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TROWBRIDGE LIBRARY

THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTENDOM

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THE
FOUNDER OF
CHRISTENDOM

BY

GOLDWIN SMITH

SHERMAN, FRENCH tf COMPANY v
BOSTON • MASSACHUSETTS • MCMVIII

1 L

PKEFACE TO SECOND EDITION
The demand for a second edition of this
address, delivered to the Unitarian Club of
Toronto and published at their instance,
seems to show that the address has attracted
the attention of some who sympathize with
its general views. That traditional belief in
supernatural Christianity has been overthrown
or shaken in many minds by the advance of
criticism and science is evident. Criticism
applied to the historical ¦ character of the
Gospels, as well as to the evidence of the
miraculous generally, has caused many to
doubt, many to reject, the Christian miracles.
The creeds repose on the Atonement; the
Atonement assumes the Fall; and the Fall
seems to have been disproved by science,
which has demonstrated that man, instead
of falling, was raised by evolution from a
lower order of being.
Yet spiritual Christianity may live, even

VI PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION
though supernatural Christianity dies. If
the miracles must be set aside as mythical,
and the dogma must be resigned, still the
spiritual Teacher, his character and his words,
remain. If we have lost the Jesus of Bethle
hem, we have not lost the Jesus of Nazareth,
or the testimony of his life to the existence
of a spiritual world.
That man is made up of a body and a
spirit, the spirit being a separate entity
infused into him by a distinct act of the
Creator, pent in the body but parted from
it at death, and itself imperishable, is a belief
which many of us, perhaps most of those who
are educated and have any tincture of science,
have resigned. We see that what has been
called the soul is, in fact, our conscious per
sonality, the outcome, mental and moral, of
our general frame. Still, there appears to
be in man that which may be rightly called
spiritual, as distinct from physical, life. Free
will or, as perhaps it had better be called, our
power of choice, perception of moral good and
evil, moral aspirations, notably such as lead
to self-sacrifice, the faculty and habit of

PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION VU
idealization, are apparently real phenomena
of our nature, hitherto not explained by physi
cal causation or brought within the domain of
physical science. To what these phenomena
may point, who can say ? Yet, if they have
no meaning, man, while he is higher than the
other animals, is more unhappy than they are,
inasmuch as he has always going on in him a
conflict between good and evil, with the sense
of failure to reach an ideal and a conscious
ness of a power of development beyond his
present condition which is doomed to frus
tration by death. We cannot see beyond the
grave. On the other hand, it is by no means
certain, or even likely, that, aided as we may
be by the telescope, the microscope, and the
spectroscope, we see the universe as it really
is. There is, apparently, no reason for assum
ing that the evidence of our physical senses
is exhaustive and that all intimations of any
thing beyond given us by our spiritual nature
are delusive. This may be said without any
disloyalty to science, which bids us recognize
all phenomena, whether at present explained
or not.

Vlll PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION
On the solution of the question, so much
debated, about the origin of life, however
interesting it may be to physical science,
nothing regarding man's spiritual nature and
destiny seems to depend. Certain it is that
man, with all his faculties and aspirations,
is developed out of a senseless embryo. It
is at the same time certain that the embryo
is not the man, and that an active power,
apart from rudimentary elements, is revealed
in the development.
There are many Lives of Christ, some of
them pietist, others rationalist, others inter
mediate not excluding but minimizing the
miraculous element. The popular Life by
the late Dean Farrar shows a tendency to
rationalize the miraculous. His treatment of
the miracle of the Gadarene swine is a notable
instance of this mode of manipulation, which
no doubt meets a popular demand and keeps
doubt at bay, but is not likely to be found
satisfactory in the end.
Strauss' s second Life is the extreme of scep
ticism. We rise from perusing it, thinking
that we know little or nothing of the Founder

PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION ix
of Christendom. Yet, imperfect as our mate
rials are, the character and the doctrine are
distinct. The character is clearly mirrored
in the writings of Paul. The character and
the words together have embodied themselves
in the creation of Christendom.
Renan's Life of Christ, like everything else
that came from his pen, combines, in the
highest degree, literary grace with erudition.
But his is the work of a great artist, hardly
in touch with simple Galilee. His author
ities are fully set forth, but his principle
in making use of them is not always clear.
For the quintessence and climax of Christ's
teaching, he goes to the Fourth, and least
historical, Gospel. From the miracles he
arbitrarily picks out the raising of Lazarus
as a real occurrence, insinuating that it was
a pious fraud contrived by the enthusiasm
of the family.
From deity, the character of Jesus has
sunk so much among violent enemies of his
faith and of the Christian order of society as
to be the mark of the most revolting carica
ture. His extreme precepts, such as those

X PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION
about passive submission to injury and renun
ciation of worldly wealth, in minds over which
they have lost their theological hold, are
apt to make way for free indulgence of natu
ral and worldly passions. It is time that
the character should be presented in its dis
tinctly human excellence and that the pre
cepts should be presented with due allowance
for the circumstances, intellectual and social,
of the peasant preacher of Galilee.
Recognizing Jesus as Jesus of Nazareth in
Galilee, and Galilee as Galilee of the Gentiles,
we are more completely set free from thral
dom to Judaism and from enforced belief in
the inspiration of the sacred books of the
Jews, with all those primitive passages in
them which divines of a certain school are
now striving to reconcile with divine author
ship by supposing that- God, in revealing him
self to man, conforms to the law of evolution.
Jerusalem is the scene of the atoning sac
rifice ; Galilee is the real scene of the mission,
and the Holy Land of the moral and spiritual,
while Judea is that of the doctrinal, Christian.
My intention was, while I excluded the

PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION XI
supernatural from view to avoid traversing
it. Nor do I think that it is traversed by
any admission of human infirmities or limita
tions in Jesus. Cardinal Newman concluded
a narration of the indignities inflicted upon
Jesus in the Passion by bidding his hearers
remember that all this was done to Almighty
God. If Deity could stoop to the endurance
of pain and insult, if it could stoop to all the
incidents of lowly birth and life, to the
infirmities of infancy and childhood, to all
the physical wants and liabilities of human
nature, why should it not have stooped to
the mental liabilities and limitations of a
peasant preacher ?
When the miracles of the Gospel narratives
are put out of sight, we are more than ever
impressed with the miracle of a world trans
formed by the character and teaching of the
son of the carpenter of Nazareth.
Reluctantly we resign the creed of our
childhood, but we cannot bar out truth.
G. S.

THE
FOUNDER OF CHRISTENDOM

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Jesus of Nazareth is held by Trinitarians
to have been God and Man, by Unitarians to
have been man, though in his spiritual gifts
and teachings near, above all men, to God.
Among those who believe him to have been
God, there are divisions about his relation to
the other persons of the Trinity. Whether
the third person of the Trinity proceeds from
him as well as from the first person is a
question which separates the - Eastern from
the Western Church. But all Churches agree
that he was man. "Perfect God and per
fect man, of a reasonable soul and human
flesh subsisting," he is called in the Athana-
sian Creed. Perfect man he could not be
without the conditions, affections, liabilities,
B ' 1

2 THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTENDOM
and limitations of humanity. The Super
natural is here not impugned, but simply
put out of sight; as it may be without ab
juring the Spiritual or anything to which the
Spiritual really points. It is only to be said
that if there is a God and He manifests Him
self to us, it is through the highest human
character that He is manifested, and most
through the highest of all.
As to the miracles by which the divinity
of Jesus is held to be attested, it may be said
that the halo round this head is brighter,
purer, more moral, and, if rationality is com
patible with miracle, more rational, than the
halo round the head of any other prophet or
saint in history. Two only of the Gospel
miracles seem in this sense to repel us ; that
of the banishment of the devils into the
Gadarene swine, and that of the barren fig
tree. Compare with this the miracles of the
Old Testament; the destruction of the first
born of Egypt, the stopping of the sun to
prolong carnage, the slaying of forty-two
children by bears to avenge an affront to
the prophet ; you have the difference between

THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTENDOM 3
the spirit of the Old and that of the New
Testament. Our materials for the life of this man, who,
of all his race, has exerted the greatest
influence, are unhappily poor and precari
ous. His personality of course cannot be
questioned. It is attested by Roman histo
rians, Tacitus and Suetonius, who mention his
religious leadership and his crucifixion. Paul
had not seen him, but had conversed with
those who had seen him, and was profoundly
impressed with his character. Devotion to
him is Paul's religion. No imagination could
have created such a character, with a reli
gious and ethical system to correspond, and
given it an influence so wide and so enduring.
Nor could anybody have invented so won
derful and striking a mode of teaching by
apophthegm and parable as that which,
adapted at first to peasant audiences, has
kept its hold upon the mind of the world.
But for the Life, we have to rely on the first
three, or Synoptic, Gospels ; all of which are
anonymous, and of date unknown; without
claim to being the work of eye-witnesses ;

4 THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTENDOM
evolved by a process which we cannot trace
from pre-existing materials, written or oral,
now lost ; not seldom at variance with each
other ; full of miracle ; and, after all, not
biographies properly speaking, since they tell
us next to nothing of the first thirty years,
but collections of memorable sayings and
doings of Jesus in a loosely biographical
or anecdotic form. The Fourth Gospel is
unavailable as historical evidence. It is
plainly Alexandrian theology, with its charac
teristic Logos, in a biographical frame. It is
not the work of a Palestinian Jew. It makes
Judea the scene, whereas the real scene of
the ministry was, and the real holy land of
the Christian is, not Judea but Galilee ; Judea
is the scene of the close. Though the actual
date of the Gospels cannot be fixed, we may
be pretty sure that the epoch of their compo
sition was that at which the memory of the
founder's sayings transmitted by oral tradition
was beginning to fade, and the desire of pre
serving them was felt.
That there was time between the events
and the records for myth to grow, is manifest

THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTENDOM 5
on the face of the records themselves. Mem
ory, however, was strong in the days when
writing was scarce, and the sayings of Jesus
may have been well preserved. v^-
We who wish simply to hear the word, do
not take our stand in Jerusalem, with its
grim environs, its sumptuous temple, its altar
reeking with bloody sacrifice, its narrow
Judaism, its haughty Sanhedrim, its self-right
eous Pharisees, its worldly Sadducees, and the
ceremonialism and casuistry which are pres
ently to assume a portentous form in the
Talmud. We take our stand on a hillside by
the lake of Gennesaret, with the snowy moun
tains in view and the sea not far away, amid
the hamlets, the corn-fields, the sheep-folds,
the vineyards, the olive grounds, the lilies
and oleanders of Galilee, all that supplies the
rural imagery of the parables. Around us is
a crowd of peasants and fishermen, many of
whom have been drawn by the fame of the
miracles, some perhaps by the hope of miracu
lous cure. We for our part have come only
to hear the word.
Opposite to us on the hillside is a group of

6 THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTENDOM
twelve men, peasants and fishermen, round
one central figure. That central figure comes
forward to speak to us. He is Jesus of
Nazareth, the Founder of Christendom. The
name of Caesar is said to be the greatest in
history. In the history of empire and con
quest it is. But what is it to the name of
this man, which forms the dividing landmark
of the centuries ? So much may be said, and
we may rejoice in the superiority of the word
to the sword, without allowing ourselves to be
swept away by the tide of pious eloquence
and ascribing the progress of humanity during
nineteen centuries to a single life.
To the personal influence exerted by Jesus
nineteen centuries after his death, and the de
votion of which he is still the object, there is
absolutely no parallel in history; before them
the glory of Sakyamouni and of Mahomet
pales. This is no doubt to be ascribed
largely to deification. But it is also due in
no small measure to spiritual impression. In
the Unitarian it has no other source. A
figure less divine could hardly have been
deified, much less have continued to be dei-

THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTENDOM 7
fied and be the object of adoring love, not
only to pious hearts, but to high intellects
down even to the present day.
What is Jesus like ? What would we not
give to know ? There is no authentic portrait
or tradition. The Byzantine portraits are
plainly works of the crude Byzantine fancy.
Of the impression on Veronica's kerchief or
on the fabulous winding sheet nothing need
be said. They are like a number of other
spurious relics, millstones round the neck of
the Roman Catholic Church in this her hour
of trial. Renan's idea of the peculiarly
Jewish beauty of Jesus, as well as the senti
mental incidents which he connects with it,
are the offspring of his somewhat Parisian
imagination. We are apt to think of the face
rather as that of the Man of Sorrows. But
in this we antedate the Agony in the Garden.
Art at its highest has striven in later times to
produce something which would satisfy our
conceptions, but it has striven in vain. To
paint a union of the human and divine
natures was beyond its power. Raphael in
his Madonna di San Sisto has perhaps, sue-

8 THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTENDOM
ceeded in producing a supernatural child by
putting mature expression into a baby's face.
Of this we may be sure, that in the features
of the Great Teacher, whatever their form,
shone the spiritual light which was to lighten
the world.
Dogmatic religion and the creeds have
filled our imaginations with the harrowing
scenes of the passion, which from the dogmatic
point of view are overwhelming in their
interest as the consummation of the Atone
ment. Any religion, to fit humanity, must to
a certain extent be a religion of sorrow. But
we have no reason to assume that the
preaching of the kingdom of heaven amid
smiling scenery, in buoyant air, beside the
blue and sail-studded lake, by a youthful
enthusiast full of hope to a simple audience of
believers, was melancholy, or that the counte
nance of the preacher was not bright.
The garb, it seems, being that of the un
changing East, we know. It was a long and
closely fitting undergarment of wool, with a
mantle loosely thrown over it, a girdle, a sort
of caftan on the head, and sandals on the feet.

THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTENDOM 9
The language of Jesus is Aramaic, a Se
mitic dialect, and a rude cousin of the Hebrew.
Greek is spoken in those parts by the cultured,
but not by the Carpenter's Son, or by the
peasants to whom he preaches. The Greek
version of Jesus's words, therefore, which
alone we have, is a translation, a fact to be
borne in mind. He is a native of Nazareth, in
a dell twelve miles from the lake. His home,
if he can be said to have a home, is now the
neighbouring town of Capernaum, where there
is a Roman garrison and customs station.
The people of Nazareth had failed to recognize
their spiritual master in the Carpenter's Son.
Jesus is a Galilean by birth, and no doubt
of Jewish race, though few will now maintain
the genuineness of either of the two diver
gent genealogies framed to prove that he was
a descendant of David. But the population
of Galilee was very mixed, and was despised
by the pure blood of Abraham at Jerusalem.
Its speech had the provincial accent which
betrayed the nativity of Peter. Consequently
it was less tribal than the population of Jerusa
lem and more human ; fitted therefore to be

10 THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTENDOM
the birthplace of the Jew who was destined to
break down the wall of Judaism from within,
and to enlarge the religion of a race into the
religion of humanity.
Jesus is about thirty years old, ripe for
action, yet with his enthusiasm not yet
chilled by age. He is the son of a carpenter,
and though we are told nothing about his
youth, he may be taken to have plied his
father's trade ; often, however, as we may
surmise, laying down his tools to plunge in
thought. His education must have been sim
ple. He can read and no doubt write. He
has been taught the Law and is familiar with
the sacred books of his nation. His knowl
edge of the books is uncritical. He takes the
book of Jonah for history. He believes in
the genuineness of the apocalyptic book of
Daniel, and its mystical " Son of Man " has
taken hold upon his mind. So have the
prophets who, like Isaiah, Amos, Hosea, and
Micah, set mercy above sacrifice. He shares
with his nation the hope of a Messiah. Of
science or scientific conceptions of the uni
verse or man, he, like all around him, is

THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTENDOM 11
totally devoid. He has made trips to Jeru
salem for the festivals, otherwise his knowl
edge of the world and its doings has probably
been almost bounded by his little hill-town
and its neighbourhood. He is perfectly open
to belief in miracle and to such popular ideas
as that of demoniacal possession. To philoso
phy, literature, and art he is a stranger. So
is he to politics and to commerce. He must
have been a lonely and original thinker, little
aided or tempered by intercourse with other
minds. He is unmarried. He is a wander
ing preacher, and, though he has a mother and
brothers, he has no domestic ties.
One day, as Jesus was musing, the spiritual
impulse prevailed ; he threw down his tools
and went forth to proclaim the kingdom of
God. Whence did the impulse come ? There
was around him a general ferment of rebel
lion, political and religious, against the pagan
dominion of Rome and its satraps, the house
of Herod. But to this Jesus is a stranger,
saving that he may be stirred by the general
unrest. Reaction from prevailing evils, social
and moral, had given birth to the ascetic and

12 THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTENDOM
Utopian sect of the Essenes, but there is no
trace of anything distinctly Essenist in the
histories of Jesus. The preaching of John the
Baptist is another sign of the spiritual fer
ment. Jesus was evidently stirred by the
appearance of John, at whose hands he sought
baptism as his consecration to his mission and
whom he continued to revere. But John the
Baptist w;as an anchorite ; Jesus was none ;
and it is implied that Jesus had felt 'his
prophetic calling when he came to receive
confirmation of his mission at John's hands.
We can only suppose that Jesus, like Sakya-
mouni, was moved by pity for the general lot
of humanity. It seems that in the further
East at least, men are easily, moved to don
the garb and go forth on the errand of the
preacher. Opposition to the formalism of
the Pharisee, though afterwards intensely
developed, can hardly have been the original
motive, since the centre of Pharisaism was
far away. Nor can we suppose that wealth
in Galilee was strikingly oppressive ; we
should rather suppose that an equality of
rude plenty was the rule.

THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTENDOM 13
Now Jesus speaks. What has he to tell
us ? Does he bring authentic tidings from
the other world ? The answer must be that
he does not. He does not undertake to unfold
to us the mystery of our being. He does not
undertake to tell us the origin of evil, of
which his only explanation is the existence
of a spirit of evil, Satan, dividing the world
with the spirit of good, as, in the Zendavest,
Ahriman divides the world with Ormazd. He
embraces the belief in a resurrection which
was current among the Pharisees, and makes
a thrilling use in hortatory discourses of the
awful imagery of the judgment-day. But of
the truth of that doctrine, though the doctrine
is fundamental, he does not give us positive
proof or even such distinct and explicit assur
ance as one charged with revelation might
have been expected to give. He solves none
of the difficulties connected with the restora
tion of the bodies the particles of which have
been dispersed ; with the cases of infants,
heathen, and savages ; or with the arbitrary
division of the human race into those deserv
ing of paradise and those deserving of hell,

14 THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTENDOM
characters being so mixed and variable as
they are. The apologue of Dives and Laza
rus, plainly fictitious, almost fantastic, could
not have been uttered by one who knew and
was sent to unfold the awful secret of the
¦ spirit world. The same might be said of the
argument that because God is called the God
of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob those patriarchs
must be still alive. Religious philosophers
without number have ever since been labour
ing to solve the mystery of our being, to
account for the existence of evil, to prove
the immortality of the soul. This they would
not have had to do if the Gospel had revealed
it all. On the other hand, Jesus did preach doc
trines so new and so momentous, doctrines
which took such hold, and have had so im
mense an effect, that they almost deserve the
name of revelations. He preached not only
the unity, but the universal fatherhood of God.
The God of the Jew was one ; but even if he
was sole, and there were not other gods for
other nations, he , was not the father of all.
He was the father only of the Chosen People.

THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTENDOM 15
He was not the father even of the Samaritan.
Sacrifice could be offered to him acceptably
only in the holy city. He was far more
moral than the tribal deities of the nations,
as well as the sole God of his tribe ; in both
respects more capable of being exalted and
liberalized into a universal God. But he was
tribal after all, and tribal he would still have
been when, as the Jew expected, all the idols
of the Gentiles had fallen prostrate before
him, and his dominion, with that of his
chosen people, had been extended over the
whole earth.
Socrates, Plato, and the Roman Stoics
Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus,.were
in their way theists. In a way only. They
used sometimes the singular word " god,"
sometimes the plural " gods " ; and they con
tinued to pay their offerings to the State
divinities. The dying request of Socrates was
the payment of an offering to iEsculapius.
The Antonines, the best of Stoics, even per
secuted for nonconformity to the State reli
gion. Moreover, the philosophers' deity was
not, like that of Jesus, a father, the object of

16 THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTENDOM
love, communion, and prayer, but merely a
governor of the universe and a supreme sup
port of virtue ; hardly personal ; a conception
confined to members of an exalted sect, not
preached by them to the common herd of men.
No church or religious community of any
kind was the result.
True, Jesus does not undertake to explain
fully the relations of God to man. How can
the father of all allow so many of his children
to be lost ? How can he have made the gate
of salvation narrow, that of destruction wide ?
How can mankind, with their infinitely graded
characters, be justly divided into sheep and
goats ? How can the potter condemn the pots
which himself has made? These are ques
tions which Jesus does not attempt to solve.
But he does preach the universal fatherhood
of God. We are listening to Jesus, the man
with profound spiritual insight, not with super
natural knowledge of the ways of Deity.
With the universal fatherhood of God,
Jesus proclaims the universal brotherhood of
man. This is the end of tribalism, the in
auguration of humanity. God, it is said in

THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTENDOM 17
the Acts, has made all nations of one blood
to dwell together on the face of the earth.
Here is a revolution greater than any polit
ical or social revolution in history. In the
Greek or Latin writers you may find faint
breathings of a common humanity ; you will
find no recognition of universal brotherhood.
To the polished Greek other races were bar
barians, fitted by nature to be slaves. The
Jew could not see a brother in the uncircum-
cised. In the early period of the Roman
Empire there were uncircumcised conformists
to Judaism ; but they w,ere outside the pale.
Circumcision remained an insurmountable bar.
By an effort which we can now hardly measure
Jesus threw down that bar, making the Gen
tile the brother of the Jew. He may have
wavered, he may at times have said that he
was come not to destroy the law but to fulfil
it, that he was sent only to the lost slieep of
the House of Israel, that it was not meet to
take the children's bread, and to cast it to
dogs ; though the record is doubtful and these
passages may express the qualms, not of the
teacher, but of Judaizing reporters of his

18 THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTENDOM
words. What the ultimate effect of his teach
ings was is plain, nor can we doubt that his
true interpreter in this respect was Paul.
The world, it is said, was united by the
Roman Empire. That world was only the
circle of nations round the Mediterranean.
The plunder of all those nations made up the
bloated opulence of Rome. The blood of
gladiators from all those nations was mingled
in the Roman amphitheatre. Slaves from
them all pined in the horrible slave quarters
of the Roman lord. Over them all ruled
Roman Governors, some, no doubt, like Pliny,
but some like Pilate. The inspiration of
Jesus sent forth missionaries to found an
empire not of the sword but of the word,
which should know no limits but humanity,
which should give and not take away,
and which, when the Roman Empire had died
of its own vices, would fill the void with the
new life of Christendom.
Let the creed, the liturgy, the fane, the
ecclesiastical order be what they may, the uni
versal fatherhood of God, which implies God's
paternal care for us now and forever, and the

THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTENDOM 19
universal brotherhood of man, are the essence
and the sum of all religion. If we have
ceased to believe in them, the end of religion
has come. We cannot go back to the
Pantheon ; and the religion of humanity with
out a God, to which we are invited to go for
ward, though it may be an enthusiasm, is
not a religion at all. Science must take the
world in hand and do what is in its power to
do for mankind. That we are losing our
belief in the universal brotherhood of man, if
not so consciously or avowedly our belief in
the universal fatherhood of God, is shown by
this outburst of Imperialism with its tribal
theories of dominion and its contempt for
human right.
Another revolution, momentous in its way,
is the treatment of poverty by Jesus. Pov
erty theretofore had been the general object
of contempt, though it might be affected by
the Cynic, not from humility but from phil
osophic pride. " Hapless poverty," says a
Roman satirist and moralist, " is in nothing
more pitiable than in the ridicule which it
brings on men." Hebrew prophets had nobly

20 THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTENDOM
denounced oppression of the poor and rebuked
the insolence of the rich. Jesus not only de
fends the cause of the poor, but regards
poverty as the state most favourable to the
reception of the Gospel and to the spiritual
frame of mind. Wealth he treats as an
obstacle to spiritual life. If a rich man
would find entrance into the Kingdom of God,
he must sell all that he has and give to the
poor. Not that Jesus says that wealth in
itself is sin. The moral of the apologue of
Dives and Lazarus may fairly be taken to be
that there will be a change of lots in the next
world, not that wealth as wealth is as a matter
of course doomed to hell. Nor is Jesus, as
some have called him, a socialist or a leveller.
He preaches no social revolution*. It is with
the Kingdom of God that he deals throughout,
not in any sense with the kingdom of this
world. He- recognizes the right of property
while he enjoins unbounded almsgiving. So
after him did his church at Jerusalem, in which,
though it is called communist, the gifts were
free. " Whiles it remained, was it not thine
own ? and after it was sold, was it not in

THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTENDOM 21
thine own power ? " says Peter to Ananias.
Nor, whatever might be the practical effect of
unbounded almsgiving, does Jesus say any
thing to sanction mendicancy. There is
nothing to show that he would have looked
with complacency on a begging Friar. His
own bread, though he did not labour with
his hands, was earned by giving the bread of
life to the world. So in its degree was the
bread of those whom he sent forth to preach
the Gospel, though they were to live upon the
charity of their hearers. Poverty is not in
itself a merit, nor when it is abject or when
it is caused by idleness and accompanied by
mendicancy, as we see it hanging about the
door of the church or the monastery in super
stitious countries, has it any relation to spir
itual life. Yet riches are deceitful, and it is
aways hard for a rich man to keep his heart
above them and thus to enter into the King
dom of God.
Apart altogether from asceticism or even
from almsgiving, there has run through
Christendom a vein of sympathetic interest
in the character and lives of the poor to

22 THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTENDOM
which a parallel will hardly be found outside
the Christian pale. The sentiment finds ex
pression in our fiction and our poetry ; in the
novels of Scott and George Eliot ; in Dickens's
" Christmas Carol " ; in the poetry of Gray,
Crabbe, and Wordsworth. The toiling masses
have been redeemed, if not from suffering, at
least from contempt. Their special virtues
and merits are appreciated. We still speak
respectfully of the widow's mite.
It must be confessed at the same time that
the doctrine is extreme, such as we should
expect from a peasant reformer, solitary,
unchecked in his aspirations by experience
of a mixed and commercial world. Without
wealth, without the accumulation of wealth,
neither material civilization, nor anything
intellectual or moral that depends on mate
rial civilization, could advance. Christendom
has had practically to qualify the teachings of
its founder and treat them at most as correc
tives of inordinate devotion to gold.
As Jesus is no communist when he exhorts
the rich to give away their wealth, so when
he prohibits the exercise of dominion and bids

THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTENDOM 23
his disciples be servants of each other, when
he rebukes their rivalry for rank by lifting a
child in their midst, he is not, as some have
fancied, playing the part of a political level
ler. He is not the bon sansculotte of Camille
Desmoulins. He took no part in the political
movements of his time, nor does he show any
interest in them beyond one or two hostile
allusions to Herod. The equality which he
enjoins is spiritual only. His words, never
theless, have taken effect in the political and
social as well as in the religious sphere. They
have instilled a feeling for equality, though
they have not kindled revolution. The wearer
of the Triple Crown, with his scarlet train
of Cardinals, was far from being an em
bodiment of the ideal of Jesus. Yet his
title of the Servant of the Servants of God,
amidst all the titles which proclaimed the
lordship of man over his fellows, was a re
minder of the Christian ideal.
" Take no thought for your life what ye
shall eat, neither for the body what ye shall
put on. The life is more than meat, and the
body is more than raiment. Consider the

24 THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTENDOM
ravens : for they neither sow nor reap ; which
neither have storehouse nor barn ; and God
feedeth them : how much better are ye than
the fowls ! " " Consider the lilies, how they
grow. They toil not, they spin not. And
yet I say unto you that Solomon in all his
glory was not arrayed like one of these. If
then God so clothe the grass which is to-day
in the field and to-morrow is cast in the oven,
how much more will he clothe you, 0 ye of
little faith ! " " Take, therefore, no thought
for the morrow : for the morrow shall take
thought for the things of itself. Sufficient
unto the day is the evil thereof." This
preaching of carelessness for to-morrow would
kill industry and prevent a man from earning
his own bread and that of his family, though
it might seem less extravagant in a land like
Galilee where boon Nature almost of herself
supplied simple wants. Nor, whatever may
have been done in wild ecstasy by Francis of
Assisi, has Christendom ever attempted to
give practical effect to such doctrines. At
best they have served as alteratives, miti
gating the intense and wearing lust of gain

THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTENDOM 25
which seems in our own days to be corroding
the hearts of men and threatens to deliver the
world over to the despotism of the purse.
" Ye have heard that it hath been said,
An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth :
but I say unto you, That ye resist not evil :
but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right
cheek, turn to him the other also. And if
any man will sue thee at the law, and take
away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.
And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile,
go with him twain." Such a renunciation of
private right and of legitimate redress for
wrong as this teaching, taken literally, im
plies would manifestly put an end to law and
give up the world to the wrong-doer. Again
Christendom has practically qualified the pre
cept of its founder and reduced it to a warning
against over-litigiousness. Throughout it must
be borne in mind that the reformer's actual
sphere was Galilee with- its population of peas
ants, which he might, without great stretch
of imagination, hope to turn into a world of
brotherly equality, spontaneous- justice, and
self-sacrificing love.

26 THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTENDOM
It must, perhaps, be admitted that an im
practicable standard of self-abnegation, it
might almost be said of self-annihilation, has
proved rather a snare to Christendom by pre
venting the formation of a more practicable
rule. Men sit in church listening heedlessly
to the words of Jesus against care for the
morrow or against litigation as words that con
cern them not, and go out of church to heap
up wealth by manipulation of stocks and to
press all their advantages in courts of law.
Jesus was not an ascetic or a father of
monkery. He came eating and drinking.
He was social ; it might almost be said con
vivial. His enemies called him a glutton and
a wine-bibber. His first miracle is said to
have been wrought at a feast. At fasting he
glances as a recognized practice, less to enjoin
it than to warn against ostentation. Asceti
cism and eremitism came to the Thebaid and
thence to Catholic Europe rather from the
Ganges than from the Lake of Gennesaret.
Of what use the monastic orders may have
been in the Middle Ages as a counterbalance
to the ascendancy of grossness and force, and

THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTENDOM 27
whether their service in that way exceeded the
disservice done by their fanaticism, their in
trigue, and the vices into which they presently
fell, are, therefore, questions which need not
be raised here. Jesus would not have seen
himself reflected in a monk.
The ethical philosophy of Jesus, if we may
use the term, seems to rest on the importance
of character and motive above formal action.
He who looks on a woman lustfully is an
adulterer. " From within out of the heart of
men proceed evil thoughts ; " and in the enter
tainment of such thoughts, even without for
mal action, the essence of wickedness consists.
The Golden Rule of doing to others as you
would they should do unto you was not taught
by Jesus alone. It had been taught by Hillel.
It may probably be extracted from any system
of moral philosophy, even from a system so
little altruistic as that of Aristotle's Ethics.
It might have been read on the walls of sacred
buildings in China by the soldiery of the
Christian powers, which was filling that hap
less land with massacre and rapine for the
advancement of Christian civilization. But

28 THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTENDOM
the difference lies in the motive. Are you
doing good to others only that they may in
return do good to you ? Or are you doing it
from love of your kind ? A Pharisee makes
a market of his virtue.
Self-renunciation is carried almost to the
pitch of self-annihilation, and, like the ex
treme precepts of meek submission to wrong
and carelessness for the morrow, transcends
the possibilities of moral aspiration in the
world as it is. In Jesus throughout, as he
is presented to us in the Gospels, we meet
with a being as near as humanity can come
to a disembodied spirit, one possible only in
such circumstances as those of his life and
mission in Galilee.
Closely allied with hatred of formalism and
legalism is the leaning of Jesus to the con
verted sinner, the returned prodigal, the
sheep restored to the fold, the penitent, rather
than to those who had never needed the phy
sician. Not that he anywhere dallies with
sin. There is nothing antinomian in his teach
ings. It is to a licentious interpretation of the
teachings of St. Paul, if to anything in the

THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTENDOM 29
New Testament, that antinomianism is to be
traced. The word ecclesia, translated in our version
" church," is twice found in the Gospels, where
it has rather a strange look ; one of the two
places being that upon which the claim of the
¦Papacy is founded. We cannot help doubt
ing whether it came from the lips of Jesus.
But if it did, he cannot have meant general
councils, consistories, synods, and courts of
ecclesiastical law ; for he says that where two
or three are gathered together in his name,
there will he be in the midst of them. We
can imagine nothing more alien to his mind
than the form which, in later ages, the church
assumed. But if Christianity was not to be
only a school of thought, like Stoicism or
Platonism, but a spiritual society formed for
mutual aid in godly living and the formation
of a religious character, organization was
indispensable.. Organization necessarily im
plied authority. By a process easily divined
if not historically recorded, authority, origi
nally vested in the congregation, gradually
centred in the bishops, to consecrate whose

30 THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTENDOM
exaltation Apostical Succession was devised.
Ultimately, by a process not less natural, it
was engrossed by the Bishop of Rome round
whom the imperilled and distracted members
of Christendom rallied as their head and pro
tector amidst the dissolution of the ancient
world. The office of the Twelve and that of
the Seventy was clearly not ecclesiastical but
missionary. Formalism of all kinds Jesus abhors. Ap
parently he would have disliked ritual, litur
gical prayer-books, formal worship of all kinds.
He seems to exclude them by enjoining the
ever memorable prayer which we may trust
oral tradition to have faithfully handed down.
Expansion, in this respect, liturgical and aes
thetic, when worship came to be a regular and
collective function, could not be avoided, though
it might have stopped short of the prayer-mill.
Mercy, not sacrifice, was the rule of the
Founder of Christendom as it was of the evan
gelical prophets. Mercy he prefers even to
the Sabbath, the ceremonial idol of the Jew.
The Sabbath he says was made for man.
He admits moral grounds for relaxation.

THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTENDOM 31
No dogmatism is put into the mouth of
Jesus by the Gospels. Dogmatism could
hardly exist before his deification. It seems.
to have had three principal sources; the
theology of Paul, who, however, is perhaps
rather ecstatic than dogmatic, and would
hardly have treated dogmatic dissent as sin ;
the Alexandrian theosophy embodied in the
Fourth Gospel ; and the speculations of the
Gnostics and other metaphysical or heretical
sects which evoked counter-definitions from
the Church. Those definitions became ortho
doxy and conditions of church-membership.
When the Church unhappily, though perhaps
inevitably, had been united to the Empire,
"orthodoxy became law, and heresy, alas, be
came treason. Desperate were the shifts to
which the Church in her darker days was
put in her effort to extract from the sayings
of Jesus anything like warrants for perse
cution and mandates for the Inquisition.
What is meant by those awful words about
the sin against the Holy Ghost has never
been made clear. It can hardly be imagined
that sin against the Holy Ghost means de-

32 THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTENDOM
parture from the dogmatic ruling of an eccle
siastical Council.
Hatred of formalism and legalism, as deadly
¦enemies of genuine godliness, brought the
Founder of Christendom into collision with the
Pharisees, whom he denounces as hypocrites,
whited sepulchres, destroyers of souls, with a
vehemence startling in one so full of loving-
kindness. The spirit of the Gospel at its birth
was confronted by the spirit of the Talmud,
and the issue proved that the struggle between
them was unto death. Talmudic Judaism,
with its tithing of mint and cummin and its
neglect of the spiritual law, recognized its
mortal enemy in Jesus. It sought to discredit
him before he, invading its citadel, enabled it
to take his life. Jesus admits that the Phari
sees sat in Moses' seat, and exhorts his disci
ples to do what the Pharisees bid, but in a
spirit unlike theirs. It is strange to find him
entering the house of a Pharisee and sitting
down to meat, unless his object was to rebuke
in a friendly way the formalism which there
prevailed. Mortal conflict with the Pharisees
probably belongs to the close of the his-

THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTENDOM 33
tory. Pharisaism in force could hardly have
been encountered in Galilee. While we con
demn the Pharisee for his formalism and his
hypocrisy, allowance is to be made for his
natural opposition to claims which to him
would appear impious.
Jesus was himself unmarried. From the ob
scure words ascribed to him about those who
made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom
of God, he would appear to have regarded
celibacy as the superior state. It must always
be borne in mind in estimating his sense of
the value of human relations that he believed
the end of the world to be at hand. Papal
policy which saw its advantage in a militia
of priests detached from family ties, conspir
ing with false notions of purity imported from
the East, might find support for ecclesiastical
celibacy in his words. But he bade husband
and wife be one flesh and asserted the sanc
tity of marriage by forbidding divorce, too
easy even under the Hebrew law and in
other nations licentiously common, saving for
the cause of fornication. He parries a casuis
tical question by saying that in heaven they

34 THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTENDOM
neither marry nor are given in marriage.
Nothing else have we from Jesus on the mo
mentous subject of marriage and love. What
is superior in the Christian idea of marriage
and in the Christian treatment of women must
be ascribed, not to any precepts of Jesus on
those particular questions, but to the general
influence of his teaching in favour of purity,
loving-kindness, and consideration for the
weak. To the worship of the Virgin has been
ascribed the chivalrous feeling of devotion
to woman. But that feeling was displayed
almost solely toward women of quality, and
was really sexual, not in any sensible degree
religious. To the mediaeval mind the Virgin
was not a woman but a deity.
St. Paul improves to some extent upon hjs
master, bidding husbands love their wives;
though he, too, in dealing with social and
domestic relations, is under the impression
that the world is passing away.
The wandering preacher has evidently been
estranged by his mission from his family.
Rather perhaps his family had been estranged

THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTENDOM 35
from him. There is even a harshness in his
reputed language about his mother and his
brethren, when they stand without desiring
to spealo with him. He seems, if not to
repudiate the domestic bond, completely to
merge it in religious brotherhood. It is diffi
cult to see how the worship of the Virgin and
the belief in the Immaculate Conception can
survive the record of the son's treatment of
the mother, or of her evident ignorance that
the son's mission was divine. We expect
nothing directly from Jesus on the subject
of domestic affection. Yet the reputed day
of his birth is the festival of the home ; and
so it may fitly be, considering the impulse
given by the Founder of Christendom to all
pure and gentle affection, apart from any
belief in his divinity or in his coming to
atone for sin and to redeem the world.
There were, of course, wide fields of human
action to which the peasant prophet of Naza
reth was a total stranger, and to which only
the most general principles of his teachings
could apply. He was a total stranger to
politics; a political quietist, willing to render

36 THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTENDOM
unto .Caesar, a foreign power of conquest, the
things which were Caesar's, provided Caesar
would allow him to render unto God the
things that were God's ; willing to pay the
tribute, abhorred as impious by the Jew ; not
shrinking from social intercourse with the
detested tax-gatherer. As it turned out, his
quietism, transmitted to his Church, ulti
mately proved a key to political power. An
emperor found in the Christians not only a
predominant sect but the most submissive and
obedient of subjects. Political considerations,
probably more than his conversion to Chris
tianity or any miracle of the Labarum, led Con-
stantine to make Christianity the religion of
his Empire. Those words, however, " Render
unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's and
unto God the things that are God's," together
with the declaration that the kingdom was not
of this world, were profound in their signifi
cance. Had they only been observed, it
would have been happy indeed for Christen
dom, and many of the darkest pages would
be torn from the book of history.
Of commerce again, now so mighty an ele-

THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTENDOM 37
ment of civilization and life, Jesus could see
nothing, saving a little transit trade at Caper
naum ; or see only what was revolting to his
mind, the traffic of the sellers of cattle and the
money changers in the purlieus of the Tem
ple. Whether he saw Tyre and Sidon is
doubtful. If he did, it was with the eyes
of a Hebrew prophet looking upon them as
doomed cities of ungodly wealth. In regard
to commerce, as in regard to politics and pub-
he life, we have nothing from him but the
most general principles, which are those of a
wandering preacher, maintained by the hospi
tality of his hearers, and regarding wealth as
a bar against entrance to the kingdom of
Heaven. Everything that was established the Founder
of Christendom took as he found it. His mis
sion was to the spirit, not to the frame of
humanity. Not only did he, odious as Phari
saism was to him, recognize the Pharisee as
the occupant of Moses' seat, but he enjoined
upon his disciples conformity to the Pharisaic
observances, while he forbade them to do mor
ally what the Pharisee did.

38 THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTENDOM
Like John, who bade soldiers be content
with their wages and refrain from extortion,
Jesus recognized the soldier's trade in the
person of the centurion, and in his discourses
he uses the imagery of war. It does not fol
low that he approved war or that he did not
detest it. Can the clergy of a State Church,
when they bless the battle-flag or chant their
Te Deum for a victory, perhaps of some power
of iniquity, hear the voice of the Founder of
Christendom mingling with their choir ?
Science was but in its germ, even in Greece.
Not the slightest breath, even of its spirit, can
have reached Jesus. Of the laws of nature
he had evidently no conception. What science
regards and explains as nature's order, he
took for the direct action of a personal God,
who numbered the hairs on our heads, pro
vided our bread, anticipated our prayers, and
without whose decree no sparrow fell.
Parables, such as that of the Prodigal
Son, that of the sheep strayed and brought
back to the fold, that of the good Samaritan,
that of the wise and foolish virgins, that of
the Pharisee and the Publican, are gems of lit-

THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTENDOM 39
erature, and the influence of some of them
has been undying. But of the literary world
Jesus could see nothing beyond the sacred
books of his nation. His saying about the
glorious vesture of the lily shows that he had
an eye and a heart for beauty. But he can
never have seen a statue or a picture, since
Jewish iconoclasm prohibited painting and
sculpture, at least of the human form.
Whatever by his love of truth Jesus may
have done for science, whatever by his moral
purity he may have done for art, the entire
field both of science and art was beyond his
ken. '
The ideal of Jesus is the kingdom of God
or of heaven, on the transcendent blessedness
of which, as well as on the conditions and the
inestimable value of admission, he constantly
dilates, illustrating them by a variety of
figures. What was this kingdom ? The
ground of the conception, so far as it was
terrestrial, probably was a peasant Galilee
purged of all social inequalities, of all selfish
ness, of everything but childlike simplicity of
heart, pure self-sacrifice, and brotherly love.

40 THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTENDOM
"Suffer the little children to come unto me,
and forbid them not : for of such is the king
dom of God. Verily I say unto you, Whoso
ever shall not receive the kingdom of God as
a little child, he shall not enter therein." It
is not likely that the seer of such a spiritual
Paradise had distinctly present to his mental
vision the Roman Empire and the great
world at large.
This terrestrial kingdom was to be the
believer's portal to everlasting happiness here
after. But apart from the hereafter the
preacher may have been opening a kingdom
of spiritual happiness here into which all enter
who prefer spiritual excellence, the love and
service of their kind, to worldly goods, pleas
ures, and advancement. The veil of death he
failed to raise. We may not be able to look
behind it. But so long as we are his true dis
ciples, we are in the kingdom of God.
On the mind of Jesus the idea of a kingdom
of Heaven gathering into it all good men
took such hold that at last he saw its advent
and the consummation of all things as near at
hand, so near that they would be witnessed

THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTENDOM 41
by some of those who were then listening to
his words. This belief in his advent he trans
mitted to his disciples ; it prevailed during the
first ages of the Church, affected all relations
of life among Christians, sustained martyr
dom, was reluctantly resigned, has from
time to time been revived, and is scarcely
extinct even now.
Apart from miracles and such events as the
Temptation in the Wilderness or the Trans
figuration, it is impossible to say what concep
tion Jesus may ultimately have formed of his
own character and relation to God ; whether
he identified himself with the Messiah or
even with Deity. Always we must remem
ber that he was a peasant prophet with
out any critical or intellectual environment
to temper his aspirations or limit his concep
tions ; while his followers, mingling perhaps
with their spiritual hopes that of sitting on
twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of
Israel, may have been pressing him to show
himself the Messiah, reveal his divinity, and
put forth his power. Nor can we tell
precisely what was the impulse which sent

42 THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTENDOM
him at last to confront the hostile forces of
Jewish orthodoxy in their stronghold at Jeru
salem, to declare his character and claims in
face of them, and thus to court inevitable
death at their hands.
After the last departure from Galilee to
Jerusalem, it would seem almost in quest of
martyrdom, there are in the life of Jesus two
events of importance, which have not only
their theological or ecclesiastical but their
historical aspect. One is the Last Supper,
an authentic account of which, apart from
the narrative in the Gospels, was no doubt
received and transmitted by St. Paul. The
whole mass of doctrine about the Real Pres
ence and Transubstantiation is in the eye of
history excrescence on the sacrament of reli
gious brotherhood and devotion to the Foun
der's ideal which, through all the ages, under
many different forms, and in spite of the most
miserable perversion, has kept its hold and
done its work.
The other event is the Crucifixion; re
garded by theology as the atoning sacrifice for
the sins of the world, by history as the great

THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTENDOM 43
martyrdom. The life of the Founder of
Christendom was the first of many lives of
fered up by his disciples, and not by his
disciples alone, as sacrifices to freedom of
opinion. Unhappily the temper of Annas
and Caiaphas or of Pilate was not confined to
the murderers of Jesus. His own creed of
liberty and mercy was perverted into a war
rant for murders on the other side. Annas,
Caiaphas, and Pilate, considering their posi
tion and their environments, must be said to
have been eclipsed in guilt, though not in
infamy, by men who murdered in the name
of Jesus, by Spanish and Roman Inquisitors,
by the authors of the massacre of St. Bartholo
mew, by Philip II and Louis XIV. There is
nothing more deplorable in history. Religious
bigotry, however, has had too great a load of
odium to bear. It has comparatively seldom
been murderous, except when the priest or the
priest-ridden king has been alarmed, not only
for his creed, but the priest for his worldly
wealth, and the king for his despotic power.
The house of Annas and Caiaphas held rich
offices, and Pilate represented an Empire.

44 THE FOUNDER OF CHRISTENDOM
Now the sun is low on the lake and on the
hillside. The peasant hearers break up, pon
dering on what they have heard, and dis
perse to their homes ; Avhile he, the Founder
of Christendom, having no home of his own
wherein to lay his head, goes to find shelter
for the night beneath some disciple's lowly
roof. Little did the owner of that roof dream
that it was receiving as a guest the genius
of nineteen coming centuries ; perhaps -of the
whole future of humanity, unless the Spiritual
as well as the Supernatural is doomed and
science is henceforth to reign alone.

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