Ernest Renan

“ A high conception of the Divinity -- which he did not owe to Judaism, and which seems to have been in all its parts the creation of his great mind -- was in a manner the source of all his power. It is essential here that we put aside the ideas familiar to us, and the discussions in which little minds exhaust themselves. In order properly to understand the precise character of the piety of Jesus, we must forget all that is placed between the Gospel and ourselves. Deism and Pantheism have become the two poles of theology. ”

“ Jesus added to it nothing durable afterwards. Indeed, in one sense, he compromised it; for every movement, in order to triumph, must make sacrifices; we never come from the contest of life unscathed.
To conceive the good, in fact, is not sufficient; it must be made to succeed among men. To accomplish this less pure paths must be followed. Certainly, if the Gospel was confined to some chapters of Matthew and Luke, it would be more perfect, and would not now be open to so many objections; but would Jesus have converted the world without miracles? ”

“ By this we are all his disciples and his successors; by this he has laid the eternal foundation-stone of true religion; and if religion is essential to humanity, he has by this deserved the Divine rank the world has accorded to him. An absolutely new idea, the idea of a worship founded on purity of heart, and on human brotherhood, through him entered into the world -- an idea so elevated that the Christian Church ought to make it its distinguishing feature, but an idea which, in our days, only few minds are capable of embodying. ”

“ A pure worship, a religion without priests and external observances, resting entirely on the feelings of the heart, on the imitation of God, on the direct relation of the conscience with the heavenly Father, was the result of these principles. Jesus never shrank from this bold conclusion, which made him a thorough revolutionist in the very center of Judaism. Why should there be mediators between man and his Father? ”

“ To Jewish theology the "kingdom of God" is most frequently only Judaism itself -- the true religion, the monotheistic worship, piety. In the later periods of his life Jesus believed that this reign would be realized in a material form by a sudden renovation of the world. But doubtless this was not his first idea. The admirable moral which he draws from the idea of God as Father is not that of enthusiasts who believe the world is near its end, and who prepare themselves by asceticism for a chimerical catastrophe; it is that of men who have lived and still would live. ”

“ The paltry discussions of scholasticism, the dryness of spirit of Descartes, the deep-rooted irreligion of the eighteenth century by lessening God, and by limiting him, in a manner, by the exclusion of everything which is not his very, self, have stifled in the breast of modern rationalism all fertile ideas of the Divinity. ”

“ Very virtuous men, on the other hand, have done nothing to perpetuate in the world the tradition of virtue. The palm is his who has been mighty both in words and in works, who has discerned the good, and at the price of his blood has caused its triumph. Jesus, from this double point of view, is without equal ”

“ Paradise would, in fact, have been brought to earth if the ideas of the young Master had not far transcended the level of ordinary goodness beyond which it has not been found possible to raise the human race. The brotherhood of men, as sons of God, and the moral consequences which result therefrom, were deduced with exquisite feeling. Like all the rabbis of the time, Jesus was little inclined towards consecutive reasonings, and clothed his doctrine in concise aphorisms, and in an expressive form, at times enigmatical and strange. ”

“ Even tradition, a thing so sacred to the Jews, is nothing compared to sincerity. The hypocrisy of the Pharisees, who, in praying, turned their heads to see if they were observed, who gave their alms with ostentation, and put marks upon their garments, that they might be recognized as pious persons -- all these grimaces of false devotion disgusted him. "They have their recompense, said he; "but thou, when thou doest thine alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth, that thy alms may be in secret, and thy Father, which seeth in secret, himself shall reward thee openly." ”

“ Jesus never once gave utterance to the sacrilegious idea that he was God. He believed himself to be in direct communion with God; he believed himself to be the Son of God. The highest consciousness of God which has existed in the bosom of humanity was that of Jesus.
We understand, on the other hand, how Jesus, starting with such a disposition of spirit, could never be a speculative philosopher like Cakya-Mouni. Nothing is further from scholastic theology than the Gospel. The speculations of the Greek fathers on the Divine essence proceed from an entirely different spirit. ”

“ Morality is not composed of more or less well-expressed principles. The poetry which makes the precept loved is more than the precept itself, taken as an abstract truth. Now, it cannot be denied that these maxims borrowed by Jesus from his predecessors produce quite a different effect in the Gospel to that in the ancient Law, in the Pirke Aboth, or in the Talmud. It is neither the ancient Law nor the Talmud which has conquered and changed the world. ”

“ Incense is an abomination unto me; for your hands are full of blood: cease to do evil, learn to do well, seek judgment, and then come." In later times, certain doctors, Simeon the just, Jesus, son of Sirach, Hillel, almost reached this point, and declared that the sum of the Law was righteousness. Philo, in the Judaeo-Egyptian world, attained at the same time as Jesus ideas of a high moral sanctity, the consequences of which was the disregard of the observances of the Law. ”

“ And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also." "If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee." "Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, pray for them that persecute you." ”

“ If God, in fact, is a personal being outside of us, he who believes himself to have peculiar relations with God is a "visionary," and, as the physical and physiological sciences have shown us that all supernatural visions are illusions, the logical Deist finds it impossible to understand the great beliefs of the past. ”

“ Their conviction that God is in them, and occupies himself perpetually with them, is so strong that they have no fear of obtruding themselves upon others: our reserve, and our respect for the opinion of others, which is a part of our weakness, could not belong to them. ”

“ And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues, and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. ”

“ His relations, free and intimate but of an entirely moral kind, with women of doubtful character, are also explained by the passion which attached him to the glory of his Father, and which made him jealously anxious for all beautiful creatures who could contribute to it. ”

“ If he had died at the period of his career we have now reached, there would not have been in his life a single page to wound us; but, greater in the eyes of God, he, would have remained unknown to men ”

“ The spirit of the time favored small churches; it was the period of the Essenes or Therapeutae. Rabbis, each having his distinctive teaching, Shomaia, Abtalion, Hillel, Shammai, Judas the Gaulonite, Gamaliel, and many others whose maxims form the Talmud, appeared on all sides. They wrote very little; the Jewish doctors of this time did not write books ”

“ Pantheism, on the other hand, in suppressing the Divine personality, is as far as it can be from the living God of the ancient religions. Were the men who have best comprehended God -- Cakya-Mouni, Plato, St. ”