Advent and ascension

Front matter

Class

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CHAPTER I. Preliminary Questions

i. Has there been a widespread feeling of the need of an incarnation? page 10. The revelation of God through the things he had made and the words he had spoken, not enough, n. Call for the supernatural, 12. And the supernatural, properly proved, our guide in this doctrine, 13. Review of philosophic thought, 14. Eastern thought; in Buddhism ; in Greece and Rome, 14. In a real Incarnation, dimly hinted elsewhere, but everywhere needed, all would culminate, 15.

2. Would such an event fitly introduce a career meeting alike divine and human wants? 15. God may need it in selfvindication, and man need it in order to act broadly and rightly, 16. How else, in such a world as this, decide whether God is love or hate? 18. Some such overpowering manifestation needed as would settle the question, 19. Browning's words about the Incarnation as solving all difficulty, 20.

3. Is any other way of advent more probable than that described in the New Testament? 21. The Coming One must come into the race by the way of a human birth, 22. Human nature not originally and necessarily sinful, 23 ; must come in a Hebrew line ; in a nation giving honor to virgin life ; must be of regal descent, and yet live among common people, 23.

4. What should one so born be expected to be and to do? He must be human, 24. But he must be more than a man's highest measure of God, 25. Instead of "limitation by humanity," extension as far as humanity, 26. Not only subjective feeling, but objective manifestation of God in an Incarnation, is needed, 26. Must be a person through whom God can be restored to man, and man to God, 26.

5. Can we think of any better method of furnishing to the zvorld the proof of such an event than that proposed by the New Testament? 27. The method of the time demanded that disciples should repeat the words and deeds of a Master, 27*

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"Oral Gospels," 28. The earliest Epistles were to be the earliest documentary proof. By Epistles, the divine idea of Incarnation was to be expressed, 29; the subsequent Gospels were to give the needed details, 30. Such a method of presenting the evidence commends itself when understood, 32.

CHAPTER II. The Witnesses to the Incarnation

1. God has given us a progressive revelation — he had spoken before Jesus came; at periods of emergency; in sacred rites; by prophetic men, 34. Hebrew prophecy grounded in Hebrew history, 36. Glances beyond immediate events, to the Coming One, 37. The word "witness," so often used, 37. The historical fact was to be historically proved. Intellectual and moral proof as good in its sphere as mathematical proof, 38. The "testimony of God" comes to us in the form of literature — the most satisfactory and enduring form, 39. Natural human faculties strengthened and inspired, 39. Sketches, both "ideal" and "minutely actual," in describing the coming Christ, 41. Promises of him steadily developed — all of them not about some one thrust in upon men, but of one "to be born," 42. An immense preparatory "gospel of the nativity," 43-

2. The testimony of Jesus to himself : claimed that he was the prophetic Christ, 45. Declared that the prophecies, in minute and definite things, were "concerning himself," 46.

3. Testimony of disciples : mission of the Twelve, 47. But a Paul was needed to set forth in documents the comprehensive idea, 49. "Back to Christ." Paul's earlier Epistles older documents than the Gospels. Gospels fill in details of the idea given in Epistles, 50. Deity through humanity. Christ as "Jehovah," 51. "God over all." After conversion through the divine idea, converts would inquire about details, such as Christ's birth, 54. Paul's crucial declaration, 55. Peter's point of view, 55. That of John, 55. James, in his peculiar view, 58. The Epistles taken as a whole, 59. The personal Christ and the official Christ, 60. The relation of Christ to God described in governmental terms; in forensic terms; in filial terms; in terms of vitality, 64. Evangelists give us sketches rather than biographies. These have a peculiarly self-evidencing power, 64. Why the detail of the virgin birth in two Gospels, and in these two only, 65. The chapters of Matthew and Luke cannot be subsequent additions, 66. Peculiar confirmations of them, 67. Each evangelist his own purpose, and so his own point of view, 69. The consent of

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the others, 70. Matthew writes for the Jew; Luke for the Gentile, 72. In the Gospels the doctrinal is combined with the historical idea of the Incarnation, 72. Historical facts reflected in the spiritual experience, 74. Writers of Gospels are Hebrews ; they were writers in a skeptical age, 80. Ethical dutyfounded by them on the Incarnation, 84.

CHAPTER III. The Testimony of the Witnesses

Definiteness of the records, 88. Genealogical tables, 93. W T hy inserted only in Matthew and Luke, 94. Difference between lineal and royal descent; but both coincide at last, 95. Luke so near Holy Family as to hear and record their words, 96. No need of inventing such a story, 96. Tracing a royal descent impossible after destruction of Jerusalem, 98. Questions about date of enrollment and place of nativity, 101. Those, vital questions in early centuries and for Jewish converts, 102. Mark's assumption of the facts, 103. John intimates, but without definite description, the virgin birth, 106. Paul also through Luke, whose purity and delicacy are manifest in the story, no. Social, political, and personal circumstances; Magi, shepherds, and Roman ruler; presentation in temple, 114. General impression made by the facts, 116. Special impression made (1) upon the virgin mother, 120; (2) upon the public of his day, 121; (3) upon his disciples, 122; (4) Christ's own consciousness, 123; (5) in subsequent centuries by the records, 124. Divinity extended rather than limited by Incarnation, 131. Christ's full knowledge of all he needed to know at any stage of his official career, 132. Godet's summary of the evidence, 133. Recapitulation of argument, 134. Christianity built on historic facts, 137. These not to be set aside by any theory of "the inexactness of human language," 141. Nor by any theory of "moral value-judgments," 142. The facts must be taken at their historic worth, 144-148.

CHAPTER IV. Questions About the Lord's Departure

How should we expect Jesus would end his career? 153. What should follow his death? 154. Completeness over against bodily death is bodily resurrection, 155. Possibility as to any resurrection of a human body, 155. The real essence alike of mind and body unknown, 158. Larger capacities than we now know, probable, 158. Constitutional basis for changing mani-

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festations in both, 159. Death of the visible sometimes the opportunity for invisible potencies, 159. Premonitions of resurrection in nature, 162. Argument for a possible or a probable resurrection is argument for a body capable of ascension as well, 163. There is the great probability of a spiritual body with capacities for the spiritual man, 166.

CHAPTER V. The Witnesses to the Lord's Resurrection and Ascension

The earliest writer to name on his pages these facts is Paul, 168. His means of knowledge, 168. His grasp of Christianity as a whole, 170. He enumerates, incidentally, six of the appearances of Christ after his resurrection, 171-175. His own testimony as one who saw the risen Christ on the way to Damascus, 177. He argues from these manifestations the corporeity of Christ at the resurrection, 178. The testimony of others from whom the evangelists derived the incidents, 178. The continuous testimony of the writers of the New Testament not only to the resurrection but the ascension of Jesus, 179. The Christ of "The Revelation" is the risen, ascended, and reigning Christ, 180.

CHAPTER VI. The Testimony of these Witnesses

The four evangelists. Matthew's incidents in keeping with his purpose, 183. Mark's incidents looking at the facts from another point of view, 185. Luke's specific purpose shown in the incidents he records, 187. John's testimony given with peculiar vividness, 189. Peter's testimony not only through Mark, but in his Epistles, 191. The contradictory theories and their failure, 193-197. The completed resurrection in the ascension, 198. Summary of the evidence for the resurrection : (1) Former miracles prepare for this, 199. (2) Gives him especial memory in the thought of the world, 200. (3) He promised it, 201. (4) Seen repeatedly by those who best knew him, 202. (5) Witnesses not credulous at outset, 205. (6) The multitude of the witnesses, 206. (7) Immediate article of faith in the churches, 207. (8) Gave rise to vital doctrine, 208. All these arguments for the ascension as the completion of the resurrection, 211. The whole career from advent to ascension compels a peculiar intervening life, 212-214. The coming Christ, 215.

ADVENT AND ASCENSION.

HOW JESUS CAME TO US.

CHAPTER I. Preliminary Questions

Two gentlemen were conversing about that subject on which men will never cease to think and speak- — the supernatural. It was near to the Christmas celebration. One of them said to the other, "This whole matter of the supernatural is very fascinating ; but can we really know anything definite about it?" In reply his friend referred to what he called the leading fact of supernaturalism — the peculiar birth of Jesus Christ which so many were just about to celebrate. "But," said the first man, "there are immense difficulties in the way of the acceptance of the story of the birth of a human child who had no human father. The whole matter is so utterly unlike all we know of other human births as to be almost, if not altogether, incredible. I wish one could believe in Christianity without accepting the virgin birth." To which there was the quick reply that if the Child then born was simply and io Advent and Ascension.

only a human child there would be the gravest doubt. But if the one thus born was a demand alike of God's thought and of man's thought, of God's need and of man's need, then some such beginning of an earthly life would not only be credible, but the absence of it would be an incredible thing. "That may be so," said the other ; "and yet I find it hard to believe in what is called 'the Incarnation.' " "Will you," was the instant reply, "consider carefully five things which I will put down in the form of questions? And when you have thought them through we will talk again of these things. The five questions are these :

"i. Has there been a widespread and conscious need of some such an incarnation of God in a person with a human body and mind and soul?

"2. Would such an incarnation as that described in the Gospels fitly introduce a life that should meet certain needs of God and of man; and, if so, what are those needs?

"3. Is there any other more probable way for such a being to come to us than through some such a birth as that claimed in the New Testament?

"4. Would such an incarnation, followed by such a life, make the whole matter of religion more distinct and impressive?

"5. Can we think of any better way, all things considered, for giving to the world satisfactory evidence of such an event than that furnished in the New Testament?"

Whether the other man consented to use this most

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reasonable method of approaching the subject we need not ask; but we — writer and reader of these pages — may consider together not unprofitably these questions just named. For they are not forbidden. These inquiries are not irreverent. As men endowed with reason we are required to employ our faculties on these noble themes. And this method of approach is not to be considered as an a priori argument — though a priori argument in all investigation is not without a certain worth; these questions are to be asked simply to open up the problem and to show what is involved in the idea of an incarnation.

The word "incarnation" is used more especially of one event — the alleged virgin birth of our Lord. But that event is the initial one which gives its name also to a whole marvelous career. So that, while in this discussion we are to use the word mainly in its initial sense, there cannot but be a constant recurrence to the subsequent life which such a birth would forecast.

i. Has there been a widespread conviction of the need of some such an incarnation?

There has certainly been a widespread and ineffaceable belief in the supernatural. This has not been confined to men in the lower civilizations ; foremost thinkers to-day form societies for psychical research. It is not the mark of high thinking to confine one's thought to the material world. Even science, which is defined to be "the study and classification of phenomena," is constantly overleaping its self-imposed bounds and striving to enter the domain of philosophy by asking what there is — there is felt to be something — behind all phenomena. Pressed closely, nearly all scientists — how much more all philosophers — are getting to feel that the "something behind all phenomena" is a "Some One." The new drift is certainly in that direction. Mind is not content with things. It desires to know what is the thought that is over and above and in all things. The "something behind" is supernatural ; above nature. So thought the ancients, agreeing in this with the moderns. Egyptian thought had among those initiated into the priesthood many who held firmly to the supernatural, and its God was God alike of the natural and the supernatural. Greek and Roman thought pressed on over different paths to the same result. Hebrew thinking ran with greater depth and wider stream toward that same illimitable ocean of the supernatural.

For want of some great fact that shall govern all men's ideas of the supernatural there have been many sad mistakes. As with the natural, so with the supernatural, there have been tens of thousands of wrong theories. Who, on account of all these errors, believes the less in the natural, and why should any wise man believe the less in the supernatural because of human mistakes about this matter? We call them errors in the realm of the natural, and superstitions in the realm of the supernatural. And only Omniscience can know whether those in the one realm exceed those in the other ; but no number of them can destroy the persistent belief in an external and natural world, and also in an invisible and spiritual world. Now, if there can be assurance given to men by some one great fact in which the supernatural bursts through the natural in undoubted manifestation — some one great fact, like the Incarnation, which will show men the line along which the supernatural can be relieved on the one hand of the frivolous and on the other of the superstitious — and thus there can be a clear sanity in following that line, then the great demand will be perfectly met.

Let it be conceded that "God is the normal object of the mind's belief;" still the universal craving is gratified only in part. It is felt that the God manifested in nature ought to be further manifested in man. From the shaping and the working of man's mind we can get some idea of the divine mind. But the two ideas, that of man's likeness to God in order of faculty and that of the incarnation of God in a being possessed of a human body and a human soul, are widely different. The latter has been often surrounded with terrible misconceptions, and yet men have held to it persistently notwithstanding all. Those attempts may have been "blind and halt and lame," but who would know of blindness if there were no vision, or of sickness if there were no health? There would be no superstition if there were not somewhere the true religion; and the multitude of mistaken ideas about an incarnation of God in the long reaches of human history show, not that everything is false, but that somewhere there is a truth in this direction.

Reviewing the philosophic conceptions of the thinking world, Mr. S. Baring-Gould has insisted that "the belief in a Creator is" in all human thought "the first step that necessitates an incarnation." This was but the echo of the declaration of Plato, that God must come down from heaven in human form if men were to have certainty in religion. The concept of the more ancient faiths was that of a Restorer "who, while human, should also be more than human." In some loose sense one section of Eastern thought held that every man was an emanation — an idea which, though different, was in some ways akin to that of an incarnation. Zoroaster, soon after Moses, "predicted a Saviour incarnate," and, in the later legend of Greece, Prometheus is to be delivered from his chains. In Brahmanism God did not always dwell on high. He came down in earthly form to live and suffer for men. In the "Mahabharata," a poem more ancient than Buddhism, there is a series of divine "descents," so called, somewhat similar to incarnations. The Deity says, "When religion is in danger I come forth." Only this is to be noted, that these hints in the Indian religions have in them no gain except in philosophic theory. There is no real incarnation. There is never actual fact, never real moral personality. At most there is merely theoretical resemblance. There is a distinct hint ; but practically the hint is neutralized by divergent beliefs. Always the idea was to free men not from sin, but from personal existence ; for life was considered a curse. The coming One was to give death, not life. These premonitions show the hold of the idea of incarnation, even in its mistaken forms, on the race. 1

Now, there is just one direction in which a thoughtful man can look to find a real incarnation. He will find it not in the Roman idea, in which man becomes a god — which is not an incarnation at all. He will find it only in God becoming man, as in Christianity. In such an incarnation as it presents all rightful expectations culminate. It is here or nowhere. It is this or nothing, thus far on in human history. If this can be certified there will be a clew to the kind of supernaturalism which alone is credible; a test by which superstition can be detected and the genuinely supernatural in religion be assured. The credible will be along this line. The supernatural, then, for us will have a basis.

2. Would such an incarnation as that described in the Gospels be the fit introduction to a life that should meet especial needs of God and of man; and, if so, what needs?

Let us say, with all reverence, that God may need it for his own manifestation. Revealed partially in the constitution of human souls and in their physical environment, these methods are liable to the mistake which belongs to any partial disclosure. So much known may need to have more made known by way of correction. Alike God's transcendence and his

1 Stalker in his Life of Christ, after reciting some of the heathen stories of God-born men from mortal mothers, and after showing how repugnant all such ideas were to men trained, as were the apostles, in Jewish ideas, insists that these things were "indications of a deep-seated sense in our common humanity of the need of an incarnation."

immanence may need a manifestation peculiar in kind and full in expression. The material universe and even the largest of all human souls may fail here. God may need in self -justification to do more than to manifest himself. He may need to become incarnate himself. And if he, then how much more may we need such an incarnation ! He has revealed himself just enough to whet our appetite for more and peculiar revelation. We know just enough about him not only to wish to know more but to be in absolute need of knowing more. We are finite, yet with infinite cravings; sinful, yet with ideals of absolute perfection. If God may demand an incarnation in order not to be misunderstood, how much more may we in order not to misunderstand! There are things beyond which we need to know in order to do the right ; things above our ken that would so help us if God would by his incarnation reveal himself to us. Even our finiteness and sinfulness are pleas for his compassion. It seems to be so needful to have some things settled once for all, and so settled that never could one doubt be raised about them. And so far as we can see the only settlement of them would be by a divine incarnation.

Take that truth of God as a God of love. How will you prove it? Can any man take all the facts for and against the proposition, and estimate them all properly, and then strike the balance and give the decision? He must needs be omniscient to do this. Some single fact not known to anyone save to God might change the verdict. Even when we take into the account the

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things we think we know, are we quite sure we fully know them? Inclined by what he sees to-day to decide that God is love, a man may be obliged to suspend or even reverse his judgment to-morrow. His own moods have much to do with his decision. His position, his climate, his surroundings, his associates, his studies, his business, his recreations, all affect his conclusion. He may propose to decide the question by what he knows of the aspects of nature about him, but skies frown, as well as smile; and if there is not some one great overwhelming fact in proof of the divine love, he can come to no decision. Shutting out anything like the idea of incarnation, where could one find this needed proof ?

A man stands on St. Elmo. Before him is the finest bay in all the world, the Bay of Naples. Directly across from him is Vesuvius, its thin veil of smoke rising gracefully from its summit. Beautiful white villages cling to its sides. The sunset hour is near. The air is full of that wonderful golden mist seen nowhere else on earth, a mist that conceals nothing but glorifies all things above, beneath, around. There is the sough in the low trees of the soft wind that hardly disturbs a leaf. The view is one of surpassing loveliness. Once seen it is the memory of a lifetime. The tender benediction of Heaven seems to rest on all things that meet the eye, and the man says that surely the Maker of all this is benignant; surely "God is love." But let this man visit again the same spot. Scarce twenty-four hours have gone, but how changed is all! Instead of last night's glory, the heavens are ashen gray and are turning swiftly to blackness. The air is heavy with sulphurous vapors. The solid world reverberates with the thunder of the earthquake. That grand and beautiful Vesuvius of last night is sullen in its awful roar, and down its sides flow the streams of fiery lava. They reach those cities clinging yesterday so fondly to its sides. They sweep them out of existence in a moment ; and their fleeing inhabitants — men, women, and children — before they can gain a place of safety, notwithstanding all their cries to Heaven, are caught in that horrible flood and perish miserably in their wild despair. What shall this man say now? Is God love, or is he hate? 1 If last night this man, standing amid the glories of that Italian sunset, was warranted in his conclusion that "God is love," what conclusion is he warranted in drawing to-night? Can he be blamed for his newer inference?

It is not easy in a world like this, with its abounding contradictions, to draw the inference that love rules; or, if one draws it in hours of delight, what inference remains for him in his hours of anguish? Look out where you will. Populous cities ? Yes ; and crowded cemeteries where the dead outnumber the living. Calm summers? Yes; and fierce, wild storms rising on the ocean, gathering new fury with every mile they travel, and then pouring themselves on some doomed bark crowded toward toothed rocks hungry for their

1 "It looks as if there were an almighty power working out some faroff end of its own with serene disregard of suffering, expenditure, and waste entailed in the process." — Maudsley.

prey, at midnight, and none to save. Who shall gather all the facts to see whether love predominates, or hate? When we have gathered all the facts we know, and all which the whole human race has accumulated, there may be some other sad fact which no man has yet discovered, but which if taken into the estimate would turn disastrously the scale. 1 Not in this way, not by nature alone, not by any summing up of its facts or its laws, is it given man to know his God. No more is it possible for God, longing to reveal himself, in this way to make himself fully known. Man's needs and God's needs call for more. If there is not more, then God will inevitably be misunderstood by man. In man's best endeavors to judge of the divine attributes and perfections by these partial revelations about him he may draw honest conclusions that are utterly incorrect. His moods of sadness or of gladness may prevail to the warping of his judgment. No revelation were almost preferable to one so liable to be misinterpreted. There needs to be some additional revelation of the divine characteristics or we are worse than confused.

Now if there could be an actual incarnation of God himself, an incarnation of such surpassing glory that nothing cast into the opposite scale could ever outweigh it, the question would be settled. If the Incarnate One came to us on a mission of pure love, that fact would go far toward the solution. If God became

1 Bishop Butler, reasoning indeed on another matter, incidentally remarks on "the infinitely absurd supposition that we men ever know all the facts of a case."

incarnate in divine self-denial and self-sacrifice, in selfsuffering evidently far beyond the limits of all comprehension, and all this were done as an "offering for our sins" and to bring about an "eternal redemption" for us, then, before this highest possible proof, there would be triumphant vindication, and men would be compelled to say that here was a manifestation which showed, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that God is love. One would be justified in believing, notwithstanding all possible sorrows in this or in any other world, that here is a proof which outweighs all that can be alleged on the other side. If the darkness were a thousandfold darker this one fact would dispel it; for it shows that the God who gave the "Only Begotten" has himself taken all things into the account, and that he who sees all the shadows in his universe sees also that they do not overpower this sunshine. He knows his own perfection of love. Browning sings :

"I say the acknowledgment of God in Christ, Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee All questions in the world and out of it."

And again:

"The Divine Instance of self-sacrifice That never ends and aye begins for man, So never miss I footing in the maze. No; I have light, nor fear the dark at all."

The need of God to reveal himself, and equally the need of man to receive such a revelation of the very God himself, is only partially met by sending to the race inspired patriarch, prophet, and apostle. They, taught of God, could teach men ; but teaching can never meet either the divine or the human craving for the coming of God himself. The divine illumination of a mere man and the incarnation of a God are widely different conceptions. Some such way of God's coming as that recorded in the Gospels and some such life as that lived by the Incarnate One described in Scripture story would alone meet the demand. That way of coming would fitly introduce that kind of life which needed to be lived among men, and thus the highest form of certainty would be furnished. 1

3. Is there any other more probable way for such a being to come to us than by some such birth ?

It is clear that no one — not even God — can come into our human race except in the way we all came into it — by a human birth. He must be "born of a

1 There are various kinds of certainty. Mathematical certainty has been much praised. But setting aside the fact that geometry rests entirely on "axioms" which can never be logically proved, though necessarily taken as true, this is clear: that mathematical proof pertains only to mathematics, and is absolutely valueless morally since it has no voluntariness. There is no act of will when we see the demonstration of the forty-seventh proposition of Euclid, and the element of will is a necessity to moral belief and therefore to moral certainty. Thus moral belief is a higher exercise of mind and heart than mere assent to mathematical demonstration. And inductive certainty has also been greatly praised, especially by scientific men; but it has always one element of uncertainty. We can never be quite sure that all the facts are in on which to found the induction. Only Omniscience knows them all on any one subject. Some newly discovered fact in optics or acoustics, some newly applied principle, such as that of evolution, may be the one fact or principle that shall not only change but exactly reverse the world's verdict. The nearest approach to certainty must always be the moral certainty of an earnest and devout soul accepting the facts of a revealed religion and led into their spiritual application by the Spirit of God. It is John, the most spiritual of the New Testament writers, who, before the historic facts of the gospel, uses most frequently the words "We know."