We perceive in
the life of the human soul an inextricable
interwoven fabric, its outlook and its exposi
tion are the most seductive object of the art
of poet and painter, its study is the most sub-

196  31E0U0 30 JForce 
lime task of science, treatment of it is the most
difficult art of the teacher. A new world of
thought and impulses is in process of be
coming, in comparison with which the world
in which the men of antiquity moved seems
like a little deserted village.
And in all this Jesus has no part. He stands
on the other side of Copernicus and Colum
bus, Kant and Darwin, Rembrandt and
Goethe. When we present this fact to our
consciousness, is it not as though a wall rears
itself before our gaze and interposes between
him and ourselves? A thinker of our day,
who has made careful investigation of the
essence and worth of historical personality,
has called particular attention to the fact that
we use the word historical in a threefold
sense.* We may say that Luther's expression :
"Here I stand, I can no other," or Tell's
when bound to the plateau at Vierwald-
stattersee, or the victory at Koniggratz are
historical or not historical. By this is meant
that the events related did or did not occur.
* Heinrich Rickert, Die Grensen der naturwissen-
schaftlichen Begriffsbildung, pp. 369-370, Tubingen,
1902. This is one of the most ponderous, though rich
and profound, works of the newer philosophy.

 3fe0U0 30 jforce  197
That Jesus is for us in this sense a historical
personality has been explicitly shown in the
first lecture of this series. The attempt to com
bat this we can but regard as purposed flights
outside the realm of reality. We may also as
sert that this or that was a historic moment,
as when Henry IV. went to Canossa, or when
Luther nailed his theses to the church door
October 31, 15 17, or when Zeppelin made his
flight August 4, 1908. By this we intend to say
that the event was important and significant,
that it lifts itself above the ordinary, and
merits retention in the memory. For not
everything that happens anywhere is an object
of historical tradition, only that which has
important consequences and awakens interest.
I trust that the second and third lectures have
shown us anew that in this sense also Jesus is
historical, an appearance of supreme great
ness among men. We use the word "histori
cal" also in a third sense. We may say that
this or that has become historical, that it be
longs only to history; things of this sort are
the flint and steel, the post coach, Klopstock's
Messias, and the pope's interdict. In using
the term with reference to certain events or
persons we put them alongside of the dead —

198  3fg0U0 30 jforce 
they may have had value and importance for
earlier steps in civilization, but for us and the
present they have no such worth; we are,
therefore, not accustomed to stir up such sub
jects and to dispute concerning them, we refer
them to antiquarians. Is Jesus in this sense
also "historic"? The worth of Jesus for the
present — that is the problem into which
every consideration of his person finally is
sues. I think you all perceive, as my friends cer
tainly hold, that this is a prior and decisive
question. For to say that the Christian re
ligion is true, is not the same as saying that
once there lived a man Jesus, who gave the
impulse from which originated the New Tes
tament literature and the construction of
really notable propositions concerning God
and the world. What such a statement means
is that with him there entered into the course
of history something that was enduring — as
we men use the word — an eternal good. It
is then sure that the questions, what Jesus
was and what he willed, are only preliminary
and subsidiary questions; they may not be
raised at all, and if raised, not a great deal of
ardor and diligence will be expended upon

 3[e0ti0 30 jForce  199
the answer to them, unless there intervenes
that mysterious feeling that this Jesus is a
matter of concern to us to-day and has much
to say to us. And so burning a question is this
now that I can easily understand how it is that
many would be willing to attempt to leap over
or pass by the question who Jesus was, espe
cially if the historical investigation concern
ing him appeared idle and unfruitful in com
parison with their little toil, with the results
of their producing, which are ever only con
ditionally valuable. But we must take the
firm stand that we may not deprive ourselves
of the help and control afforded by science in
deciding what value Jesus has for us; for
without this we run the risk of receiving a
Christ that has been invented and dreamed,
one that has been fabricated to meet the needs
of an individual or a community. Yet as a
matter of fact, no investigation can of itself
ever present or deprive us of the decision; we
must ourselves pronounce it upon the basis of
experience and the demands of our own souls.
II
So long as there is a Christianity, so long
as there are men and women who confess

2oo  3fg0ti0 3g jForce 
themselves followers of Jesus, so long is there
the firm conviction that Jesus is not a magni
tude that is of the past, but that he is of the
present. Never was this faith held with
greater assurance and a higher inspiration
than where it was least to be expected,
namely, in the generation which had itself ex
perienced the sorrow of the death of Jesus.
This faith expressed itself in the conviction
(r) that Jesus as the exalted Lord, though
invisible, was yet active and near his own,
and (2) that his Spirit continued to live in
the circle of his disciples. In order to under
stand these representations it is necessary to
note that religious faith can express itself only
in imaginative language, its normal mode of
speech is the "myth." This "myth" of the
Christ who had been taken away from earth,
had gone to another place, and had ascended
to the throne of God, whence he was again to
descend in order to complete the interrupted
work of establishing the government of God,
is, as every one sees, inseparably connected
with the three-storied universe of antiquity.
Where this conception of the universe no
longer has force — and it does not obtain
among us — the "myth" referred to can no

 3fegug 3g jforce  201
longer govern thought, its re-presentative
capability is gone. We lack the qualifications
for the reception of this faith in the form in
which it was held by the people of that time ;
the general framework is gone into which the
picture of the Exalted One naturally fitted.
The second conception named above (that of
the continuance of the Spirit with the dis
ciples) better fits in with our mode of think
ing. Yet even here it is necessary to note that
primitive Christianity understood by "the
Spirit" which was poured out upon the hearts
of the faithful something much more gross
than that which we mean when we employ
the word "Spirit."
But we cannot stop to discuss whether it is
feasible to maintain these conceptions; the
question rather takes the form : What experi
ences of the soul built them up? What needs of
the soul evoked such a picture? How did
primitive Christianity have communion with
him who had died on the cross, who no longer
dwelt with them in bodily form? In what
characteristic marks did it find his nearness,
his presence? There were in those ancient
times men who were stimulated by the world
which was about them to the reception of vis-

2Q2  3fggtig 3g JForce 
ions, hallucinations, hearing of voices from
heaven, the noting of oracles and signs, to
whom it was self-evidently a commonplace
to perceive deity in physical or soul-life. Was
it by these means that primitive Christians
assured themselves of the presence also of the
deceased Jesus? Is the origin of faith in the
Lord as continuing to live to be placed in
experiences which, from our standpoint, are
regarded as in part naively childish, in part
pathological? But danger menaces this path, though its
seductions entice again and again. Even Paul
reports such immediate intercourse with the
Christ who had been translated to heaven,
and tells of meeting him and having speech
with him. And still more than he, the lesser
lights of his generation luxuriated in ecstatic
visions, glossolalia, prophesying, in stories of
healing of the sick, wonderful answers to
prayer, and interventions [from above], and
thereby nourished faith in the presence of
Jesus. But wonderful to relate! This very gener
ation, whose attention thus aroused was di
rected to heaven, is the creatrix of our Gospel
literature; it collected with the care of a

 3|egug 3g jTotce  203
thrifty householder every little circumstance
in the life of Jesus, every saying and proverb
that fell from his lips, in the endeavor that
nothing be lost, intermingling meanwhile
many an ungenuine thing; it fixed all this
in writing, made translations of it, and began
to read the Scriptures, thus originated, in
its assemblies. "I know of no fact that is
much more astounding than this" is the re
mark of S. Eck (in Hefte zur christlichen
Welt, 1898, no. 32, p. 21). But equally as
tounding is another fact, that all search and
grasping after wonder-working activities of
the Spirit cannot obscure the conviction that
the most precious of all God's gifts is love,
the power to lead a life of purity and good
ness; that this is more worthful than the
speaking with tongues and the sight of things
that may not be told, than retirement from the
world and resignation of it (I Cor. xiii.).
There can be no doubt as to the way in
which to interpret these facts. The experi
ence of the presence of Jesus did not rest on
those unsound and mysterious experiences,
but rather on his manifest words and the idea
of his earthly existence; and the absorbing
token of the abiding association with him was

2Q4  31e0U0 a0 jForce 
that love which showed the spirit of minister
ing affection, which the historical Jesus had
fulfilled. Out of contact with the spiritual
content which was concealed in the vessel of
this historical appearance grew the faith in
the living Lord.
Here is an important guidepost, which yet
has often enough remained unobserved in
Christianity. Ever again and again has the
longing of the pious stormed against the walls
which separate from our world that world
in which the dead live; and fancy has brought
help to this eager longing and mirrored forth
the fulfilment of its wish. On the other hand
it has constantly been shown that this is no
road to a firm conviction that can support one
in the storm and stress of doubt, and that the
revelations which men claimed to receive
were only too often nothing but the results
of their own vanity, thirst for power, and
sensuousness. Luther denied the right of ex
istence in the Evangelical church to manifes
tations of this sort of piety, when he fought
against the fanatics and Anabaptists. The
presence of Jesus as a continually operating
force can, for us, have no other significance
than the presence of the historical fact that,

 3fegng 3g JForce  205
nineteen hundred years ago in a corner of the
Roman world, Jesus taught, healed, fought,
and suffered, and, perhaps after only a year of
this activity, died. Ill
In what ways do facts that belong to the
past continue to operate? In just two ways
and no more: through things or through per
sons, by works or by recollection.* The first
method may be illustrated from the field of
technical invention. There can be no doubt
that the life of man is fundamentally changed
because of the invention of the steam engine
and the railroad ; how great a change these
have produced may be learned from any ex
position of the development of commercial
life during the nineteenth century. These
works continue to exist and to operate alto
gether independently of their originators.
Thousands travel on the railroads who know
nothing whatever of George Stephenson, mill
ions have to do with machines without the
slightest thought of James Watt. Moreover,
the man who first hollowed a tree and made
* This useful distinction I borrow from an unpub
lished lecture by Professor Samuel Eck, of Giessen.

2o6  3fegu0 30 jfocce 
the attempt to journey over water, he who
first tempered iron in fire, he who first
smoothed stone and built a house with it —
who and what kind of men were these? Of
them we have no knowledge. They live
solely through their works ; we reason to their
existence from the law that each thing must
have its cause, but no personal recollection of
them remains. The second method is that
which occurs when there comes before the
mind's eye the image of a dear one — a father,
perhaps, or a friend — who is separated from
us. Here, too, there may be the auxiliary
working of some thing or event — a letter
which the departed had written, a song which
he used to sing, a withered bouquet, a place
which we had visited together. But evidently
our relation to these things is entirely differ
ent from our relation to the works of industry
and the like already referred to. These things
of which we now speak may have no intrinsic
value, either that of money or for purposes
of utility or as works of art; they may con
ceivably be not even the products of him
whom they recall to memory; they may be
simply the means by which a certain mental
individuality lives again in us, or they may

 3fe0tt0 30 jForce  207
be a trait of this person — his love, or earnest
ness, or diligence, or cheerfulness, it may be
his grief or rivalry. They have value to us
as memorials of a personal life. They work
their effects upon us, make us sad or glad,
render us elated or ashamed, stimulate us to
tears or make our hearts beat faster with joy.
Apart from the individual with whom they
by chance came into connection, they are as
nothing ; but through this connection they re
ceive their entire significance as vessels and
vestments of a soul which still speaks to us.
The worth of these things passes over into per
sonal value. Indeed such externals are not
necessary as stimuli, for within us, unevoked
by such things, may rise the figure of some
long past fact. This abiding presence of the
past in us we call memory.
In order to avoid misunderstanding, allow
me to add the following. In the distinction
between the continued operation of the im
personal and the personal I have referred to
what was merely and purely external, within
which history ran its course. But men do not
as a matter of fact dissect the past into things
which operate materially and those which op
erate personally. There could hardly exist a

208  3fg0U0 30 JForce 
man who would come into consideration
purely and solely as the originator of some
industrial product. Even though for those
who had no intimacy with him he had signifi
cance only through this product, in the hearts
of widow and children he would continue to
live as a personality. And it is to be noted
with equal emphasis that the circle in which
this operation through works is active is
usually incomparably larger than that in
which interest concerns what the man really
was. Still more important is the observation
that distinction cannot always be made be
tween this continued operation by means of
the material and that by means of personality.
We recognize this at once when we take into
account the heritage left by an artist or a
thinker. To be sure, the dramas of Sopho
cles carry with them their own life, and it is
hardly likely that anyone under their influ
ence would be led by them to call up for him
self the figure of the poet. Griinewald's Isen-
heimer altar speaks immediately to the spec
tator, even though the person of the painter
remains wholly in obscurity.* Spinoza's
* Translator's Note. Matthias Griinewald was a Ger
man painter of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth

 3le0U0 30 JForce  209
Ethica will be the object of abiding esteem
for its contents and the conclusiveness of its
reasoning alone. And yet you all feel that the
work of the artist and the scientist do not so
permit of disconnection from their creators
as does, for instance, the plate from which
food is taken from the potter who turned it.
The work of artist or thinker continues to live
not independent of its creator, in its form it
bears along with it into the future something
of the soul of him who created it. Edison in
vented the telephone and Schiller wrote Die
Rauber; but when we see Die Rduber repre
sented, our relation to the personality of
Schiller is altogether different from our re
lation to the personality of Edison as we use
the telephone. IV
From these general considerations we now
return to Jesus. In what way do we of to-day,
centuries, of whose life it is known only that he was
born in Aschaffenburg and lived most of his life in
Mainz. His masterpiece, created between 1493 and
1516, was the high altar at Isenheim in Upper Alsace,
on which were the figures of St. Sebastian, St. Anthony,
St. Paul, and the Madonna. The work is now in the
museum at Colmar.

2io  3fg0U0 30 jForce 
we who are here gathered in this hall, experi
ence an influence from the historical fact —
Jesus? It is at first glance significant that we have
to thank him for no one of the material pos
sessions which we use and find profitable. J
may call to your recollection the observation
of Naumann, to which attention was directed
in a former lecture (ante, pp. 85-86).
Through Jesus [directly] no country road was
improved, no smallest corner of nature was
subjected to the dominance of the human
spirit, no state boundaries were changed on
the earth's surface, no social or ecclesiastical
institutions were created. What is called "cul
ture" in the narrower sense received neither
impulse nor opposition from him. Of course,
it is possible that those who did act upon it
were under the influence of Jesus, that from
him they received their courage and hope,
their steadfastness and fidelity; but the stim
ulus to apply their creative zeal and their
force to these things — to scientific problems,
to advance in mechanics, to national, social,
or economic gain, to interest in nature and to
the impetus to overcome it — did not originate
from Jesus. So the fact lies open to the eye

 3fe0U0 30 JForce  m
that for a fullness of the gains of culture and
of political and social rights, which, indeed,
we would not be without, we are under obli
gations to men who had no relationship to
Jesus, as also for forces and motives which
had their birthplace elsewhere than in the
thought-world of Jesus. He who is not sight
less will not deny that the most significant, if
not the only leverage to this progress has
been the impulse to self-preservation. It en
gineers invention and discovery, conquers
wastes and moors and subdues them to the
purposes of human habitation, it inflames to
war and wins political rights and economic
success and social recognition. Of course,
this impulse is a gift of God, and the pious
are ever under the influence of wonder at the
way in which the Eternal leads mankind by
means of profit and loss from obscurity into
light; but every attempt to make Jesus the
originator of this impulse (such as that which
Rousseau made) is an injustice to Jesus and
is shattered unfailingly upon the rock of his
sayings and his cross.
And yet, one may speak of a continuance
of operation through material things that is
traceable to Jesus. As a fact we are girded

212  31E0U0 30 JForce 
about with activities that hark back to his
historical appearance, that have, so to speak,
emanated from his person and pass on among
us, from hand to hand, without awakening
the realization in us that they are coins of
Jesus' mintage. And this truth is not limited
to things, but applies to the thoughts and dis
positions, convictions and norms, which are
the possession of the men of to-day, particu
larly in the Protestant world, though they
may in various ways have become attenuated,
enfeebled, and united with foreign material;
they have become incarnated, so to speak,
in flesh and blood, are ever the immediate
foundation of mental life. We cannot sever
this element of our thinking and experience
from our life without cutting ourselves off
essentially from the culture of mankind and
breaking with it entirely (as indeed Schopen
hauer and Nietzsche did). Whoever will
not do this lives in possession of these things,
even though he care not at all about the per
son of Jesus.
A first impression of such a deposit of
Christian thoughts, dispositions, norms, and
ideals may be gained in the following man
ner. We may take under consideration three

 3(g0U0 30 jForce  213
men, Albrecht Diirer, Goethe, and Bismarck,
who possessed natures of the utmost dissimi
larity. That in spite of this dissimilarity
there was a community of relationship among
them will become at once evident to you
when I put the question whether it is at all
conceivable that men of those types could
have developed in a world that was controlled
by Buddhistic teaching. The answer cannot
be in doubt. So characteristic a genius as
breathes in the creations of Diirer, so delight
ful an appreciation of the individual as is
evident in the productions of Goethe, the
artist in life, and so titanic a series of achieve
ments as that of Bismarck's could not take
form in the heavy air of the Indian religion —
a faith that would obliterate personality, that
regards individuality as a burden, and would
let activity lapse in sleep.
Is it possible in some measure to compre
hend and to define according to its contents
this stock of modern humanity, which is a
common possession yet takes many forms and
is the resort of all? The attempt is often
enough made; indeed the lure is so attractive
that the best powers ever set themselves the
task. I offer here the exposition of an ob-

214  3fegug 3g Jforce 
server of modern life, a man only recently
deceased, who was possessed of a fine delicacy
of perception and thought — the Berlin phi
losopher, Friedrich Paulsen. He pictured in
the following fashion the Christian undercur
rent in the modern view of the world and life,
the penetrating operation of Jesus in our
thinking and feeling (System der Ethik, i.
141-148, Berlin, 1896) : Christianity has en
graved three great verities in the mental life
of man. First, Christianity has revealed an
appreciation of suffering as an essential in
the life of man to which the Greek world
never attained. Suffering is no more a brutal
fact, it is the way to inner peace, a condition
which is necessary for the complete develop
ment of mankind. We men of the present
know nothing more penetrating or greater
than this to say of suffering, from which no
life is free. We either understand it and so
bear it, or we understand it not at all. Second,
as with suffering, so sin and guilt are essential
sides of the life of man. This verity was
either seen not at all by the man of ancient
times, or not discerned in its full measure.
Christianity sees as a most serious and fearful
fact that in the very being of the natural man

 3[egug 3g jForce  215
deeply rooted is a tendency to evil. This per
ception takes its rise from the ineradicable
impression of the righteousness and holiness
which took form in Jesus. By this is afforded
a simply crushing norm. Paulsen continues
as follows: "This method of seeing the fact
is inextricably interwoven in the fabric of
our being. To accept evil so unconcernedly
as did the Greeks, to regard one's own life
with so naive self-satisfaction as was possible
to Greeks and Romans — these are no longer
possible for us. At a modern funeral are oc
casionally sung those lines of Horace begin
ning, Integer vitae scelerisque purus; I am not
sure but that for the dead, if he can hear it,
this song has something embarrassing. It may
call up the recollection of the beginning of
that prayer of the Pharisee: 'God, I thank
thee that I am not as other men.' And I ques
tion whether at that moment the close of the
song with its sweetly smiling refrain contains
aught that is edifying for him. Better at the
end is the old refrain sung on Good Friday:
'Christ, thou lamb of God, who takest away
the sin of the world, have mercy upon us.'
The proud saying of the dying Julian : 'I die
without repentance, for I have lived without

2i6  3fg0U0 30 jforce 
guilt,' may perchance be possible for us as
we stand before the judgment seat of man;
but how is it when we are before the judg
ment seat of our own conscience or before the
bar of God?"
The third great verity which Christianity
has impressed in us is that the world lives
through the voluntary martyr death of the
innocent and righteous. From a historical
and philosophical standpoint it is the most
profound truth that the secret of peoples'
life lies in the fact that the best and most
unselfish, the strongest and purest, offer them
selves as sacrifices. The best that man pos
sesses has been obtained in this way, and the
reward for the service was misjudgment, neg
lect, expulsion, death. Jesus opened the eyes
of men that they might see this and by it
aroused in individual cases ever anew the de
sire for sacrifice, and in many established a
disposition of gratitude for life as a heritage
from the saints. To these three verities Paul
sen adds a fourth, namely, the desire for the
supramundane. Antiquity was satisfied with
the earth; the modern world finds in a sen
sation of dissatisfaction with the existent real
ities something continually recurrent. Echoes

 3(e0U0 30 JForce  217
of the declaration which Christianity made to
the East, that the true home of the soul is not
this earth, that the present life is a pilgrim
age in a foreign land, are heard in poetry and
time the step of modern life even among chil
dren of the world. The necessity of raising
oneself above the present world in prescient
sighing for reality of a higher order is so
ingrained in modern humanity that to eradi
cate it would require an entire reconstitution
of man.
These subtle and profound remarks by
Paulsen can certainly not meet your ear and
attention without awakening you to the real
ization that they vibrate in harmony with
chords which belong to your inner life. Who
can follow out a train of thought like this and
not be convinced how profoundly and closely
we have grown up in touch with Christianity,
how the spiritual substance of the preacher of
the Sermon on the Mount and of him who
died on the cross has become a part of our
own inner life? But you will have noticed
that the connection between individual reali
zations of this sort has not been brought to
expression, and above all their immediate
derivation from the person of Jesus. It seems

218  3fg0U0 30 Jforce 
to me that there is a still simpler and more
unified method of showing how among us
the continual force of Jesus' life is operative.
In one of our lectures last year there was
made the statement that, "Christianity stands
or falls with the dictum: 'What is a man
profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and
lose his own soul?' " [Matt. xvi. 26]. In re
peating this, we express the very core of the
Gospel, and perception of it does not require
philosophic training or stress of thought; on
the contrary, everyone who has eyes to see will
perceive it, and just as it always has been per
ceived. The very center of the mission and
the personality of Jesus is a rock-firm and
effectually assured belief in the eternal worth
of the human soul. This worth Jesus recog
nized and loved in every man, even in the
lowest and the polluted, where national per
versity and social prejudice made its discov
ery impossible— in the Samaritan and the
heathen woman, in publicans and sinners, in
children and women. This worth he fostered
with gentle hand and in behalf of it battled
with passionate indignation. His whole
ethics may be summed up in a passion for sin
cerity and fidelity to one's own personality

 31e0U0 30 JForce  219
and for love to everything that bore the stamp
of humanity and bore in its breast the germ
of personal life. His path of suffering en-
fleshed obedience to personality, which he
might not put to shame by compromise and
dissembling and would not sacrifice by silence
or denial. His faith in God evinced his un
derstanding of the power over all things
which sprang from this confidence (in per
sonality) : and he knew nothing more exalted
to say of it than that it is full of soul, merciful
and protective, abounding in sympathy and
joy in human life.
This faith in the eternal worth of human
personality is the productive soil from which
sprang the entire round of Jesus' thought; it
affords the key to the understanding of suffer
ing, guilt, sacrifice, and the unconditioned
assurance of another life. Jesus' teaching and
person are but the incarnation and application
of this faith; hence it may be asserted that
only from this premise can one attain to ac
quiescence in his thoughts and disposition.
In saying this I do not overlook the fact that
other leaders of mankind, before Jesus and
independent of him, have reached and felt
the truth of this conclusion. Indeed in germ

220  3fg0U0 30 Jforce 
and obscurely, this truth lives in every man,
and it is truth only because every man is con
stituted in it. But Jesus expressed this truth
so that children may understand it, and he
brought to experience both the directive keen
ness and the blessed delight that are inherent
in it so that neither causes slights to the other.
Above all important is the serious earnestness
with which he treated it. To be sure, he did
not prove it; but it is not a thing that is sus
ceptible of proof. The one proof is that if
we disown it or let go of it, we find ourselves
in a condition of dire unhappiness.
And now I maintain that this belief in per
sonality is the force in human history which
impels to progress, and that it is more clearly
and profoundly comprehended by the men
of to-day than ever before. It' rages and
storms in all earnest and trying contests, and
that not as a secondary concomitant phenom
enon, but down in the very fundamentals,
where the springs well up and the ore is
found. What else was it that inspired the soul
of Roger Williams, the father of modern de
mocracy, and what else came to expression in
the exposition of the rights of man, than this
faith? It gives to modern movements among

 31e0U0 30 JForce  221
workers their momentum and passion; it is
at the basis of the campaign of the modern
woman for social-legal standing and com
pleter opportunities in life. It compels us
ever anew to think through the problem of
the instruction of our sons and daughters, and
to stand in awe before the mystery of the soul
of a child. What does freedom of science
mean if not reverence in the presence of per
sonal conviction? What is sincerity in art
but the striving for a pure expression of per
sonal life? Yet we are not to regard this be
lief as though it were a gentle balsam or a re
freshing draught. It ought rather to be com
pared with hot iron. Where business or po
litical interests would absorb control, where
a masterly folk would despoil a minority of
tradition or mother speech,* where a ruling
class would hinder their dependents from
manifesting their opinions, there this belief
stalks forth with threatening mien. Firmly
and relentlessly it haled before its tribunal
Church and school in order to inquire whether
their ordinances and the direction of their ac-
* Translator's Note. Possibly a reference to the rig
orous attempts of the imperial government of Germany
to Teutonize Prussian Poland.

222  3fe0U0 30 .force 
tivities accorded with freedom of conscience;
it rose in rage where merely the faintest sign
appeared of persecution of thought and opin
ion. It fought and endured and bled; it was
like a pillar of fire that directed man on his
way to unknown blessed remotenesses. And
this fire was kindled by Jesus. In this faith
we are related to him, we all stand within the
sphere of operation of his appearance, we ex
perience the transformation of our lives
through him. So long as this faith affects us,
fights in us, consoles us, quells us, Jesus has
not yet become historic. But when it shall
once for all have gained complete victory,
the kingdom of God will be present.
V
There are no doubt many among you who
regard our theme as exhausted. I believe that
the continuing effects of the life of Jesus
among a large, a very large, majority of the
men of to-day are confined to this permea
tion of the idea of personality and to its par
ticipation in the deposit of thoughts and mo
tives — a permeation which disengages itself
in every one, but in very varying degrees of

 31e0U0 30 Jforce  223
strength and fullness. And it does not seem
to me a false statement that the belief in the
indelible nobility of personality is the religion
of modern man, so far as he is capable of re
ligion, that is, of devotion and reverence.
Naturally I leave out of the question the great
multitude of those who are sunk in material
ism, whether of a coarse or a more refined
quality, for the presence of such men is no pe
culiar possession of our day — they have ex
isted in all time. But within the circle of
present day manhood there is a smaller circle
of those who do not believe that in what has
been said the theme of the continuous opera
tion flowing from the person of Jesus has been
exhausted. With them there goes through
life the memory of Jesus, like that of a
brother or a friend, the memory of his words,
the recollection of the characteristic stories of
his intercourse with men and of his brave
deeds. They realize the necessity of drinking
deep and true at the fountain of tradition con
cerning him and of finding therein sources
for the renewing of secret individual life. It
is their heart's wish that this heritage be not
lost, that its use may become wider and its
presence more fully known. Such men value

224  31e0U0 30 jforce 
above all things spiritual converse with the
person of Jesus. We would like to know that
our lectures are understood as voices from
this circle. It is out of this exactly that there
grows the further task in the process of tak
ing stock of asking what value there is in this
memory of Jesus. Does it possess value and
produce fruit? Or is this recollection mere
pleasurable occupation or the consequence of
a senseless habit?
Let us think through the following train
of thought before answering. Spiritual com
munion with the Jesus of the New Testament
might have been for a more primitive man
kind worthful, even necessary. Contempla
tion of his form and the preaching of the
apostles and of the Church may have been
helpful in awakening and strengthening faith
in his personality. But in our times this be
lief no longer requires such insufficient in
vestiture and repeated inculcation. It has
cast away the form which had become too re
stricted and continues to live free and inde
pendent, meanwhile ever creating for itself
new and greater incarnations. It has absorbed
within itself that earlier faith which hung
upon and clung to the person of Jesus, and its

31e0U0 30 jForce  225
present declaration is: Though the shell
is utterly demolished, the noble contents con
tinues to exist. Does it retain the purpose of
going back to its historical origin, and is not
that merely a scientific interest in antiquarian
research? Physicists have taught us to recog
nize as the law in the world of nature that one
force converts itself into another and is lost
in that other; heat is converted into motion
and motion into light. Who thanks the burned
coals that set the wheels in motion when, hav
ing arrived at his goal, he leaves the express?
Or who, sitting under the friendly light of the
electric lamp, thinks of the whir of the ma
chinery, without which he would sit in dark
ness? And why should we not with joy and
inspiration allow ourselves to be led along by
the idea of personality without joining in a
cult followed by our ancestors in company
with its renowned celebrants?
But to this course of thought, enticing
though it sounds, I and my friends reply with
an unconditional and well-considered nega
tive. We decline to be seduced into giving up
veneration before the person of Jesus of Naz
areth in behalf of a cultus of the idea of per
sonality, for we fear that with the one we

226  3[g0U0 30 JForce 
should lose also the other. We consider that
it is not merely a case of scientific exactness
or the claim that we should be faithful to his
tory that requires us to keep in mind this con
nection. Rather the interests of faith in per
sonality itself insist upon all this.
There is a wide difference between spirit
ual forces and physical forces. The latter,
even if we cannot create them, we can evoke,
subdue, and master. But spiritual forces
emanate from mysterious depths over which
we exercise no mastery, and they are em
bedded in man. Only and simply our inter
course with man tells us what is meant by love
and hate, good and bad, truth and lie; or
rather, we become sensible of them in man.
From the aspects presented by human indi
viduals, from contact of our own souls with
those of others, these conceptions receive their
inexhaustibly rich content, which defies de
scription. If it were conceivable to isolate
a man completely and finally, all these great
things would lose for him their content and
their significance; he would then be under
the influence of the forces of nature, but no
longer under those of the soul, and would
himself become a mere being of nature. So it

 31e0ttg 3g jForce  227
is with faith in personality. It lives in the
breast because of the influence which good
and great men exercise over us, and it lives
upon this influence. It is not a verity that is
inborn in us, nor can it be reached through
the processes of logical thinking; it is insep
arably connected with the recollection of con
crete individualities, before which doubt con
cerning the nobility of the human soul seems
a wretched and poor thing; so we win the
courage and the joy, we even regard it an
ethical duty, to exempt the soul from the gen
eral law of extinction.
There is a fable which tells of the giant
Antaeus, who could not be overcome by his
foes because by contact with his mother
Earth he ever obtained new and mightier
power. Similarly faith creates and absorbs
its vital force through uninterrupted connec
tion with the concrete reality of heroes and
saints. So far as these actually linger among
us — and every way of life is traversed by
such saints, though their names are often
humble and they appear in lowly guise — this
intercourse completes itself by unenvious and
delicately responsive reception of their being
into our own, and so far as they belong to the

228  3(egug ag Jforce 
past, this comes about by the process of foster
ing their memory.
One who agrees with this would be terrified
at the thought that at any time remembrance
of the person of Jesus and regard for his in
dividuality should be lost. It would be a dep
redation of manhood itself, taking away that
which is most fundamental in its constitution.
To be sure, belief in personality would not
equally be lost, for God has called up many
witnesses to this, and in manifold embodi
ments it is to be found in the world. And
we rejoice because of this fact, and listen with
grateful affection wherever the note of de
voted and genuine life makes itself heard.
But we do this great fact no wrong when we
look beyond the great cloud of witnesses to
Jesus, the author and finisher of faith. For
no remembrance can equal the remembrance
of Jesus in presenting an invincible resistance
to the timid doubts which at times assail us
and the piercing anxiety which seeks out even
in the greatest the traces of littleness and
weakness. Without it, the idea of the true
Worthfulness of man fades like a figure in the
fog, and there comes a tottering of the under-
Standing of the world and of life which is

 3legug 3g JForce  229
built upon this firm foundation. Into every
life come critical hours of discouragement
and impotency; and what have we left if we
do not retain this?
The highest accomplishment and loftiest
flight of the faith in personality is faith in the
personal God. It is not necessary to declare
to us how great a thing it is to think in spir
itual terms of the Power that sustains and
guides all things. We know also the dif
ficulties with which this thought has to strug
gle, and that there is danger of forgetting the
immensity and unutterable sublimity of God,
for we have to mirror his being in figures de
rived from human life. Faith in God may
never be separated from reverence and hu
mility in the presence of the Inconceivable
and Unapproachable, nor may it degenerate
into a trifling familiarity which presumes to
understand God and determines to compre
hend his government, thus drawing him down
to the level of human personal life. In the
inner life of Jesus there was wonderfully
combined with a childlike confidence in the
love of God a holy and modest reserve in the
presence of the God of heaven and earth, who
rules royally and is without bounds in his

230  3[egug 3g jTotce 
power. We listen gladly to the earnest ad
vocates of modern monism when they warn us
against the danger of conceiving God in a
manner that is trifling and human. On the
other hand, we must take the position that
every exposition of Deity as nature or as the
first cause of all that comes into being or of
eternal being is a degradation ; we hold that
he cannot be more insignificant than the high
est that exists in the entire circle of reality —
the pure, self-existent, good Personality, the
benign Father, the true Shepherd. While
we hold converse with Jesus every doubt of
this vanishes. In this personal life the being
of God unveils itself ; for his sake and in ac
cordance with the vivid expressions with
which he has favored us we believe in a Per
sonal God, in the God who is Good Will.
This is the reason why we who have ad
dressed you in these hours spent together hold
fast to the memory of Jesus and protect it as a
holy treasure. And this we do in the assur
ance that thereby we are doing mankind the
highest service, that we are saving the salt of
the earth and guarding the light of the world.
Yet — and this is our final word — we do not
at all lose sight of the fact that this memory

 3fegug 3g JForce  231^
or recollection is not a work of ours. Not by
our art certainly can Jesus be made a present
reality; and he who thinks otherwise is not
cognizant of the character of memory. Be
cause memory exists only in ourselves and is
a part of our inner life, it easily comes to ap
pear as though it were an act of our own,
a product of our free will; it seems as though
we were the originators of our recollections,
as if we could and must call the past back into
life. But it needs little consideration to dis
cover how misleading this appearance is.
Memory is something received, not something
done. While we may concentrate our atten
tion upon recollection and cling to certain
means toward that end, this comes about in
the same way as when we direct our attention
and thoughts upon speaking, as when leading
a conference. But the content of recollection
is not originated by us, it comes to us from
without; we are passive, not active, in the
process. We recall an event or a person; that
is the same as saying that this (remembered)
case has the singular property of reawakening
to life in our spirit. Memory is a manifesta
tion of the life of the person whom we re
member.

232  3[egug 3g jfocce 
We attribute to Jesus the quality of retain
ing himself within the remembrance of men
always. There may be intervals in which the
life of the soul is like the storm-beaten surface
of the sea, when man does not observe in it the
reflection of the heavens. But when the storm
has passed, the sun again mirrors himself in
the quiet waters. The memory of Jesus will
change, as it has incessantly changed even till
the present; each generation conceives it
anew, sides of his being which have hitherto
been unobserved are seen in more profound
meanings. Those who are his, in whom he
ever returns again to life, giving them incen
tive and comfort, courage and exaltation, ex
perience in all this the truth of the saying at
tributed to him by the oldest community — a
saying precious for the very reason that their
own experience avouches it — "Lo, I am with
you always."

Unbes

INDEX

Adonis, 22, 25, 45, 46
Agni, 22, 23, 25
Antaeus, 227
Asceticism, Jesus' relation to, 166
Asita, 45
Augustine, 149-150 B
Baal, 22
Bauer, B., 20
Benfey, 30
Bethlehem, 22
Bismarck, 213
Buddhism, 23, 24, 26
Burnouf, E., 20

Canaanitish woman and Jesus, i6»
Chamberlain, H. S.. 13
Character, portrayal of, difficult,
120-122
Conservatism of Jesus, 137
Criticism, historical, 17-18, 191
Cross, the, 35-36, 44

Frenssen, 13
Freyr, 31

Gerd, 31
German folk-stories, 30*31
God, not to be described, 119
Goethe, 5, 121, 14s, 213
Gospels, 26, I2I-I22, 191
Grimm, 30
Griinewald, 208
Gutzkow, K.. 13
Guyot, Y„ 13
Gymir, 31 H
Hartmann, £. von, 13
Hathor, 23
Heyse, P., 13
History, how it lives, 205
Hochart, P., 20

Irony, 104-105, 129, 132

Dollinger, J. J. I. von, 29
Dogma, composite character of, 54-
55; temporary value of, 52-54
Drews, A., 21, 27, 60
Diirer, A., 213

Egypt, flight into, 22
Eschatology, Jesus* use of, 82-83
Essenes, 22, 36
Eucken, R., 5-6

Faith, 182-18;, 196. -«9
Formulas, religious, 17-18

Tames, W., 153-154
Janus, 43-45
Jesus and Joshua, 22, 37
Jesus, apparent legalism of, 92; as
myth, 22; as sun god, 22, 37;
as teacher, 65; austerity of, 170,
174; authoritativeness of, 93;
brethren of, 40-41; conception of
his work, 136; conservatism of,
137; death of, 176; ethical perfec
tion of, 156; faith of, 176, 182-183;
fidelity of, to his work, 174;
gnomic methods of, 103; histori
cal place of, 194; ignorance con
cerning, 19, 121-122; inner free
dom of, 158, 164; irony of, 104-
105, 129, 132; love of, 168; man
hood of, 119-120, 123, 183; men
tality of, sound, 144; messianism

235

236

3nDe*

of, .39, 185-186; methods of
studying, 55-57; naivete of, 147;
national prejudice of, 159; natur
alness of, 140; "myth" concern
ing, 200-201; not an iconoclast,
67; not a social reformer, 87-88;
orientalism of, 124; permanence
of, 230; personality of, 6-7, 10-13,
X19; questions concerning, 10-13;
portrayal of, difficult, 121-122;
power of, over people, 132; pray
ers of, 180, 184; present value of,
.99; rationalism of, 107; relation
of, to asceticism, 166; to present,
198; to sacrifice, 161; and to the
law, 162; self-reliance of, 138-
139; serenity of, 138, 15 ij sin
lessness of, 155; teaching of, 68,
98, 1.3-114; temperament of,
.25; work of, 210
John the Baptist, 44, 73-75
Jordan, H., 8, 9
Joshua and Jesus, 22, 37
K
Kahlberg, H. von, 13
Kalthoff. A., 13, 21, 34
Key, Ellen, 13
Kierkegaard, S., 13
Kingdom of Heaven, 72
Kretzer, M., .3
Krishna, 23

Lacroix, S-, .3
Law, the, 90, .62
Lord's Supper and Buddhism, 23-
24
Losinsky, E., .3
Luther, 145, 160-161, .64-166, 204
M
Martyr death, function of, 216-2.7
Melchizedek, 24
Mentality of Jesus, sound, 144
Messiahship of Jesus, 139, 185-186
Mill, J. S., 42-43
Mithra. 22, 24, 43
Modern Culture, .5
N
Naassenes, 38
Naivetd of Jesus, 147
Naumann, F., 13, 85-86, 310
Nazareth, 34-35

Osiris, 25

o p

Paul, 25, 39-40, .48-149, .54-155,
202-203
Pauline letters, 39
Paulsen, F., 214
Personality, 120-121, 205, 218; of
Jesus, 6-7, 10-13, .19
Peter the apostle, 43
Pfannmuller, G., 10
Pharisees, 126, 147, 201
Primitive Christianity, 20s
Proteus, 43
Proverbial teaching of Jesus, 103
Purim, 24

Rationalism of Jesus, 107
Religion, primitive methods in, 65-
66
Robertson, J. M., 20
Rosegger, 13
Rousseau, 42

Sacrifice, Jesus' relation to, 161
Sadducees, 128-.29
Sargon, 23
Saturnalia, 24
Schiller, 209
Schweitzer, A., 9, .3
Science, freedom of, 221
Self-reliance of Jesus, 138-.39
Serenity of Jesus, 138, 151
Seneca, 25
Simeon and Asita, 45
Sin, 214-215
Sinlessness of Jesus, .55
Smith, W. B., 20
Soul, 84, 87, 169, 218-219
Spiritual force, source of, 226-227
Suffering, function of, 214

Tammuz, 25
Temple, cleansing of, 129-130
Theological conceptions, .6
Therapeutae, 22, 36
Tolstoi, L., 13
Tradition, 15, 122

u
Uhland, J. L., 30
Ursula, 39

 .Unpeg  237
v w
VoUers, K., 2. Weinel, 9
Voltaire, 4--4» W.?_ss" '- \3 tr
Widmann, J. V., .3
Wilde, O., 13
Word, as religious instrument, 6$
Wrede, 9