using familiar and sacred words as the vehicles of truths which they are well adapted to convey, though they may not have been originally intended for that purpose.1

When we come to 'critical weighing' of facts, such adaptations and expressions are improper; but for the sake of our argument, let us concede to the author of Ecce Homo that they are proper, and ought to be employed; and that he is justi

fied in his conclusion that in commanding his disciples to give alms and visit the sick and the prisoners, Christ virtually commanded us to undertake all the investigations and to carry out all the measures which he enumerates. The question will still arise-why stop there? If you are going to idealise and develop, why do you not carry out your developments to the full extent? If you get general philanthropy out of the fact that Christ went about doing good in the sense of miraculously healing disease, why not get general morality out of the fact that he commanded general philanthropy? The desire to relieve suffering is not a thing which can be indulged without restriction. You see a soldier being flogged. Christ went about doing good. Therefore, cut him down. But is it for the general advantage that he should be cut down? If not, to cut him down would be to do not good, but harm. Before you can decide the question whether your proposed act is good or not, you must have a whole system of morals with special reference to all sorts of political, military, and international questions. To say that Christ's life was passed

in a protest against pain as pain, and that, therefore, Christians in the present day ought to pass their lives in a systematised protest against pain as pain, and not against such pain as moral philosophy in its ripest form shows to be generally injurious, is to argue upon an arbitrary guess. If, on the other hand, you say the example of Christ teaches us to do in every sphere of life that which moral philosophy declares to be right, then moral philosophy is our real instructor, and not the enthusiasm of humanity derived from the contemplation of Christ. This is opposed to the whole theory of Ecce Homo, though we believe it to be perfectly true.

The fact is that, like many other people, the author of Ecce Homo falls into the mistake of making a false division of morality. He arranges it under two heads. One comprehends all the gentler virtues; everything which has an obvious immediate tendency to diminish the sufferings of mankind, or to indulge kindly feelings towards them. Under the other head are included virtues of a less immediately and obviously amiable class. The first are the specially Christian qualities, and are to be discharged because of the love of Christ; the second are to stand on their own ground. You are to relieve a sick man because of the enthusiasm of humanity; you are to invest your money securely because it is an act of prudence: but the enthusiasm of humanity has nothing to do with prudence, and moral philosophy, which inculcates prudence, has nothing to do with

never entertain.

We agree in the opinion that there is a fierce vein in Christianity, as indeed the history and character of every body and of every theological system that has ever claimed the Christian name abundantly prove. We also agree in the belief that the fierce passions are a most important part of human nature, and ought, on certain occasions, to be permitted to have full play, and to guide our conduct in important particulars. The soldier, the judge, and the hangman are necessary members of human society, and ought to do their respective tasks effectively; but in their department of affairs more than any other is displayed the truth of the doctrine that enthusiasm is merely a motive power and not a guide, that reason is to judge of the extent, the occasions, and the manner in which such passions are to be indulged. A

man

who deliberately measures out the degree in which he will allow his natural and proper feel

as

ings of anger to have their way on such an occasion, for instance, that of the suppression of the Indian mutiny, acts well. man who, on such an occasion, merely tries to throw himself into the attitude in which he supposes Christ to have been when he rebuked the Pharisees, and allows himself to be guided by a supposed divine instinct urging him to feel 'vindictive enmity' against one class, 'bitterness' against a second, 'irreconcilable hostility' to several more, will probably act the part, restraining king or general, but not of a strong deliberate selfthat of a flighty hysterical fanatic, ready, according to circumstances, to slobber over his neighbours, or to cut their throats. It is not because Christ went about doing good that we ought to relieve distress. It is not because Christ levelled unsparing invectives against the scribes and Pharisees that we ought, in case of need, to exercise the utmost severities, in order to maintain lawful authority. We ought to do these things if necessary calmly, deliberately, with a minimum of excitement and passion, because they are, according to the best tests of right and wrong which we can discover, the right things to do under the circumstances. In regard to morals, feeling and reason are like the steam and the machinery in an engine. Without the steam have no power, without the machiyou would nery you would have no resistance, and you want both to get motion. The mere following of Christ, the enthusiasm kindled by the contemplation of his example, will not in the least degree enable people to dispense with moral philosophy. On the contrary, it will increase

the necessity for it in proportion to the vigour of the impulse which it gives to the general character. For how can the enthusiasm of humanity tell you which precedent you are to apply in a particular case, and when it is to be limited by others? Apply in the wrong place the reflection that Christ went about doing good, and you get indiscriminate almsgiving or the old poor-law. Apply in the wrong place 'Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?' and you get the Inquisition, the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and the penal laws against the French Protestants or the Irish Roman Catholics. What then is to guide you, and to tell you which is the right place for the one, and which for the other reflection? Not Christ, but reason, that very moral philosophy which the author of Ecce Homo underrates.

This leads us to say a few words on the last part of the argument of Ecce Homo which we think it necessary to examine. The author appears to us to attach far too great a degree of weight to personal devotion to Christ as a panacea for all moral evils. Christ, he tells us, says to struggling humanity, Cling to me, cling ever closer to me,' and the greater part of his argument is directed to prove that this is the one thing needful to make bad men good. Mysticism, of course, must not be pressed too closely. When you ask what 'clinging to Christ' specifically means, you must not expect a categorical answer; but, no doubt, the general signification of the phrase is, that by forming to themselves an image of Christ, and by then conceiving of him as always present, always invisibly interfering and communicating good impulses to the soul, men will become good, and that to do this is the real essence of Christianity. Of course, it cannot be denied that a belief in the possibility of a personal intercourse with God through prayer is of the

essence of what may be called personal religion. A man who does not believe that he can, by prayer, keep up such an intercourse might, no doubt, retain a belief in the existence of God, and in his moral government of the world; and these beliefs are of immense importance, but he would certainly entirely leave out that department of Christianity which is usually supposed to exercise the greatest influence over individual character, and this shows the enormous practical importance of the question to which we have referred, namely, whether the advice to cling to Christ' in the sense above explained is a sufficient answer to human beings, asking how they are to be guided and supported in their various affairs.

The connection of this question with the general scope of Ecce Homo may not be apparent at first sight, but a little reflection will, we think, make it clear. To 'cling to Christ' is to pray to Christ, to make Christ your God; and as a man's God is, as his ideal, that to which he tends, which he recognises as the supreme good, and seeks to attain-so will be the man's life, the man himself. If, therefore, Christ is to be our God, our ideal, books like Ecce Homo are attempts to give us an image and description of our God, and when they tell us to cling to Christ they mean 'Pray to such a being as I describe, as the ultimate object of all reverence, the ultimate source of all goodness. Model yourself on him. He is to be your God, and you are to be his people.'

Such an exhortation differs widely from the doctrines of the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds. Their doctrine is that not the man Jesus, but the person Jesus Christ, perfect God and perfect man, is the object of worship, and that this being is one, not by the conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of the

manhood into God. Let us try to translate this technical phraseology into its equivalents in every-day life. To us, at least, it appears to suggest some such meaning as the following: When you worship Jesus Christ, beware against idolising a human creature. You are not to worship Jesus of Nazareth. You are to worship Jesus Christ, because Jesus Christ was God. Whatever Christianity was cr was not meant to do, its theology was a standing protest against idolatry, especially against the idolatry of Jesus. Christ is in all Christian churches an object of worship, not as man, but as God and man. The practical difference between the two is enormous. If you are required to worship a being who is made up in some mysterious way of God and man, you can always bear in mind, in acts of worship, that the object of your worship is not a particular man but God, and that if Jesus Christ is to be worshipped it is not as a man who preached the sermon on the mount, or worked miracles, or rose from the dead, but because in him were in some way or other united SO as to form one person man and God, so that the object of worship is a being infinitely wise and good, omnipotent and omnipresent. These are the only terms on which the worship of Jesus Christ can be anything else than the worship of a human being a representative man; and unless the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds are heretical from end to end it is hard to dispute the orthodoxy at least of this assertion.

With reference to this matter, it is important to observe that the gospels as we have them are, as we have already pointed out, exceedingly imperfect if they are regarded as biographies of a human being, and leave a number of gaps which must be filled up by those conjectures and exercises of the 'historical imagination' which make

up so large a part of the substance of Ecce Homo. Now, the more definite, the more human, the more conceivable the character of Christ is made, the further he recedes from the position of an historical character, with incomprehensible motives and feelings,' the less divine he becomes, and the more difficult is it to worship him. It cannot be denied, for instance, that the character which the author of Ecce Homo draws falls very far short of divinity. We refuse altogether to recognise the Christ of the gospels in the Christ of this book. The character as we have it here appears to us to be in several respects open to just exception: the doctrines which Christ is alleged to have taught appear to us to be in many particulars untrue, and the conduct ascribed to him to be in some points sentimental (as in the case of the woman taken in adultery), and in others rash and violent (as in the case of the rebukes levelled against the scribes and Pharisees). So long as the human character of Christ is left as the evangelists leave it-that is to say, incomplete and mysterious-and so long as we are told that he was in point of fact God Incarnate, our mouths are closed. We cannot, of course, presume to criticise the acts of such a being. We say these acts were, no doubt, right under the circumstances; these words were, no doubt, wise and true, and therefore they cannot have meant anything foolish or wrong, although we may not be in a position to say precisely what they did mean; but when the historical imagination fairly takes the whole matter in hand, and says Jesus thought this and that, and acted thus and thus, and you are to cling to him, cling ever to him, if you wish to be good and happy, the reply is, 'You wish me to cling to a being whom you represent as imperfect and mistaken. It would be idolatry to

worship such a Jesus as you describe, and that not merely in the technical but in the practical sense of the word. The pattern which you hold up is not the highest which my imagination can conceive. I worship God as being the creator, maintainer, and disposer of the whole world, physical and moral. If it pleased that being to unite himself to man (which is a question of fact) it is justifiable to worship him under that form; but it is the superhuman, the divine being which is the object of worship.' This question is in the highest degree practical, for worship is the setting up of an ideal which is to be your guide and aim in cases of difficulty. Now, there are large departments of human duties and affairs on which the example of Christ throws no light whatever, and in which the direction cling to Christ' is an unmeaning phrase. The duties of the writer, the philosopher, the artist, the legislator, the magistrate, and the lawyer, except on particular occasions and in certain departments of their affairs, are not much enlightened by the sermon on the mount. The great efforts of the intellect, the great efforts of the imagination, may be sustained and excited by the reflection that the universe is cosmos and not chaos, conceivable by the human mind, bearing in itself the traces of being, so to speak, the thought of a mind of which the human mind is a kind of reflection; but such thoughts, though not inconsistent with the parables and the sermon on the mount, are not contained in them. It is only by violent metaphors and strained constructions that you can connect what may be called the business part of life, political economy, law, commerce, and the principles by which they are regulated, with Christ's example. 'Cling to me, ever closer to me,' would have been strange advice to give to

VOL. LXXIV.-NO. CCCCXXXIX.

Adam Smith when anxious to discover the principles of the wealth of nations; or to Tribonian and his associates when they arranged the chaos of the Roman law; or to the founders of the British empire in India; yet these were items, and not trifling items either, in that collective whole which makes up humanity struggling with its destiny;' and if there be a God at all who cares for men and treats them as accountable moral agents, it is inconceivable that he should not have viewed the due discharge of the tasks which we have mentioned as duties of the highest and most sacred kind, quite as high and sacred (though there is no need to be sentimental about them) as preaching, or praying, or administering the sacraments.

It is hardly, perhaps, necessary to observe that these observations by no means impugn the divinity of Christ. Their object is to show the danger of converting the human nature of Christ into an idol by magnifying the importance of the particular qualities which he displayed till they are made by development and expansion to fill the whole sphere of human life. The inveterate tendency of men and women to do this constantly leads them to regard everything which does not fall within the limits of Christ's example as carnal and worldly; and this tendency to separate the common business of life from that department of it which is specially illustrated by the teaching and example of Christ reacts upon the character of persons engaged in those other pursuits, and leads them to take an irreligious view of occupations which, so to speak, are unsanctified by one who is supposed to have summed up in himself every form and kind of human holiness.

These are the principal observations which Ecce Homo suggests to us. We can foresee that the remarks which we have felt bound to make will provoke an obvious retort.

E