Octavius Brooks Frothingham

“ The emperor Augustus was deified. His statue on the public square, his insignia on a banner, his name on a shield excited veneration. The noblest religion without a human centre was less prized than the ignoblest with one, and the faith of Israel was compelled to yield to the degrading fascinations of the Bona Dea.
The Christian Jews, with their Messiah, took the popular desire at its best, and satisfied it. The image they presented, though to the mind's eye only, was so much more gracious than the loveliest that eastern or western art furnished that its acceptance was assured. ”

“ The ethics of the New Testament, like the ethics of the Old, have their root in the faith that Israel was a chosen people; in the expectation of a king in whom the faith should be crowned; in the anticipation of a judgment day, a national restoration, a celestial sun-burst, a final felicity for the faithful of Israel. The enthusiasm, the extravagance, the fanaticism, the passive trust, the active intolerance, the asceticism, the arbitrariness, bespeak in the one case as in the other, the presence of an intense but narrow spirit. They are not the ethics of this world. ”

“ The disappearance of the resplendent figure of the Christ from the heaven of our philosophy has not, therefore, come too soon; for thinking, clear-sighted, brave and resolute minds there are. Discerning eyes, bright and gentle, look out and see the fields, sown with new seed, whitening for a new harvest. To such as these Jesus is no longer necessary for faith in humanity, for enthusiasm and constancy in humanity's service. Heroic men and saintly women exist in such numbers and in such variety that they sit in judgment on the judges, and call the censors to account. ”

“ The destruction of Jerusalem put an end to the State more completely than the overthrow of any modern city could do; for the holy city was the home of the [Pg 143] national life in a peculiar sense; it was the seat of the national worship in which the national life centred. With the temple fell the institutions that rested on the temple. When the walls were thrown down and the grand buildings levelled, it was like erasing the marks of history, tearing up the roots of tradition and setting the seal of destiny on the nation's future. ”

“ He is a man, yet is he no man; his flesh is only "the likeness of sinful flesh," liable to death, but not implicating the personality in dying. He is the spiritual, heavenly, ideal man; celestial, glorious, image of God, translucent, sinless, impeccable; pre-existent, of course; without father or mother; an expression of divinity; a creator of new worlds for the habitation of the "Sons of God." His birth is an entrance into humanity from an abode of light. The mission of this transcendent being is, in a word, to break the force of transmitted sin, and reverse the destiny of the race. ”

“ The most valuable part of the effect on the character which Christianity has produced by holding up in a divine person a standard of excellence and a model for imitation, is available even to the absolute unbeliever, and can nevermore be lost to humanity. For it is Christ rather than God whom Christianity has held up to believers as the pattern of perfection for humanity. It is the God incarnate, more than the God of the Jews or of nature, who being idealized has taken so great and salutary a hold on the modern mind ”

“ The standard of moral attainment and the quality of moral character set up as authoritative by any single race, however distinguished, by any one era, however brilliant, abuses and injures the standards of other races, and casts suspicion on the attributes of other generations. The belief that at some time humanity has already come to full flower, discourages the laborers in the human garden. Humanity is still a-making; its perfection is prophecy not history. ”

“ It was time for death to put an end to a situation strained to excess, to snatch him from the embarrassments of a path that had no issue, and, delivered from a trial too protracted, to introduce him, stainless, into the serenity of his heaven."
This is strong language, even shocking to minds accustomed to worship a character of ideal perfection. But it is scarcely bolder than the case warrants. The privilege to pick and choose material has its limits. We have no right to take what pleases us and leave the rest. Statements that rest on equal evidence deserve equal acceptance. ”

“ Why should religion, which has built up more grandeurs than any of them, turn her back to the new day, confess her creative power exhausted, and creep back to the images of her own idolatry? The Christ-idea, become human, will surpass its old triumphs. ”

“ The rest of the life is given to the disciples. The last supper, its agony and distress of mind omitted, is an occasion for impressing on "his own" the lesson of mutual love. The departure of Judas on his errand is the signal for a burst of rapture. Words of consolation, mingled with promises of the "Spirit of Truth," "The Comforter," words of blessing too follow, intended to beget in his friends the feeling that, though absent, he will still be present with them. They are bidden to remember him as the source of their life ”

“ The religion of Israel lacked little but outward prestige of power and wealth to make it precisely what the time required; and in times of real earnestness the prestige of power and wealth is readily dispensed with. The unfashionable faith is the very one to attract worldly people on their first awakening to spiritual sensibility. The show of worldliness is then, to the worldly, particularly offensive. "The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life," delight in abasing themselves before rags and filth, wishing to reach the opposite extreme. ”

“ As a Greek by birth and culture, he was interested in the fate of other nations besides the Jews. A system of religion adapted to the traditions and satisfactory to the hopes of a peculiar people,—a national, exclusive religion in the benefits whereof none but Jews might share, and from whose grace no lineal descendant of Abraham could be excluded, did not commend itself to this man, half Jew, half Greek. The faith that obtained his allegiance, and awoke his zeal must possess a human character by virtue of which its message could be carried to all mankind. ”

“ The great empire was split into fragments, but each long preserved a sense of the unity from which it was broken off. All were leavened more or less with a common idea of civilization, and recognized man as one being in various stages of development, to be trained under one guidance and elevated to one spiritual level. In the two great kingdoms of Egypt and Syria, which sprang out of the Macedonian,—in the two great cities of Alexandria and Antioch, to which the true religion owes so deep a debt,—the unity of the human race was practically asserted and maintained. ”

“ Men are saved, not by natural piety and excellence, but by faith in the Christ as the Logos. The whole sum of Christianity [Pg 111] is conveyed in this one position: the manifestation of the Divine Glory in the Only Begotten Son. This manifestation is of itself, the coming of salvation, the gift of God's life to mankind. By this, the Christ overcomes the powers of darkness and evil. He has come a light into the world; by him come grace and truth; to believe in him is a sign of God's working. He that cometh to him shall never hunger; he that believeth on him shall never thirst. ”

“ But the fourth gospel is a purely literary work; a composition, the production of an artist in language. Its author, perhaps because he was simply an artist in language, is unknown. Trace of an historical Jesus in it there is none. No breath from the world of living men blows through it; no stir of social existence, no movement of human affairs ruffles its calm surface. The people are not real people, the issues are not real issues, the conflict is not a real conflict. ”

“ His actions are phenomenal; the passages of his life do not open into one another, do not lead anywhere; nothing follows anything else, nothing moves; there is no progress towards development. The biography is a succession of scenes, a diorama. There are no sequences or consequences. Stones are taken up, but never thrown; hands are uplifted to strike, but no blow is delivered. The movement to arrest is never carried out. The miracles are not deeds of power or mercy, they are signs, thrown out to attract popular attention, demonstrations of the divine presence ”

“ The breadth and the limitation, the ideal beauty and the practical point were alike Jewish. The gorgeous abstractions, gathered up in one discourse, look like fresh revelations of God; as autumn leaves plucked and set in a vase seem more luminous than do myriads of the same leaves covering the mountains and the meadows, their crimson and gold blending with the brown of the soil and the infinite blue of the sky. ”

“ The critics of Strauss' "Life of Jesus" insisted on the necessity of a historical foundation for his character. Such a person they declared must have lived; he could not have been invented. Strange position to take, in view of the fact that idealization is one of the commonest feats of mankind; that the human imagination is continually constructing heroes out of poltroons, and transmuting lead into gold! Some idealization there is, by the general confession of unprejudiced men. ”

“ The "Acts of the Apostles" is, as elsewhere hinted, prepared with a view of making it appear that no controversy existed; that Peter carried the gospel to the Gentiles, and that Paul insisted on the validity of circumcision, the mark of initiation into the Jewish church. The narrative is so forced, the incidents so artificial, the aim so evident, the limitation of view so marked, that the book betrays its own character. To admit the genuineness of the "Acts" is to throw into confusion the little history that we certainly know, and to unfix the continuity of events. ”

“ He complains bitterly of parents who bring up their children to think more of the laws of Moses than of the laws of their country.—"Some there are, assigned by fortune to Sabbath fearing fathers, who adore nothing but the clouds and the genius of the sky; who see no distinction between the swine's flesh as food and the flesh of man. Habitually despising the laws of Rome, they study, keep and revere the code of Judæa, a tradition given by Moses in a dark volume. The blame is with the father, with whom every seventh day is devoted to idleness, and withdrawn from the uses of life." ”

“ The Messiah's essential conception of his office does not differ materially from that of his countrymen. He is no military leader; he puts no confidence in the sword; he incites to no revolt. But he does not trust to intellectual methods for his success; the success that he anticipates is not such as follows the promulgation of ideas, or the establishment of moral convictions. He looks for demonstrations of power, not human but super-human. ”

“ The believer in the divinity of the Christ planting himself on the doctrine of the Logos, reads his theory into the earlier gospels, loads the language with meaning it was never meant to bear, stretches the homely incidents on the rack of his hypothesis, and painfully excavates the figure he has already laid there. The believer in the humanity of the Christ, pursuing the opposite method, belittles the Johannean conception till it comes within the compass of his argument, dilutes the statements, expurgates and attenuates the thought, till nothing remains but sentimentalism. ”

“ Very singular, but very consistent and logical were the views of death entertained by the brotherhood in Christ. As their Lord delayed his coming, the elders grew old and fell asleep. There was a brotherhood of the dead as well as of the living; the living became few; the dead many. Questions arose respecting the destination of those departed. That they had perished was not to be thought of; as little to be thought of was the possibility of their forfeiting their privilege of sharing the believers' triumph. The resurrection the disciples had always believed in. ”