When the generation had passed, and the expectation had been disappointed, some, it is true, gave up their belief in Christianity, but these were probably few. A great energy of belief, when opposed by a barrier of contrary fact, seldom or never is annihilated, it only changes its mode of manifestation. In this case we have a specimen of the process in probably the latest of the New Testament writings, where (Peter being made to predict the scoffing of those few who fell away because of the nonfulfilment of the Messianic predictions, asking, "Where is the promise of his coming? for, from the day that the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were")* the delay in the coming of the Son of man is accounted for by the reminders that " one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some count slackness; but is longsuffering to you-ward, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come," etc. (2 Peter iii. 8-10).

From the manifest failure of the Messianic predictions, as understood by Jesus and his apostles,† we cannot but think it highly improbable that during his

* 2 Peter iii. 4.

† We agree with the Rev. Prebendary Row in his estimate of the relative position and value of "the Messianic prophecies," among evidences of this nature for supernatural revelation. He says (Bampton Lectures, 1877, p. 200), " Unless their fulfilment in the person, work, and Church of Jesus Christ proves a superhuman prescience, we shall in vain seek it in any other."

life on earth miracles should have been wrought to attest the truth of the doctrines he preached,-whether or not he was raised from the dead, and made a new revelation to Paul or to any of the original apostles, the probability of which may be considered, as previously intimated, after the proper life of Jesus has been studied.

We must, as already shown, form our idea of this life of Jesus chiefly from his teachings as recorded in the first Gospel, which, in the main, it is morally certain are authentic utterances of the prophet of Galilee, and there is some probability that for most of these records of his teaching we have the authority of the apostle Matthew. We say advisedly for most of them, for if indeed he published a book of the sayings of Jesus (the Logia), and if with this was afterwards incorporated many of the incidents believed to have occurred in his life, we have still no security that some teachings, traditionally regarded as those of Jesus, were not also added to those recorded by Matthew.

We shall, at discretion, avail ourselves of the latitude taken and allowed by modern critics and apologists in the matter of chronological sequence,* buț whether, on the basis of Matthew and Mark, we can form any intelligible idea of Jesus without miracles,

*

See Dr. Lightfoot in Contemporary Review, May, 1875. He says, "In fact the synoptists give no continuous chronology in the history of our Lord's ministry between the baptism and the passion; the incidents were selected in the first instance (we may suppose) for purposes of catechetical instruction, and are massed together sometimes by connec tion of subject, sometimes, though incidentally, by sequence of time."

perhaps remains to be seen. Any conception of his life and character that is full of incongruities ought surely to be rejected; on the other hand, any conception of him which enables us to present a picture, however coarsely and meagrely sketched, that shall have a general symmetry and congruity on the basis of naturalism, may be tolerated, as, at the least, a possible outline of the actual. For if we start with the hypothesis that Jesus was simply a man (of however remarkable genius) unendowed with supernatural gifts, we shall, in attempting to trace his career, if he really was so endowed, utterly fail.* A pure fiction might, it is true, be made consistent throughout with itself, but its outlines would not coincide with any that are discernible as underlying the canonical Matthew and Mark.

Before commencing to portray our own conception of the Nazarene, it may be as well to remark that the Gospels were written by persons who fully believed that Jesus was the Christ, and who believed that the designation" Son of man" properly belonged to the Christ as such; and as a comparison of the Gospels rarely shows an exact verbal agreement, we must not be surprised to find, for example, that sometimes, when

* Those modern apologists who admit the deficiency of the external evidence, place their main reliance on the evidential value of the character revealed in the Gospels, if that character is once accepted as historical. Prebendary Row, for instance, says of it, “If it be an historical reality, it is too clear to require argument, that he of whom it is the delineation must have been superhuman." ("Christian Evidences viewed in Relation to Modern Thought," p. 185.) He means, we presume, a character of absolute perfection, but is it possible for the reality of such a character to be proved historically?

Jesus is speaking of the Christ to come, he should be represented as speaking of himself. And such an expression as "Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest," may possibly, after all, instead of being an instance of "sublime egotism," have been prefaced by some such phrase as The Son of man will say, "Come unto me," etc. *

At the same time, it must be admitted that a "sublime genius," when his attention is directed to himself by way of comparison with the multitude, cannot but know his own superiority.

It is, of course, only the public life of Jesus that can be based on Matthew and Mark; any idea of his boyhood, youth, and early manhood must be obtained elsewhere. Happily, having the Old Testament, we can hardly be ignorant of the chief influences surrounding the religious education of the young Galilean.

* In this case, however, we think there are other and more probable modes of escape from any apparent necessity of imputing egotism to Jesus.

CHAPTER VII.

ORIGIN OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL.*

*

IT will be remembered that after our consultation of the critics as to the authenticity of the evangelic narratives, supplemented by our own independent conception of the character and aims of the Galilean. prophet, we found that the Synoptic Gospels, and especially the first, contained, in the main, a truc portraiture of Jesus of Nazareth; while the fourth Gospel presented him differently in some important respects, on which we came to the necessary conclusion that its representations of the Great Teacher, wherever they differed from those made by the Synoptics, were also divergent from the facts, and therefore untrue. We also saw it to be a settled point that the fourth Gospel was much later than the other three, and so, having concluded that we must reject, i.e. deny, the historical validity of either the Synoptics

* Instead of here commencing the "Life of Jesus" from a naturalistic point of view, on the lines briefly indicated in the Appendix, we have substituted for the original Seventh Chapter a subsequent one on the origin of the Fourth Gospel, in order to make the present volume complete in itself.