GERMAN ANTI-SUPERNATURALISM.

LECTURE I.

I INTEND, in these Lectures, to give you some account of Dr. Strauss's "Life of Jesus;"* a book which I presume most of us have heard of, and heard of in connexions that must have stimulated curiosity to inquire what kind of book it is. It is deserving of attention on many grounds. As an attempted solution (the most noted in recent European literature) of one of the gravest of historical and moral problems; and as an expression of German thought, a development of tendencies that have been working in the German mind since the time of Semler, this work of Strauss's must be interesting alike to the theological inquirer and to the general student: while the reputation which it has acquired, the controversies which it has elicited, together with the critical talent, acuteness, learning and moral uprightness which it manifests in the estimation of the more distinguished even of the Author's opponents, concur in claiming for it a careful examination from all who concern themselves with the subject of which it treats, or with the tendencies and characteristics of German theology. Judging from the impression which the "Life of Jesus" has made upon my own mind, I believe that many of us will think their time and attention well employed in availing themselves of such assistance as it may render towards a clearer understanding of that great question -the Origin of Christianity.

* Das Leben Jesu, kritisch bearbeitet von DR. DAVID FRIEDRICH STRAUSS. Dritte Auflage. Tübingen, 1838.

I take for examination, in this Lecture, Dr. Strauss's Introductory Chapter, which he entitles "The Development of the Mythical Point of View for the Gospel History." Our Author's leading principle, I may here explain, is quite different from that of some others of the theologians of Germany, whose names are most familiar to us as anti-supernaturalists-such, for example, as Eichhorn and Paulus. He is as distinctly opposed to them as they are to the orthodox supernaturalists; agreeing with them in the rejection of miracle, but altogether differing from them in the method by which this common result is evolved. In fact, we may count three distinct schools of theological rationalism (using the word in its largest sense, as denoting disbelief of the supernatural), each having its representatives in German literature. First, is that which we may call anti-Christian rationalism (of course I use the term 'anti-Christian' simply as a matterof-fact designation, without implying by it either praise or blame); the system of those inquirers who regard the miracles of Scripture as juggleries and frauds, and the workers of them as consciously deceiving mankind by forging divine credentials and simulating a divine mission. This is essentially the theory of the celebrated "Wolfenbüttel Fragments," given to the world by Lessing. It is characteristic of this scheme to account Christ a political agitator; the disciples emissaries of sedition; and such a transaction as the entry into Jerusalem, or the driving the traders out of the temple, an abortive attempt at insurrection. I call it 'anti-Christian," because it assumes an antagonistic position towards the character and work of Christ.

Then there is, secondly, what we may designate Christian rationalism, from the historical point of view; the system which regards the narrative books of Scripture as real, honest histories of real events-those events, however, partially misinterpreted by ignorance; resolving the miracles into ill-understood or undesignedly exaggerated natural occurrences, which the rude science of the day interpreted as special acts of Deity attesting the divine mission of the agents. It is characteristic of this theory to regard Christ as a wise and good man, healing

disease by felicitous accident, by medical skill, or by the natural action of his faith on the faith of the patient; and, in every narrative of miracle, to cast about for some supposable germ of fact out of which the mistake or exaggeration might have innocently grown. The great representatives of this school are Eichhorn and Paulus. I call it 'Christian,' because it allows of sympathy with the spirit and character of Christ; its divergence from other modes of Christianity merely respects a question of physical, external fact. And I call it 'historical,' to distinguish it from a third form of anti-supernaturalism, which treats the Scripture narratives of miracle not as authentic histories, but as mythi, poetical and moral fables, having their origin in ideas rather than in facts; expressing a religious faith rather than an historical reminiscence. Not, of course, that a foundation of fact is denied for the histories of Christ; it is granted that Christ had a history, known to us in its general outlines: but it is maintained that we have not data for ascertaining the details of that history; that the original occurrences, whatever they were, come to us in a mythical and legendary dress, from which we cannot confidently separate them; and that it were a vain and hopeless labour to try to guess out the specific facts from which the existing legends have gradually grown, by a process of which we see only the results, but know nothing of its intermediate stages. Floating traditions of what Jesus had been and done, arrayed in a garb of poetic fable answering to the prophetic type of what the Christ ought to be and to do -such, on this system, are the materials of our gospels. It is characteristic of this scheme to doubt the genuineness, the contemporaneous authorship of the historical books of Scripture; and, instead of accounting for the facts recorded by tracing them to a source in other supposed or imagined facts, to account for the record itself by tracing it to a source in pre-existing ideas and traditions, and in general laws of thought and feeling. This is the mythical theory of Christian anti-supernaturalism; Christian' still, like the other, since it implies no antagonism to the moral ideas which are Christianity, but merely theorises upon the outer form in which those

ideas are exhibited. The stronghold of this scheme is obviously in such narratives as those of the nativities of John the Baptist and Jesus; where we have a whole world of legend, evidently constructed after the model of older legendsangels with Hebrew names coming to announce the birth of children; men and women speaking poetry extempore; dreams and visions without stint; the whole done that the prophets might be fulfilled;' one such instance of a made fact being held to indicate tendencies and capabilities in the early Christian mind, which may be supposed to have worked in other instances. This view has been partially adopted by many German theologians: but its complete development and systematic application to the phenomena of the four gospels have been reserved for Dr. Strauss in his "Life of Jesus."

The first section of our Author's Introduction is entitled "The inevitable rise of different ways of explaining sacred histories." He here indicates the source of that tendency to heretical and sceptical dealing with written revelations, which invariably manifests itself as mind advances, in one generation, beyond the ideas and knowledge of a preceding one. "Whenever," he says, "a religion resting upon written records succeeds in diffusing itself through distant lands and times, accompanying its votaries through many progressive stages of mental growth, then, sooner or later, arises a discrepancy between the teachings of such records and the newer culture of those who have been trained to regard them as sacred books." This alienation of men's minds from a documentary religion, will, he proceeds to shew, apply mainly to two points; first, to that ceaseless interposition of Deity, that direct and visible interference of the divine with the human, which (implied in all antique religions) distinctly contradicts the laws of mental and physical being, as these are developed with every new advance of intelligence; and, secondly, to the moral barbarisms which will be found in religions born in times of barbarism. And it will express itself in one or the other of two ways, according to the relative proportions of reverence and of logical acumen in the individual mind. Men will either say, while holding to the religion, Surely,

a divine book never can really mean this thing which the letter of it seems to say'-and then will come a process of interpretation, to mediate and reconcile, and shew that the book may or must mean something very different from the offensive literality; or else they will reject the religion altogether, and say, 'The book which contains such a thing as this is not divine, is an error, or a fraud.'

In one of these two ways, according to our Author, will advancing intelligence and moral refinement re-adjust their relations to a stationary book-religion,—either assuming the divinity of the book as a fixed point, and inferring error in the obnoxious interpretation; or else assuming the justness of the interpretation, and inferring the non-divinity of the book. We have instances of both in our modern theology. The former is the course taken by those very orthodox geologists who interpolate their thousands of years-as many as may be wanted-between the second and third verses of the first chapter of Genesis, to make out Moses sound in the faith of the geological section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science: the latter is the course of those inquirers who venture to question the plenary inspiration of certain Old-Testament books, which exhibit the Deity in attributes not readily distinguishable from those of Homer's Mars. One or the other of these two things will take place in the mutual relations of progressive mind and stationary creed, as surely as mind is mind, and creed is creed.

The history of the Greek mind (as Dr. Strauss goes on to shew in another section) illustrates this conflict between the spirit and the letter. Intelligence and morality were early revolted by the wild conflicts of Hesiod's Theogony, and the loves, hates, and other goings-on of the Homeric Olympus: and so Anaxagoras and others allegorised the mythology of the Iliad into something about virtue and justice, making Homer a teacher of wisdom in fable (which he is, though not quite in that sense); and the Stoics interpreted the wars of the gods symbolically of the elemental strife of nature working herself from a chaos into a world. This was one way of dealing with fables which men had got past believing in;