is not only not to be condemned, but it is not to be avoided. But it will be a long time before a critical acumen sufficiently true and adequate, spiritual enough as well as scientific and philosophical enough, will be generally developed to give us permanent results on this line. Meantime each succeeding and temporarily successful such attempt will be subjected to the tests of time and ever-enlarging experience, and will survive or perish according to its truth or falsity. Still we shall never attain to the larger and truer criticism of the future except as we are trained in the cruder and confessedly still imperfect criticism of the present. And it is only through the growth and discipline of the critical faculty and function, of the powers of discrimination and judgment, that we can be educated to a higher understanding, appreciation, and enjoyment of the highest truth. In the first stage, therefore, of our study of the Gospel I shall follow, as best I may, in the track of the critics. I shall endeavour to admit nothing in the Synoptic Gospels and as of the Gospel which the best present criticism will not admit as pure record, as being of the objective truth of which they are the truthful reporters. We have recognized the fact that beside the bare record or report of objective fact which constitutes the bulk of the Synoptic Gospels, they all more or less abundantly contain matter that may or may not be objectively true also, but that is the subjective conception and interpretation of the objective facts on the part of the writers, or of the Church which they represent. This Christian or Church interpretation takes two directions and assumes two forms. It is first an interpretation of what we call "the work" of our Lord, meaning by that the purpose and result of His whole human life as, for example, atoning, redeeming, new-creating, etc. It is often, of course, difficult to separate between pure record and subjective interpretation, inextricably intermixed as they are. As an instance, the account of the intimate connection between the successive ministries of John the Baptist and Jesus is doubtless largely simple report of the facts. It is common to all the Gospels and seems to have been from the first the starting point of the public life and of all the stories of Jesus. Yet I think we shall see that in the form which the narrative has uniformly assumed there has been already embodied, in the contrast between John and Jesus, and more especially in the significance of their respective baptisms, a statement and interpretation of the whole work of Jesus than which nothing could be more comprehensive or exact. With regard to all subsequent reflection and interpretation of the life and work of Jesus it must be at least admitted that it is separable in thought from the objectively true facts which it undertakes to explain. At the same time it has itself to be understood and accounted for. We have seen that the ultimate and complete form assumed by reflection upon and explanation of the life-work of Jesus Christ is to be found in what I have called the second phase of the Gospel, the gospel of the resurrection: Jesus Christ—the conqueror of sin and destroyer of death, the author and finisher of holiness, of righteousness, of eternal life. The other direction taken by Christian reflection has to do with not the work but the person of our Lord. But it was not the less inevitable, and has equal claim to validity. Admit the nature of the work, and you cannot escape or avoid the question of the person of the worker. There may be doubt as to whether or to what extent this question is raised or answered in the Synoptic Gospels. Whether or no what we call the Gospel of the Infancy is at all part of the record, or at any rate of the primitive or original record, this at least is certain about it. It did not belong to the very earliest form of either oral or written gospel, which began, as in St. Mark, with the public life, and knows, or at least includes, as yet nothing of the previous private history of Jesus. When it is later included, it may indeed be so as fuller record of facts, to fill out a completer narrative from more perfect information. But unquestionably there was a further motive for its introduction. The question was up of the mystery of the person of the Lord. It is not answered in the Gospel of the Infancy it is true. In all the stories of the birth there is nothing which affirms or necessarily postulates a previous personal existence. But at least the line of reflection and interpretation is entered upon which finds no possible or satisfactory close until it completes and expresses itself in the Prologue of St. John, - that is to say, in the Gospel of the Incarnation. |