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.h1
Gita and Gospel
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GITA AND GOSPEL.
BY
NEIL ALEXANDER.
Calcutta
THACKER, SPINK & CO.
1903.
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CALCUTTA:
PRINTED BY THACKER, SPINK AND CO.
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.h2
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
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#Chap. I.—What is the Bhagavadgītā?:chap1# . . . #1#
#Chap. II.—Plato’s Just Man:chap2# . . . #21#
#Chap. III.—The Servant of Jehovah:chap3# . . . #26#
#Chap. IV.—Virgil’s New Age of Justice and Peace:chap4# #36#
#Chap. V.—Jesus of Nazareth:chap5# . . . #41#
#APPENDIX.—Neo-Krishna Literature:appendix# . . . #67#
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ABBREVIATIONS.
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Amalnerkar: Amalnerkar, Priority of the Vedanta-Sutras
over the Bhagavadgītā.
Bose, H. C.: Bose, Hindu Civilization under British Rule.
Deussen: Deussen, Sechzig Upanishad’s des Veda.
Dutt, C. A. I.: Dutt, Civilization in Ancient India.
G.: The Gītā.
Garbe: Garbe, The Philosophy of Ancient India.
Gough: Gough, The Philosophy of the Upanishads.
Hopkins, R. I.: Hopkins, The Religions of India.
Hopkins, G. E. I.: Hopkins, The Great Epic of India.
Kaegi: Kaegi, The Rigveda (Arrowsmith’s translation).
Kidd, P. W. C.: Kidd, Principles of Western Civilization.
Krishnacharitra: Bunkim Chundra Chatterji, Krishnacharitra,
fourth edition.
Macdonell: Macdonell, Sanskrit Literature.
Mommsen: Mommsen, History of Rome.
Monier-Williams: Monier-Williams, Brahmanism and Hinduism.
Müller, A. S. L.: Müller, Ancient Sanskrit Literature,
second edition.
Müller, S. S. I. P.: Müller, Six Systems of Indian Philosophy.
S. B. E.: The Sacred Books of the East.
Schürer, H. J. P.: Schürer, History of the Jewish People in
the Time of Jesus Christ.
Seal: Brajendra Nath Seal, Comparative Studies
in Vaishnavism and Christianity.
Telang: Telang, The Bhagavadgītā, &c. (Sacred
Books of the East, vol. VIII.)
Weber, I. L.: Weber, Indian Literature.
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.h2 id=chap1
CHAPTER I. | WHAT IS THE BHAGAVADGITA?
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In the whole literature of the world there are few poems
worthy of comparison, either in point of general interest, or of
practical influence, with the Bhagavadgītā. It is a philosophical
work, yet fresh and readable as poetry; a book of devotion, yet
drawing its main inspiration from speculative systems; a dramatic
scene from the most fateful battle of early Indian story, yet
breathing the leisure and the subtleties of the schools; founded
on a metaphysical theory originally atheistic,[#] yet teaching the
most reverent adoration of the Lord of all: where shall we find
a more fascinating study? Then its influence on educated India
has been and still is without a rival. Everybody praises the
Upanishads, but very few read them; here and there one finds
a student who turns the pages of a Sūtra or looks into Sankara or
Rāmānuja, but the most are content to believe without seeing.
The Gītā, on the other hand, is read and loved by every educated
man. Nor is there any need to apologize for this partiality: the
Divine Song is the loveliest flower in the garden of Sanskrit
literature.
For the Western mind also the poem has many attractions.
The lofty sublimity to which it so often rises, the practical character
of much of its teaching, the enthusiastic devotion to the one
Lord which breathes through it, and the numerous resemblances
it shows to the words of Christ, fill it with unusual interest for
men of the West. But while it has many points of affinity with
the thought and the religion of Europe, it is nevertheless a genuine
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product of the soil;[#] indeed it is all the more fit to represent
the genius of India that its thought and its poetry are lofty enough
to draw the eyes of the West.
What, then, is the Gītā? Can we find our way to the fountain
whence the clear stream flows?
A. When the dwelling-place of the ancient Aryan tribes
was partly on the outer, partly on the inner, side of the Indus
(primeval patronymic of both India and her religion), and the
tribesmen were equally at home on the farm and on the battlefield,
then it was that the mass of the lyrics that form the Rigveda
were made. We need not stay to set forth the various ways in
which this unique body of poetry is of value to modern thought.
For us it is of interest because it gives us the earliest glimpse of
the religion of the Indo-Aryans. That religion is polytheistic and
naturalistic. The Vedic hymns laud the powers of nature and
natural phenomena as personal gods. They praise also, as distinct
powers, the departed fathers. Such is undoubtedly the
general character of the religion of that age. On the other hand,
the hymns to Varuna bring us very near monotheism indeed.[#]
It is, however, only at a later period when the Aryan conquest
had moved out of the Punjab to the South and West, and
just on the eve of the formation of the Rigveda as a collection of
religious hymns, that we find the beginnings of philosophic speculation.[#]
A few hymns, chiefly in the tenth Mondol, ask questions
about the origin of the universe, and venture some naive guesses
on that tremendous subject. Some of the hymns[#] take for
granted the existence of primeval matter, and ask how or by
whom it was transformed into a cosmos. In others[#] there is more
monotheistic feeling, and a Creator, either Hiranyagarbha or
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Visvakarman, is described. In others[#] the strain of thought is
agnostic.
B. With the collection of the hymns of the Rigveda we
pass into a new and very different period, the literature of which
is altogether priestly. To this age belong the two great sacerdotal
manuals, the Sāmaveda[#] or Chant-book, and the Yajurveda[#]
or Sacrifice-book, and those extraordinary collections of priestly
learning, mythology and mysticism, the Brāhmanas.[#] These books
introduce us to changed times and changed men, to new places
and a new range of ideas. The fresh poetry of the youth of
India has given place to the most prosaic and uninteresting
disquisitions in the whole world.[#] The home of this literature
is the great holy land of Brahman culture, stretching from the
Sutlej on the West to the junction of the Jumna and the Ganges
at Prayāga.[#] In this period the doctrine of the transmigration
of the soul first appears.[#]
C. The Aranyakas[#] and Upanishads[#] place before us a
further development of Indian religion. Reflection led to the
perception of the great truth, that the kernel of religion is not
the ritual act but the heart of piety behind it. Many a man who
had found the endless formulæ and the showy ceremonial of the
sacrifice a serious hindrance to real religion, sought refuge from
the noise and distraction of the popular cult in the lonely silence
of forest or desert. To run over the sacrifice in one’s own mind,
they reasoned, was as acceptable to the gods as to kill the horse
or to pour the ghee upon the altar fire. But they soon reached
the further position, that for the man who has attained TRUE
KNOWLEDGE sacrifice is altogether unnecessary. For knowledge
of the world-soul emancipates a man from the chain of births and
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deaths and leads to true felicity. The main purpose, thus, of the
Upanishads, is to expound the nature of the world-soul. Their
teaching is by no means uniform. Not only do the separate
treatises differ the one from the other; contradictory ideas are
frequently to be met with in the same book. They all tend to
idealistic monism; they all agree in identifying the soul of man
with the world-soul; but on the questions, whether the latter is
personal or impersonal, how spirit and matter are related, and
how the human soul will join the divine soul after death, there is
no unanimity.[#]
There is thus no speculative system to be drawn from these
books. Those of their ideas that are held with settled, serious
conviction, are taught rather dogmatically than philosophically;
and, on the other hand, where there is freedom of thought, there
is rather a groping after the truth than any definite train of illuminative
reasoning. Yet this occasional, conversational, unconventional
character gives these simple and sincere treatises their
greatest charm, and fits them for that devotional use to which so
many generations of pious readers have put them. To this early
period there belong only the first great group of prose Upanishads,
the Brihadāranyaka, Chāndogya, Taittirīya, Aitareya,
Kaushītaki and parts of the Kena.[#]
D. In bold contrast to this unsystematic meditation on the
Eternal Spirit there stands out the severe, clear-cut, scientific
system of Kapila,[#] the first Indian thinker who dared to trust the
unaided human mind. Buddhist tradition recognizes that he preceded
Buddha, and connects him with Kapila-vastu, the birth-place
of Buddha, the site of which was discovered as recently as
December 1896.[#] He drew a sharp distinction between matter
and spirit and declared both to be eternal, without beginning and
without end. The material universe develops in accordance
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with certain laws out of primeval matter, prakriti. Spirit, on
the other hand, exists as an indefinite number of individual souls,
each eternal. There is no supreme divine spirit. The value of
this system lies chiefly in its severely logical method, which
demands that all reasoning shall proceed from the known elements
of experience. It has exercised a very great influence on
Indian thought, partly by its method, but still more perhaps
through its cardinal ideas, the eternity of matter, the eternity of
individual souls, the three gunas, the great cosmic periods, and
kaivalya, i. e., the attainment of salvation through the separation
of the soul from matter. This great system is known by the name
Sānkhya, i. e., enumeration, seemingly on account of the numbering
of the twenty-five tattvas, or principles, which it sets forth.[#]
Such is the Sānkhya system; but it would be dangerous to
affirm that the whole came from Kapila; for no treatise written by
him has come down. The earliest systematic manual of the
philosophy extant to-day is the Sānkhya-Kārikā of Isvara-Krishna,
which dates from the early Christian centuries.[#]
E. Shortly after the Sānkhya system, and in close dependence
upon it, there appeared Buddhism and Jainism; but as
these great religions exercised no very definite influence on the
main stream of Indian thought for several centuries, we shall not
linger over them.
F. We notice next the second great group of Upanishads,
the Katha, Isā, Svetāsvatara, Mundaka, Mahānārāyana,[#] which
are all written in verse. That this group is later than the great
prose Upanishads is abundantly clear from the changed form as
well as from the more developed matter. “As contrasted with
the five above-mentioned Upanishads with their awkward Brāhmana
style and their allegorical interpretations of the ritual, the
Katha Upanishad belongs to a very different period, a time in
which men began to coin the gold of Upanishad thought into
separate metrical aphorisms, and to arrange them together in a
more or less loose connection.”[#] Further signs of their belonging
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to another stage of thought are their references, more or less
clear, to the Sānkhya and Yoga philosophies,[#] and their tendency
to adopt the doctrine of Grace,[#] i.e., that salvation is not a fruit of
true knowledge, but a gift of God. The idea of Bhakti, which
became afterwards so popular, appears in this group of Upanishads
only once.[#] Here also for the first time in Sanskrit literature the
word Sānkhya occurs as the name of a system.[#]
But while these five metrical treatises are clearly later than
the prose Upanishads, scholars are not agreed on the question of
their relation to the great systems. Some[#] hold that the Katha
is earlier, others[#] that it is later, than Buddhism; Weber[#] believes
that the Svetāsvatara, Mundaka, and Mahānārāyana depend not
only on Kapila’s system, but also on the Yoga Sūtras of Patanjali
(see below), while others[#] believe that in these Upanishads
we have scattered pieces of teaching which were later systematized.
But whatever be the truth on these points, it is clear that
these five are posterior to the first group, that their relative age is
Katha, Isā, Svetāsvatara, Mundaka and Mahānārāyana,[#] and
that this last belongs to quite a late date.[#] Along with these
verse Upanishads we may take three prose works, which are
manifestly still later,[#] the Prasna, Maitrāyanīya and Māndūkya.
G. Several centuries after the Sānkhya there appeared the
Yoga philosophy, the text-book of which is the Yoga Sūtras.
According to Indian tradition the founder of the school and the
author of the Sūtras was Patanjali,[#] the well-known scholar who
wrote the Mahābhāshya on Pānini’s grammar. He accepts the
metaphysics of the Sānkhya system, but postulates the existence
of a personal god, and urges the value of Yoga practices for the
attainment of Kaivalya, that isolation of the soul from matter,
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which, according to Kapila, is true salvation. Thus not one of
the three main elements of his system is original; for Yoga
practices have existed from a very early date in India. Yet his
system is sufficiently marked off from others, first by his combination
of Yoga practices with Sānkhya principles and a theistic
theology, and, secondly, by his systematic treatment of Yoga
methods.[#]
H. Later still than the Yoga philosophy is the systematic
statement of the Vedānta point of view by Bādarāyana in his
Sūtras, which are known either as Brahma-sūtras, Sārīraka-sūtras
or Vedānta-sūtras.[#]
I. We next notice the latest development of Upanishad
teaching, namely, that found in the Upanishads of the Atharvaveda.
With the exception of three, namely, the Mundaka, Prasna
and Māndūkya Upanishads, which we have already noticed, they
are all very late.[#] They fall into four great groups, according as
they teach (a) pure Vedantism, (b) Yoga practices, (c) the life of
the Sannyāsin, or (d) Sectarianism.[#] For our purpose the last of
the four is of the most importance. “These sectarian treatises
interpret the popular gods Siva (under various names, such as
Isāna, Mahesvara, Mahādeva) and Vishnu (as Nārāyana and
Nrishinha) as personifications of the Atman. The different
Avatārs of Vishnu are here regarded as human manifestations of
the Atman.”[#] Let readers note that the doctrine of Avatārs is
quite unknown in the Vedas, the Brāhmanas, the early Upanishads
and the Sūtras.[#] We may also note that in groups (a) and
(b) we find what is not found in earlier Upanishads, namely, the
phrase Sānkhya-Yoga used as the name of a system.[#] Here also
the doctrines of Grace and Bhakti, the beginnings of which we
found in the verse Upanishads, are regularly taught.
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J. The last development that we need mention is the teaching
of the Mahābhārata and Manu. We take them together,
not only because each of them is the final product of long
centuries of growth and compilation, but because they are so
closely related to each other in origin, that it is hardly possible
to take them separately.[#] In the first book of the Mahābhārata
we are told that the poem originally consisted of only 8,800
slokas, and that at a later date the number was 24,000. The
complete work now contains over 100,000 slokas.[#] We need not
here enquire when the simple heroic lays were composed, which
lie at the basis of the great composition as it has come down to
us; nor need we stay to decide at what period it finally reached its
present labyrinthine structure and immense dimensions.[#] It is
sufficient for our purpose to notice that scientific investigations
have laid bare four stages in the formation of the Epic:—(a)
early heroic songs, strung together into some kind of unity: this
is the stage recognised in Book I, when the poem had only 8,800
slokas, and is in all probability the point at which it is referred to
by Asvalāyana; (b) a Mahābhārata story with Pandu heroes, and
Krishna as a demi-god: this is the form in which it had 24,000
slokas, and is the stage of the poem referred to by Pānini; (c) the
Epic re-cast, with Krishna as All-god, and a great deal of didactic
matter added; (d) later interpolations.[#] Scholars are able to fix,
within certain limits, the dates of these various stages. We need
not attempt to be so precise: for us it is enough that the representation
of Krishna as the Atman belongs to the third stage of the
growth of the Epic. Parallel with this third stage is the final redaction
of Manu.[#] The philosophic standpoint of these two great
works is practically the same, being now the Sānkhya-Yoga, now
a mixture of Sānkhya, Yoga and Vedantic elements.[#]
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But the main thing to notice is that in these books we are
already in modern Hinduism. Turning from the Vedas to them
we find ourselves in an altogether new world. There are many
new gods; most of the old divinities have fallen to subordinate
places. New customs, new names and ideas are found everywhere.
The language too has changed: new words, new expressions and
new forms occur in plenty; old words occur in new senses;
while many others have disappeared.[#]
.tb
Let us now turn to the Gītā. What is its place in this long
succession? Clearly it is posterior, not only to our first, but also
to our second group of Upanishads. For it echoes the Katha,
the Svetāsvatara, and several of the others repeatedly;[#] its
versification is decidedly later in character;[#] the doctrines of
Grace and of Bhakti, which are found in these Upanishads only
in germ, are fully developed in the Gītā;[#] while the whole theory
of Krishna is a fresh growth.
The Gītā may also be shewn to belong to the same age as the
Atharvan Upanishads. It has in common with them (a) the
identification of Krishna and Vishnu with the Atman, (b) the
doctrine of Avatārs,[#] (c) the doctrines of Grace and Bhakti, (d)
the Sānkhya-Yoga.
But we may go further, and show that the Gītā is in its teaching,
in general, parallel with the third stage of the Mahābhārata
and with Manu. For while the usual philosophic standpoint in the
Song is Sānkhya-Yoga, there are frequent lapses to the Vedānta;
and there is an evident effort here and there to combine all three.[#]
This is precisely the position of Manu and the Epic, as we have
seen. Note that in the Gītā the Yoga philosophy is already old,
so old that it has fallen into decay, and requires to be resuscitated.[#]
The Sānkhya is not a loose group of ideas, but a formed
system, as appears from the phrases Sānkhya-Kritānta[#] and
Guna-sankhyāna.[#] Kapila, its author, is so far in the past that he
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is canonized as the chief of the Siddhas.[#] There are many minor
points which the Gītā holds in common with the Mahābhārata, and
which are not found earlier. The latter half of the tenth chapter
is full of Epic mythology. There Skanda is the great warrior-god,[#]
as in the Mahābhārata,[#] there too we find the horse Uccaihsravas,[#]
the elephant Airāvata,[#] the snake Vāsuki,[#] the fish
Makara.[#] Nirvāna is used in the Gītā[#] for ‘highest bliss,’
‘Brahmic bliss,’ precisely as in the Epic.[#] In the Mahābhārata
Bhīshma, after receiving his mortal wound, has to wait for the
Uttarāyana (the northward journey of the sun), i. e., he has to
wait until the sun passes the southern solstice, before he can die
in safety.[#] In the Gītā we find a similar idea: only those devotees
who die during the Uttarāyana go to Brahman; those who
die during the Dakshināvana return to earth.[#] This dogma is
not found in the early Upanishads nor yet in the Sūtras.[#]
A study of the language of the Gītā[#] leads to the same conclusion.
A portion of its vocabulary is the same as that of the
first group of Upanishads; a larger portion coincides with our
second group; a still larger coincides with the diction of the
Atharvan group; and finally, much that is found in no Upanishad
is characteristic of the Epic.
We need not attempt to fix the date[#] of the poem, for that is
not only impossible as yet, but is quite unnecessary for our purpose.
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What we wish to do is to show that the religious literature of
India displays a long, regular, evolutionary process, that the Gītā
belongs to the same period as the third stage of the Mahābhārata,
and is itself clearly the result of all the preceding development.
.tb
Can we then accept the declaration of the poem itself, that
it was uttered by Krishna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra?—That
necessarily depends upon the history and the chronology.
At what point then in the historical development of the literature
which we have been studying does the famous battle stand?—According
to all scholars the great war and the compilation of
the Vedas both belong to the same period.[#]
The results of our study may, therefore, be tabulated as
follows, with the proviso that the long process of the growth
of the Epic cannot be fully represented:—
.pm verse-start
The Hymns of the Vedas.
Compilation of the Vedas . . . KURUKSHETRA.
The Brāhmanas.
The prose Upanishads.
Kapila.
Buddhism and Jainism.
The verse Upanishads.
Patanjali.
Bādarāyana.
The Atharvan Upanishads.
The third stage of the Epic and Manu . . . THE GITA.
.pm verse-end
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It has thus become perfectly clear that The Gītā cannot
have been uttered on the battlefield of Kurukshetra;
for it is the last member of a long series, the final product of a
clearly defined and elaborate process of development. To ascribe
the Gītā to the age of Kurukshetra is much the same as if one
were to ascribe the poetry of Tennyson to the age of Alfred the
Great. A thousand years intervene; the thought and toil of a
millennium were needed to produce the great result.
Had Krishna uttered these doctrines on the famous battlefield,
we should inevitably have found references to them in the literature
produced during the following centuries. But where in the
Brāhmanas do we find any of the leading ideas of the Gītā?
Even if men had disbelieved Krishna, his claim to be God incarnate
would at least have drawn out a protest; but in no single
Brāhmana or early Upanishad is there the slightest hint of anything
of the kind. So far from there being any corroboration of the
great myth in early literature, there is the clearest proof that it is
false. In the Kāthaka recension of the Black Yajur Veda king
Dhritarāshtra is mentioned as a well-known person[#]; yet in the
whole literature of the Black Yajur there is no suggestion that
Krishna claimed divine honours. The Satapatha Brāhmana,
which is a product of the Kuru-Panchāla country,[#] contains the
names of a number of the heroes of the great war,[#] but never refers
to Krishna as God incarnate; while in the Chāndogya Upanishad,[#]
which belongs to the same district,[#] he is spoken of merely as a
man: he is mentioned as a pupil of Ghora Angirasa and is called
Krishna Devakiputra.[#] Nay, even in the earliest part of the Mahābhārata
itself Krishna is only a great chief, and not a deity at all.[#]
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Finally, the references to Pandu heroes and to the worship of
Krishna and Arjuna in Pānini,[#] would lead to the conclusion
that in Pānini’s day Krishna was not regarded as the supreme
God, but as one among many;[#] and this cautious inference is
corroborated by the fact that the Mahābhāshya itself does not
recognize him as the incarnation of Brahma, but as a hero and
demi-god.[#] Thus the whole of the Vedic literature, and the whole
of the Sūtra literature, are destitute of a single reference to Krishna
as the incarnation of the Supreme. There is only one conclusion
to be drawn from this overwhelming mass of evidence.[#]
It is strange that educated Hindus should have clung so long
to the idea that the Gītā is a real utterance of Krishna. The very
fact that the poem has always been regarded, not as Sruti, but
simply as Smriti, should have been enough to suggest the truth.
A piece of genuine divine teaching, uttered in such circumstances,
and before the composition of the earliest Upanishads, would
have inevitably found a place among the most authoritative
scriptures of the faith. The fact of its having been always
regarded as Smriti is sufficient proof by itself that the book does
not belong to the Vedic age at all. Another consideration ought
also by itself to have been sufficient to save Hindus from such
a grave error, namely, this, that no great religious advance or
upheaval followed the time when Krishna is supposed to have
lived and taught. Contrast the mighty revolutions that followed
the work of Buddha, of Christ and of Mahommed; and the
emptiness of the Krishna claim will become at once apparent.
Again, the subject of all the early Upanishads is the nature
of the Supreme Spirit, whether called the Atman or Brahma. If
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on the field of Kurukshetra, Krishna had claimed to be the
Supreme, as the Gītā says he did, can any one believe that the
claim could have been passed unnoticed in the Upanishads?
Krishna is mentioned in the Chāndogya; Brahma is the subject
of the Chāndogya: yet there is not the slightest hint anywhere
that Brahma has been incarnated, far less that Krishna is Brahma.
Such evidence is surely irresistible.
One reason why the truth about this myth has been so long
in finding its way into the minds of educated Hindus is undoubtedly
to be found in the wretchedly inadequate way in which
Sanskrit literature is taught in the Universities of India. In
Calcutta at least most men who take Sanskrit as one of their subjects
for the B. A. Degree get through their examination without
having the slightest knowledge of the history of the literature.[#]
For some curious results of this very deficient training, see the
Appendix.
With Krishna, all the other so-called Avatārs vanish; for they
rest on foundations still more flimsy and fanciful. They merely
serve as signal proofs of the tendency inherent in the Hindu mind
to believe in incarnations and to see such around them. This
tendency was already living and creative long before the Christian
era, and it has kept its vitality down to the present day; for
though Chaitanya, the sixteenth-century reformer, is the most
noteworthy of those who within recent times have been counted
Avatārs, he is by no means the last: the late Ramkrishna Paramhamsa
was regarded as such,[#] and some of her admirers claim
the same honour for Mrs. Annie Besant.[#] Further, this making
of Avatārs is but one aspect of that passion for deifying men which
has characterized Hinduism from first to last,[#] a passion which
has set many a modern Englishman among the gods. Even such
a whole-hearted Christian as John Nicholson did not escape.[#]
// File: 021.png
.pn +1
The story, then, that Krishna uttered the Song on the battlefield,
is a pious imagination. All scholars hold the war to be
historical; Krishna’s name can be traced in the literature from the
Upanishads downwards; it is possible, or even probable, that he
was a Kshattriya prince[#] who fought in the war; but the assertion
that on the field he claimed to be the supreme being, is absolutely
negatived by all the early history and literature of India.
.tb
How then are we to account for the Gītā? Whence came
its power and its beauty? and how did it reach the form it has?—We
must recognise the action of three factors in the formation of
the Song, the philosophy, the worship of Krishna, and the author.
We have already traced in outline the genesis of the philosophy;
there remain the cult and the author.
All our scholars recognize that Krishna-worship has existed in
India since the fourth century B. C. at least; for there can be no
doubt that, when Megasthenes says that Herakles was worshipped
in Methora and Kleisobora,[#] he means that Krishna was worshipped
in Mathura and Krishnapur. How much further back the
cult goes we have no means of learning. Nor does it really
matter for our purpose. The important thing to realize is the
existence of this worship of Krishna, before his identification with
Vishnu[#] and final exaltation to the place of the supreme pantheistic
divinity.
The author of the Gītā was clearly a man of wide and deep
culture. He had filled his mind with the best religious philosophy
of his country. He was catholic rather than critical, more inclined
to piece things together than to worry over the differences
// File: 022.png
.pn +1
between them. Each of the philosophic systems appealed to his
sympathetic mind: he was more impressed with the value of each
than with the distinctions between them. But his was not only a
cultured but a most reverent mind. He was as fully in sympathy
with Krishna-worship as with the philosophy of the Atman. Indeed,
it was the union of these qualities in him that fitted
him to produce the noblest and purest expression of modern
Hinduism. For Hinduism is just the marriage of ancient
Brāhmanical thought and law with the popular cults. But
without his splendid literary gifts the miracle would not have been
possible. The beauty, precision and power of the diction of the
poem, and its dignity of thought, rising now and then to sublimity,
reveal but one aspect of his masterly literary ability.
Much of the success of the poem arises from his genuine appreciation
of the early heroic poems, which he heard recited around
him, and from his consequent decision to make his own Song, in
one sense at least, a heroic poem. Lastly, there is the shaping
spirit of imagination, without which no man can be a real poet.
With him this power was introspective rather than dramatic.
No poet with any genuine dramatic faculty would have dreamed
of representing a warrior as entering on a long philosophic discussion
on the field of battle at the very moment when the armies
stood ready to clash. On the other hand, what marvellous insight
is displayed in his representation of Krishna! Who else could
have imagined with such success how an incarnate god would
speak of himself? Nor must we pass on without noticing that,
though the situation in which the Song is supposed to have been
produced is an impossible one, yet for the author’s purpose it is
most admirably conceived: how otherwise could the main thought
of the book—philosophic calm leading to disinterested action—have
been so vividly impressed on the imagination?
This author, then, formed the idea of combining the loftiest
philosophy of his country with the worship of Krishna. He
would intertwine the speculative thought that satisfied the intellect
with the fervid devotion which even the uncultured felt for a god
who was believed to have walked the earth. Philosophy would
thus come nearer religion, while religion would be placed on far
surer intellectual ground. His tastes led him to connect his work
// File: 023.png
.pn +1
with the romantic poems of the day; his genius suggested the
situation, a dialogue between a noble knight and the incarnate
divinity; his catholicity taught him to interweave the Sānkhya
with the Yoga and both with the Vedānta; and as we have seen,
his penetrative imagination was equal to the creation of the
subjective consciousness of a god-man.
We can now answer the question which stands at the head
of this chapter, What is the Bhagavadgītā? It consists of two
distinct elements, one old, one original. The philosophy is old;
for it is only a very imperfect combination[#] of what is taught
in earlier books. The original element is the teaching put into
Krishna’s mouth about his own person and the relation in which
he stands to his own worshippers and to others. Of this part
of the teaching of the Gītā we here give a brief analysis:—
.pm letter-start
Krishna is first of all the source of the visible world. All
comes from him,[#] all rests in him.[#] At the end of a Kalpa
everything returns to him,[#] and is again reproduced.[#]
He pervades all things;[#] and again, in another sense,
he is all that is best and most beautiful in nature and
in man.[#] But while Krishna is thus the supreme
power in the universe,[#] he is altogether without personal
interest in the activity therein displayed:[#] he sits unconcerned,[#]
always engaged in action,[#] yet controlling
his own nature,[#] and therefore never becoming bound
// File: 024.png
.pn +1
by the results of his action.[#] This conception of the
Supreme, as at once the centre of all activity and yet
completely detached, enables the author, on the one
hand, to soften the seemingly hopeless contradiction
involved in identifying the king, warrior and demon-slayer,
Krishna, with the passionless, characterless
Atman[#] of the Upanishads, and, on the other to
hold up Krishna as the supreme example of Action
Yoga.
We now turn to Krishna’s relation to his worshippers.
Knowledge is good;[#] mental concentration is better;[#]
disinterested action is better than either;[#] but the
supreme wisdom is faith in Krishna and boundless
devotion to him.[#] Such is the teaching of the Gītā.
The worst epithets are kept for those who fail to
recognise him as the Supreme, who disregard him,
carp at him, hate him.[#] To those who resort to
Krishna,[#] who place faith in him,[#] who shower on
him their love, devotion and worship,[#] who rest on
him,[#] think of him[#] and remember him[#] at all times,—to
them are promised forgiveness,[#] release from the
// File: 025.png
.pn +1
bonds of action,[#] attainment of tranquillity,[#] true
knowledge[#] and final bliss[#] in Krishna.[#]
Since all the gods come from Krishna,[#] and since he is in
the last resort the sole reality,[#] worship offered to
other gods is in a sense offered to him.[#] He accepts
it and rewards it.[#] This is in accordance with his
indifference to men: to him no one is hateful, no one
dear.[#] Yet the highest blessings fall only to those
who recognize him directly.[#]
.pm letter-end
Clearly our author formed his conception of the man-god
with great skill, and fitted it into his general scheme with all the
care and precision he was capable of. On this elaboration of
the self-consciousness of Krishna he concentrated all his intellectual
and imaginative powers. And with what unequalled success!
Could any greater compliment be paid an author than to have
sixty generations of cultured readers take the creation of his
mind for a transcript from history?
.tb
The masses of evidence we have marshalled to prove that
Krishna never claimed to be God, may be briefly summarised as
follows:—
1. The situation in which the Gītā is said to have been
uttered at once strikes the historical student as suspicious: one
can scarcely believe that there was ever a battle in which such
a thing could have taken place; and, on the other hand, it makes
such an excellent background to the theory of Action Yoga, that
one cannot help believing that it was invented for the very
purpose. Further investigation leads to the following results:—
2. The characteristic religious and philosophical ideas of
the Gītā are not found in any books produced immediately after
the age of Kurukshetra. If we start with the teaching of that
// File: 026.png
.pn +1
age, we have to trace the stages of a long and clearly-marked
development before we reach the ideas of the Gītā.
3. The diction of the Gītā is not the Vedic Sanskrit of the
early Brāhmanas (which are the literature of the period following
Kurukshetra), but belongs to a very much later stage of the
language.
4. The fact that the Gītā is not sruti, but smriti, proves that
it comes neither from Krishna, nor from the time of Kurukshetra.
5. Krishna Devakiputra is known in the later Vedic literature
as a man, and in the Sūtra literature as a hero or demi-god, but
never as the supreme being.
6. The fact that there is not a single reference in the whole
of the Vedic literature, nor yet in the Sūtra literature, to Krishna
as the incarnation of Brahma, makes it impossible for us to
believe that at the battle of Kurukshetra he claimed to be such.
7. The fact that there was no revival or reformation of
religion in the age of Kurukshetra proves that God was not
incarnated then.
.fn #
The philosophic basis of the book is primarily the Sānkhya system
which is essentially atheistic.
.fn-
.fn #
Dr. Lorinser’s attempt (Die Bhagavadgītā, übersetzt und erläutert
von Dr. F. Lorinser, 1869) to prove that the author of the Gītā borrowed
many ideas from the Bible must be pronounced a failure. Cf. Garbe, 19, 83-85;
Max Müller, Natural Religion, 97-100; Hopkins, R. I., 429.
.fn-
.fn #
On the religion of the Rigveda see Kaegi, 27-74; Hopkins, R. I.,
Chaps. II-VI; Macdonell, 67-115; Bose, H.C., I, 6-9; Dutt, C.A.I., Vol. I,
Chap. V; Monier-Williams, Chap. I.
.fn-
.fn #
Hopkins, R.I., 141; Macdonell, 385; Garbe, 1-2; Kaegi, 87.
.fn-
.fn #
E.g., X, 90.
.fn-
.fn #
X, 81; 82; 121.
.fn-
.fn #
X, 129.
.fn-
.fn #
Kaegi, 3; Macdonell, 171-174.
.fn-
.fn #
Kaegi, 4; Macdonell, 174-185.
.fn-
.fn #
Kaegi, 5; Macdonell, 202 ff.; Müller, A.S.L., Chap. II; Bose, H.C.,
I, 9-12.
.fn-
.fn #
Müller, A.S.L., 389.
.fn-
.fn #
Hopkins, R.I., 177.
.fn-
.fn #
Gough, Chap. I; Garbe, 2-7; Macdonell, 223; Hopkins, R.I., 204.
.fn-
.fn #
Müller, A.S.L., 313 ff.; Macdonell, 204; Kaegi, 5.
.fn-
.fn #
Müller, A.S.L., 316 ff.; Macdonell, 218 ff.; Kaegi, 5; Bose, H.C., I,
12-19.
.fn-
.fn #
For the teaching of the Upanishads see Gough; Hopkins, R. I.,
Chap. X; Garbe, 7-10.
.fn-
.fn #
See Deussen on each of these Upanishads, especially p. 264; and
Cf. Macdonell, 226.
.fn-
.fn #
Garbe, 10; Macdonell, 390, 393.
.fn-
.fn #
Führer, Monograph on Buddha Sakyamuni’s Birthplace, Arch. Surv. of
India, Vol. XXVI, Allahabad, 1897; Macdonell, 13.
.fn-
.fn #
For the Sānkhya system, see Garbe, 10, 11, 29, 36, 45; Macdonell, 390-395;
Dutt, C. A. I., Vol. I, pp. 276 ff.
.fn-
.fn #
Macdonell, 393.
.fn-
.fn #
Macdonell, 226; Deussen, 261, 523, 288, 544, 241.
.fn-
.fn #
Deussen, 264.
.fn-
.fn #
Katha, 3, 10-13; 6, 6; 6, 7-11; 6, 14-18; Svet. passim; Mundaka, 2, 1,
1-3; Mahānār, 63, 21. Cf. Deussen, ad loca.
.fn-
.fn #
Katha, 2, 23; Svet. 3, 20; Mundaka, 3, 2-3. Cf. Hopkins, R.I., 238.
.fn-
.fn #
Svet. 6, 23.
.fn-
.fn #
Svet. 6, 13.
.fn-
.fn #
Müller, Anthrop. Rel., 345; Oldenberg, Budda, 56.
.fn-
.fn #
Weber, Sitz. Berli. Ak. 1890, p. 930.
.fn-
.fn #
I. L., 159.
.fn-
.fn #
Deussen, 291, 308.
.fn-
.fn #
Deussen, ad loca; Macdonell, 226.
.fn-
.fn #
Deussen, 242.
.fn-
.fn #
Deussen, ad loca; Macdonell, 226.
.fn-
.fn #
Garbe, 14; Macdonell, 396; Hopkins, R. I., 495.
.fn-
.fn #
For the Yoga system, see Garbe, 14-15; Macdonell, 396-399; Dutt,
C. A. I., Vol. I, pp. 285 ff.
.fn-
.fn #
Garbe, 16-18; Macdonell, 400-402.
.fn-
.fn #
Deussen, 4; Macdonell, 238; Dutt, C. A. I., Vol. I, 119; Garbe, 69.
.fn-
.fn #
Deussen, 541-543; Macdonell, 238-239.
.fn-
.fn #
Macdonell, 239. Cf. Deussen, 543; Weber, I. L., 153 ff.
.fn-
.fn #
Bose, H.C., Vol. I, 4.
.fn-
.fn #
Garbha, 4; Prānāgnihotra, 1; Sūlika, passim.
.fn-
.fn #
Macdonell, 428; Hopkins, G. E. I., 18-23.
.fn-
.fn #
Macdonell, 282-4.
.fn-
.fn #
See Hopkins, G. E. I., Chap. VI; R.I. 350; Macdonell, 285-288.
.fn-
.fn #
Hopkins, G. E. I., 397-398; Macdonell, 283-286. Bunkim Chundra
recognizes the second, third and fourth of these stages: see Krishnacharitra,
Chap. XI.
.fn-
.fn #
The Ordinances of Manu, Burnell and Hopkins, pp. XIX-XXVIII;
Macdonell, 428.
.fn-
.fn #
Hopkins, G. E. I., Chap. III; R. I., 265.
.fn-
.fn #
Hopkins, R. I., Chaps. XIV and XV; Bose, H. C., Vol. I, 3.
.fn-
.fn #
See Telang’s translation throughout, and cf. Hopkins, G. E. I., 28-46;
Amalnerkar, 4-5.
.fn-
.fn #
Telang, 15.
.fn-
.fn #
Cf. Hopkins, R. I., 429.
.fn-
.fn #
G., IV, 8.
.fn-
.fn #
Hopkins, R. I., 399.
.fn-
.fn #
G., IV, 1-3.
.fn-
.fn #
G., XVIII, 13.
.fn-
.fn #
G., XVIII, 19.
.fn-
.fn #
G., X, 26. This is a noticeable point; for Kapila is the only founder of
a philosophical system known to the Epic; he alone is authoritative in all
philosophical matters. See Hopkins, G. E. I., 97.
.fn-
.fn #
G., X, 24.
.fn-
.fn #
See Hopkins, R. I., 414.
.fn-
.fn #
G., X, 27.
.fn-
.fn #
G., X, 27.
.fn-
.fn #
G., X, 28.
.fn-
.fn #
G., X, 31.
.fn-
.fn #
G., II, 72; V, 24; 25; 26; VI, 15.
.fn-
.fn #
Hopkins, G. E. I., 88; R. I., 427.
.fn-
.fn #
Mahābhārata, Bhīshma Parvan.
.fn-
.fn #
G., VIII, 24-25.
.fn-
.fn #
Amalnerkar, 13.
.fn-
.fn #
See Jacob’s Concordance to the Principal Upanishads and Bhagavadgītā.
.fn-
.fn #
Mr. Justice Telang was inclined to put the date before the third century
B.C., but his otherwise most judicious criticism is faulty in this that it does not
take all the factors of the problem into consideration. Others, such as Müller,
Weber, Davies and Lorinser, incline to a very late date, about the third century
A.D. Most writers believe that the true date lies between these extremes.
So Monier-Williams, Hopkins, Fraser and others. Prof. Amalnerkar’s
pamphlet contains a number of most interesting points. His contention, that
the phrase, Brahmasūtrapadaih (G. XIII, 4) refers to the Vedānta Sūtras,
and that the Gītā is therefore the later work of the two, has been accepted by
Max Müller (S. S. I. P., 155), but Prof. Hopkins thinks the Gītā is earlier
than the Sūtra (R. I., 400). The theory which Prof. Hopkins holds, that
the Divine Song was originally an Upanishad, and that it was redacted, first
as a Vishuite poem, and then a second time in the interests of Krishnaism
(R. I., 389), would account, on the one hand, for the numerous inconsistencies
in its teaching, and, on the other, for the very conflicting signs of date which
it presents. For a criticism of Bunkim Chundra’s views, see the Appendix.
.fn-
.fn #
Dutt, C. A. I., Vol. I, 9-11; Bunkim Ch. Chatterji, Krishnacharitra,
46; Macdonell, 174-175, 285; Hopkins, R. I., 33, 177-179.
.fn-
.fn #
Macdonell, 285; Weber, I. L., 90.
.fn-
.fn #
S. B. E., Vol. XII, pp. XLI-XLII; Macdonell, 213.
.fn-
.fn #
S. B. E., Vol. XIV, Index. Cf. Weber, I. L., 186; Krishnacharitra, 31.
.fn-
.fn #
3, 17, 6. See Dutt, C. A. I., Vol. I, 189; Weber, I. L., 71; Bose,
H. C., Vol. I, 26; Hopkins, R. I., 465.
.fn-
.fn #
Weber, I. L., 70.
.fn-
.fn #
Whether Krishna Angirasa in the Kaushītaki Brāhmana be the same
person as Krishna Devakiputra, or not, we cannot tell.
.fn-
.fn #
Dutt, C. A. I., Vol. I, 127; Bose, H. C., Vol. I, 33-34; Hopkins, R. I.,
403; Monier-Williams, 112.
.fn-
.fn #
The reference to Krishna and Arjuna runs Vāsudevārjunābhyām vun
(IV, 3, 98), words which put the two on one level.
.fn-
.fn #
Hopkins, G. E. I., 390-395.
.fn-
.fn #
Hopkins, G. E. I., 395.
.fn-
.fn #
We need not stay to ask whether the Srimadbhāgavat and other
Purānas can be trusted as evidence for the life of Krishna; for all scholars
agree that, while ancient Purānas existed, all those that have come down to
us reflect a later stage of Hinduism than that of the Mahābhārata; and that,
while they contain much that is old scattered up and down their pages, the
oldest fragments are of the same general date as the Mahābhārata and Manu.
Hopkins, R. I., 434-445; Macdonell, 299-302; Dutt, C. A. I., I, 19; II, 211;
Müller, A. S. L., 61; Kaegi, 8, 105; Krishnacharitra, Chaps. XIV-XVI.
.fn-
.fn #
The study of Prof. Macdonell’s excellent manual ought surely now to
be made part of any Sanskrit course prescribed for a University degree in
India.
.fn-
.fn #
Bose, H. C., Vol. I, 5.
.fn-
.fn #
The Student’s Chronicle, May 1903, p. 6.
.fn-
.fn #
For some amusing instances see Hopkins, R. I., 522, note, and cf.
Monier-Williams, Chap. X.
.fn-
.fn #
Monier-Williams, 260.
.fn-
.fn #
Garbe, 85; Monier-Williams, 98, 112, note.
.fn-
.fn #
McCrindle, Ancient India, 201. Cf. Hopkins, R. I., 459; Macdonell,
411; Dutt, C. A. I., Vol. I, 219; Garbe, 19, 83.
.fn-
.fn #
That it was only at a very late date that this identification took place is
evident from the fact that it is not once mentioned in the early literature.
Even in two of the Vishnu Upanishads of the Atharva Veda, the Atmabodha,
and the Nārāyana, Krishna is referred to as a mere man. Apart from the
Gītā and the Mahābhārata, the earliest reference to him as God incarnate
is in the Gopālatāpanīyopanishad. See Weber, I. L., 169; and cf. Garbe,
18-19, 85; Bose, H. C., Vol. I, 25-26; Dutt, C. A. I., Vol. II, 191.
.fn-
.fn #
For the inconsistencies of the Gītā, see Telang, p. 11; Hopkins, R. I.,
390, 399, 400.
.fn-
.fn #
VII, 6; 10; IX, 8; 10; 13; XIV, 3.
.fn-
.fn #
VII, 7; IX, 5.
.fn-
.fn #
IX, 7.
.fn-
.fn #
IX, 7.
.fn-
.fn #
IX, 4.
.fn-
.fn #
VII, 8-11; X, 20-38.
.fn-
.fn #
IX, 10; 17-18.
.fn-
.fn #
IV, 14.
.fn-
.fn #
IX, 9.
.fn-
.fn #
III; 22-24.
.fn-
.fn #
This is Telang’s translation of two very difficult, yet very instructive
phrases. In the Gītā the word prakriti is used, first for the primeval matter
of the Sānkhya system (III, 27; 29; IX, 8, 10, 12; XIII, 19, 20, 23, 29),
and secondly for the primeval matter of personal character, each man’s
natural disposition (III, 33; VII, 20; XI, 51; XVIII, 59). There is then a
third class of passages in which the word is used in the Sānkhyan sense, but,
by the addition of a personal pronoun, prakriti is made to belong to Krishna
personally (VII, 4, 5; IX, 7, 13). Here we have one of the devices our
author employed to give the great old phrases a vivid personal colouring.
Now such a phrase as “my prakriti” is already ambiguous; so we are not
surprised to meet with two passages, in which it is impossible to tell whether
the meaning is metaphysical or ethical (IV, 6; IX, 8). Probably the author
intended to suggest both meanings. Most translators take the meaning to be
metaphysical, but Telang may be right in taking it as ethical: Krishna is
regarded as the ideal of Action Yoga. For a similar use of the personal
pronoun compare sarvakarmāni mayi sannyasya (XVIII, 57) with sarvakarmāni
sannyasya of the Paramahansopanishad. Pages 706, 708 and 709 of
Jacob’s Concordance to the Principal Upanishads and Bhagavadgītā are peculiarly
instructive in this connection.
.fn-
.fn #
IV, 14; IX, 9.
.fn-
.fn #
X, 12, 20.
.fn-
.fn #
III, 3; IV, 36-38; XII, 12.
.fn-
.fn #
XII, 12; XIII, 24.
.fn-
.fn #
II, 47-53; III, 7, 30; IV, 14-23; V, 2; VI, 1; XII, 12; XVIII,
1-11.
.fn-
.fn #
VII, 13-14; XII, 20.
.fn-
.fn #
VII, 15; IX, 11-12; XVI, 6-20.
.fn-
.fn #
II, 61; VII, 14; XII, 6; XVIII, 57.
.fn-
.fn #
XII, 2.
.fn-
.fn #
VI, 14, 31; IX, 13-14, 22, 30, 34; X, 8-10; XII, 2, 6-7, 14.
.fn-
.fn #
IV, 10; VII, 1, 29; IX, 32.
.fn-
.fn #
VI, 14; X, 9; XVIII, 57-58.
.fn-
.fn #
VIII, 5, 7, 14.
.fn-
.fn #
X, 3; XVIII, 66.
.fn-
.fn #
IV, 14; IX, 28; XVIII, 49.
.fn-
.fn #
V, 29; VI, 15; XVIII, 62.
.fn-
.fn #
X, 11.
.fn-
.fn #
VI, 15; VIII, 15.
.fn-
.fn #
IV, 9; VII, 19; VIII, 5, 7, 15-16; IX, 25, 28, 32, 34; XII, 8;
XIII, 18; XIV, 2; XVIII, 55-56, 62, 65.
.fn-
.fn #
X, 2.
.fn-
.fn #
X, 1-3, 20.
.fn-
.fn #
IX, 23.
.fn-
.fn #
VII, 21-22.
.fn-
.fn #
IX, 29.
.fn-
.fn #
IX, 22; X, 7-11.
.fn-
// File: 027.png
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h2 id=chap2
CHAPTER II. | PLATO’S JUST MAN.
.sp 2
We must now leave the land of Bhārata and seek the shores
of Greece.
In the fifth century, B. C., Athens became the focus of
Hellenic culture. Her achievements in the Persian wars had
given her very distinctly the leadership of all the Greek states;
and the steady progress of her commerce brought her not only
wealth but abundant intercourse with other cities. So that in
the latter half of the century we find the peculiar genius of Hellas
displayed in Athens with unexampled vigour, variety and splendour.
But space will not allow us even to outline the achievements
of that incomparable age in the various provinces of human
culture. We must confine our attention to philosophy.
The general advance of intelligence, education and culture
in Greece produced the only result possible in communities whose
religion was a traditional polytheism and whose morality rested
merely on custom and proverbial wisdom: scepticism, both
religious and ethical, broke in like a flood. Tradition and
custom could not withstand the corrosive influences of fresh
thought fed by deepening experience and widening science. The
Sophists were the exponents, but scarcely the creators, of this
sceptical habit of thought. The philosophers had not done much
to cause it, and they could do as little to cure it. Their theories
dealt with nature rather than man, and stood in no clear relation
to the problems that agitated every thinking mind.
It was at Athens that this sceptical spirit showed itself most
conspicuously, now in the lectures of the chief Sophists of
Hellas, naturally drawn to the centre of intellectual ferment, now
in the stately tragedies of her Dionysiac festivals, now in the
// File: 028.png
.pn +1
fin-de-siècle conversation of her gilded youth. The timid, the old-fashioned,
the conservative scolded and sputtered and threatened,
blaming individuals instead of the time spirit, but had no healing
word to utter.[#]
From the very centre of the disturbance came the new spirit
of order and restoration: Socrates, the Athenian, saved Greece.
The older philosophers had discussed nature; he turned all his
attention to practical human life. Like the Sophists, he trusted
human reason; but unlike them, he aimed not at a display of
intellectual dexterity but at reaching the actual basis of human
morality, society and politics. Human conduct was the sole
subject of his thought and his conversation. Hence the definite,
practical value of his influence: his teaching stood in the closest
possible relation to life and to the problems of the time. On the
other hand, he began with introspection; self-knowledge was what
he demanded of every disciple. Hence the inexhaustible significance
of his work for philosophy. He gave no set lessons to his
pupils, delivered no lectures, wrote no books. He spent his whole
time in conversation with individuals, proceeding always by
question and answer, thus compelling his companion to think for
himself. His extraordinary intellectual skill and the loftiness and
simplicity of his character drew all the best intellects of Athens
around him. But what gives him his unchallenged supremacy in
the history of Greek thought is the fact, that in his hands the
sceptical thought, which had caused such dismay everywhere,
proved to be the very means of revealing the great realities which
men had feared for.[#]
In 399 B. C., when he was an old man of seventy years of age,
a number of his fellow-citizens brought a criminal case against
him, charging him with corrupting the youth of Athens and with
impiety. He was tried, found guilty and sentenced to death. A
month later he drank the hemlock—such was the Athenian mode
of execution—surrounded by his friends.[#]
// File: 029.png
.pn +1
How tragic! Athens, “the school of Hellas,”[#] kills her
greatest teacher! Socrates, the father of ethical philosophy, the
founder of the critical method, the ideal instructor, dies as an
impious corruptor of the youth of Athens!
But Socrates was not merely the greatest teacher of his day.
All subsequent Greek philosophy is filled with his spirit; indeed
the leading schools of thought were founded by his pupils.[#] Consequently
he is the fountain-head of all Western philosophy and
science; for in both Greece was the school-mistress of Europe.
Among all the disciples, Plato best represents the master’s
spirit. The Megarians, the Cynics, the Cyrenaics, and, at a later
date, the Stoics and the Epicureans, certainly carried on the
work of Socrates, but they are deflections from the straight
line: they are “imperfect schools,” as Zeller calls them.[#] Plato
is in the direct line of succession.
He was about twenty years of age when he began to listen
to Socrates. Eight years later came the death of the great
teacher. Plato then left Athens and spent a number of years in
travel and in study in different places. About 390 B. C., however,
he returned to the city and set up a philosophical school in a
garden called Academia. For forty years thereafter he was the
acknowledged leader of philosophic thought and teaching in
Athens.[#] His influence since his death has rested chiefly on his
Dialogues, one of the most perfect literary treasures in the Greek
language. The form of these beautiful compositions still reflects
the question-and-answer method of Plato’s master; and the
debt of the pupil is everywhere acknowledged; for in most of the
Dialogues Socrates is the chief interlocutor.[#] Among the Dialogues
the Republic is universally recognized as the most precious;
for it shows us not only his literary art at its highest, but the
thought of his matured mind: it represents Plato in his strength.[#]
// File: 030.png
.pn +1
The subject of the Republic is “What is Justice?” It is
thus the culmination of the ethical teaching of Socrates. Among
the preliminary discussions in this book there occurs a very
striking conversation between Glaucon and Socrates, in which the
former gives two ideal portraits, one of a man consummately
unjust, the other of a man altogether just. Here is the passage:—
.pm letter-start
“But in actually deciding between the lives of the two persons in
question, we shall be enabled to arrive at a correct conclusion by contrasting
together the thoroughly just and the thoroughly unjust man,—and
only by so doing. Well then, how are we to contrast them? In this way.
Let us make no deduction either from the injustice of the unjust, or from
the justice of the just, but let us suppose each to be perfect in his own line of
conduct. First of all then, the unjust man must act as skilful craftsmen do.
For a first-rate pilot or physician perceives the difference between what is
practicable and what is impracticable in his art, and while he attempts the
former, he lets the latter alone; and, moreover, should he happen to
make a false step, he is able to recover himself. In the same way, if
we are to form a conception of a consummately unjust man, we must
suppose that he makes no mistake in the prosecution of his unjust
enterprises and that he escapes detection: but if he be found out, we
must look upon him as a bungler; for it is the perfection of injustice
to seem just without really being so. We must, therefore, grant to the
perfectly unjust man, without any deduction, the most perfect injustice:
and we must concede to him, that while committing the grossest acts of
injustice, he has won himself the highest reputation for justice; and
that should he make a false step, he is able to recover himself, partly by
a talent for speaking with effect, in case he be called in question for
any of his misdeeds, and partly because his courage and strength, and
his command of friends and money, enable him to employ force with
success, whenever force is required. Such being our unjust man, let
us, in pursuance of the argument, place the just man by his side, a man
of true simplicity and nobleness, resolved, as Æschylus says, not to seem,
but to be, good. We must certainly take away the seeming; for if he be
thought to be a just man, he will have honours and gifts on the strength
of this reputation, so that it will be uncertain whether it is for justice’s
sake, or for the sake of the gifts and honours, that he is what he is.
Yes; we must strip him bare of everything but justice, and make his
whole case the reverse of the former. Without being guilty of one
unjust act, let him have the worst reputation for injustice, so that his
virtue may be thoroughly tested, and shewn to be proof against infamy and
// File: 031.png
.pn +1
all its consequences; and let him go on till the day of his death, steadfast
in his justice, but with a lifelong reputation for injustice; in order
that, having brought both the men to the utmost limits of justice and of
injustice respectively, we may then give judgment as to which of the two
is the happier.”
“Good heavens! my dear Glaucon,” said I, “how vigorously you
work, scouring the two characters clean for our judgment, like a pair of
statues.”
“I do it as well as I can,” he said. “And after describing the men
as we have done, there will be no further difficulty, I imagine, in proceeding
to sketch the kind of life which awaits them respectively. Let me therefore
describe it. And if the description be somewhat coarse, do not
regard it as mine, Socrates, but as coming from those who commend injustice
above justice. They will say that in such a situation the just man
will be scourged, racked, fettered, will have his eyes burnt out, and at
last, after suffering every kind of torture, will be crucified; and thus
learn that it is best to resolve, not to be, but to seem, just.”[#]
.pm letter-end
The picture of the just man here is surely a very remarkable
one. It is dramatically put into the mouth of Glaucon, and part of
it is by him attributed to those who commend injustice; but these
are but literary forms; the picture is Plato’s own. It is his ideal of
the just man; and the extraordinary thing is his belief, here stated
so plainly, that a man whose heart is perfectly set on righteousness
may be so completely misunderstood by those around him, as to
be regarded by them as utterly unjust, and may in consequence
be subjected to the extremest torture and the most shameful
death.
No one can doubt that it was the death of his master that
led Plato to perceive the great truth to which he here gives such
energetic expression. The charges against Socrates were a complete
inversion of the truth: his reverence was called impiety;
his brilliant work for the character of the youth of his day brought
him the charge of baneful corruption. From his tragic end Plato
learned that the good man who brings new truth is very likely to
be completely misunderstood and to be classed with the worst
wrong-doers.
.fn #
Zeller, Socrates, Chaps. I and II.
.fn-
.fn #
Zeller, Socrates, Chaps. III to IX; Bury, History of Greece, II, 140-146;
Grote, History of Greece, Chap. LXVIII.
.fn-
.fn #
Zeller, Socrates, Chap. X; Bury, History of Greece, II, 147.
.fn-
.fn #
So called by Pericles, her greatest statesman. See Thucydides, II, 41.
.fn-
.fn #
See Milton, Paradise Regained, IV, 272-280.
.fn-
.fn #
Socrates, Part III.
.fn-
.fn #
Mahaffy, Greek Literature, II, 160-162; Ritchie, Plato, Chap. I;
Mayor, Ancient Philosophy, 41 ff.
.fn-
.fn #
For the Dialogues see Ritchie’s Plato, Chap. II.
.fn-
.fn #
On the Republic see Mahaffy, Greek Literature, II, 195-201.
.fn-
.fn #
Plato, Rep., II, 360 E-362 A, Davies and Vaughan’s translation.
.fn-
// File: 032.png
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h2 id=chap3
CHAPTER III. | THE SERVANT OF JEHOVAH.
.sp 2
The history of Israel is unique in the annals of the nations.
In size scarcely worthy of regard, in politics only for one brief reign
of any serious account, with no special genius for art or war,
for speculative thinking or scientific research, failing to keep
even their racial unity in the day of their greatest strength, torn
in pieces by every conqueror, deported out of their own land, and
even after their return kept in subjection by other imperial races,
finally stripped of their temple and sacred city by the Romans,
and shattered into fragments, this feeble people has yet set its
name high beside Greece and Rome, has given the world the only
book which all the world reads,[#] and the religion which has
produced Western civilization.
The one duty of which the best spirits in Israel were
conscious throughout the history of the people was faithfulness
to Jehovah. Indeed the whole consciousness of the race might
be summed up in two phrases: Jehovah is the God of Israel, and,
Israel is the people of Jehovah. War, government, philosophy,
art might be for other peoples: Israel’s one duty was to serve
her God, religion the sole activity of her spirit.
// File: 033.png
.pn +1
The relation between Jehovah and Israel was a peculiarly
tender one;—“When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and
called my son out of Egypt,”[#] says Jehovah by the mouth of one of
His prophets. As Israel was Jehovah’s son, he had to be
taught, trained, disciplined. The history of the people, then,
is simply the record of Jehovah’s dealings with them in this
process of loving and patient training.
Israel’s education was chiefly in the hard school of experience,
in national disaster and disgrace, in national recovery and
victory. But not in events alone: Jehovah spoke His will out
clearly through a series of most remarkable men known as the
Prophets. What is most noticeable in these men is the directness
and the certainty of the message they brought from Jehovah
to His people. Usually it was criticism and condemnation, with
a definite declaration of coming punishment; but now and then
it was comfort and consolation, with the promise of speedy help
and relief.
It would be most interesting to trace the history in detail and
to watch how the people were led step by step to fuller and
clearer knowledge of God, but we must not stay for that here. We
need only say sufficient to enable readers to understand the circumstances
in which the great prophecy which we wish to discuss
came to be uttered.
The people were slaves in Egypt. They were brought out
under Moses; and in the peninsula of Sinai a Covenant was made
between them and Jehovah, which laid the foundation of their
religion and their national life. Joshua was their leader in the
conquest of Palestine, an event which probably took place in the
thirteenth century B. C. During the first two centuries of their
residence in the land they had no settled form of government,
but acknowledged as their rulers from time to time certain great
personalities known as Judges. Towards the end of the eleventh
century the pressure of the Philistines led to the establishment
of a monarchy. Saul knit the people together; David built up
a petty empire; Solomon gave his attention to commerce and
internal organization.
// File: 034.png
.pn +1
But after these three reigns the nation fell in two. From
937 B. C. onward for two centuries, instead of one state there are
two rival kingdoms, the northern called Israel and the southern
Judah. The great events of these centuries occur in Israel.
Through the prophets Elijah and Elisha the people were taught
that Jehovah would never consent to be one among many gods:
They must worship Jehovah alone. Later, Amos prophesied
that Jehovah would bring about the destruction of the kingdom
of Israel, because the people would not live righteously.
They offered God sacrifices, while He demanded righteous
conduct between man and man. But they could not believe
that Jehovah would destroy His own chosen people: “How
can we believe that He will destroy the only people in all
the world that He has made Himself known to?” Swift comes
the answer, “You only have I known of all the families of
the earth: therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities.”[#]
Israel had had greater privileges than any other people;
therefore Israel had a deeper responsibility, and would receive
a severer punishment. In 722 B. C. the Assyrians overthrew
Israel, and carried away 27,290 of the leading inhabitants
and settled them in Mesopotamia and Media.[#] The prophecy
of Amos was thus literally fulfilled.
The kingdom of Judah, which was not involved in the fate
of Israel, stood for rather more than a century longer. Isaiah was
the prophet of Jehovah in Judah when Israel fell. He condemned
his own people just as Amos had condemned Israel, because they
identified religion with ritual, and would not give Jehovah what
He wanted, namely, righteousness. The state of the people was
so bad that Isaiah declared that nothing could cure them.
Jehovah would intervene: the bulk of the people would be destroyed,
but a righteous remnant would be saved. Towards
the end of Isaiah’s life Sennacherib, king of Assyria, came, devastated
the land of Judah, took many of the cities, and demanded
the surrender of the capital, Jerusalem. Isaiah advised
// File: 035.png
.pn +1
the king not to yield, and prophesied that the Assyrian would
not be able to touch the city. His prophecy was fulfilled to the
letter. The huge Assyrian army was suddenly annihilated by some
unknown cause, probably pestilence, and Sennacherib hastened
back to Assyria.[#]
A century later Judah was in a still worse condition: idolatry,
polytheism, immorality were eating out the vitals of the nation.
In 604 B. C. Jeremiah prophesied that Jehovah would bring
Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, into Syria, and that he would
destroy Judah and all the nations round about, that they would
groan under the rule of Babylon for seventy years, but that at
the end of that period Jehovah would punish the Babylonians for
their iniquity, and would make their land desolate forever.[#] But
his countrymen would not listen. Jehovah had saved His people
from the Assyrian in the time of Isaiah: why should He allow the
Babylonian to touch them now? Yet in 585 B. C. Nebuchadnezzar
took Jerusalem, burned the city and the temple, and carried
away the king and all the leading families to Babylon.[#] Once
more the word of Jehovah, as spoken by His prophets, was literally
fulfilled.
But what was to be the end?—Jehovah seemed to have utterly
destroyed His chosen people: what was His purpose? what good
was to come out of it?
The people of the northern kingdom, carried away in 722
B. C., soon lost their religion, and were in consequence speedily lost
themselves among the peoples of the East. Not so the captives of
Judah: the training of Isaiah and his disciples and of Jeremiah
and his friends had taken fast hold of their hearts, so that even in
a foreign land, far away from home and temple, they held by the
religion of Jehovah. Nor is that all: they began to take their
religion seriously; they began to perceive that the prophets were
right in declaring that Jehovah was a very different God from the
gods of the nations around them, that He would not be satisfied
with sacrifice and song, but demanded heart-worship and
// File: 036.png
.pn +1
righteousness. But although they clung to their faith in Jehovah,
they were naturally greatly depressed by the seeming hopelessness
of their captivity.[#] To rebel against the Babylonians, and by the
sword regain their freedom and their land, was an utter impossibility:
they were altogether helpless under the omnipotent empire.
But about 550 B. C. Cyrus, an Elamite king, began a great
career of conquest. In 549 he overthrew the Cimmerians under
their king Astyages, and by 546 he was master of Persia. He
then went further west to subdue Asia Minor.[#]
It was at this juncture, according to all scholars, that a great
prophet, whose name is unknown, began to comfort and encourage
the Jewish exiles in Babylon. His prophecy is preserved for us
in the latter part of the book of Isaiah.[#] His message is that
the sufferings of the exiles are nearly at an end, that Cyrus is to
capture Babylon and give them leave to return to their native
land.[#]
In 538 B. C. Cyrus marched into Babylonia, defeated the
Babylonian army, and seized the city, thus fulfilling in a very
striking way the second part of Jeremiah’s prophecy.[#] Soon
after, the Judean captives received permission to return to
Palestine. They were also allowed to carry with them the sacred
vessels which Nebuchadnezzar had carried away from the temple
in Jerusalem.[#] The prophecy of restoration was thus triumphantly
fulfilled. One company of exiles went at once, and others
followed them later.
The people of Jehovah in this way began life afresh after
the great national punishment of the Captivity. They had
thoroughly learned one lesson at least, namely, this, that Jehovah
spoke through His prophets. So in their new system, while they
retained the old ritual of the temple, they made careful provision
for the preservation of the writings of the prophets and for the
instruction of the people in the Mosaic Law.
// File: 037.png
.pn +1
We need trace the history no farther; for it was this post-exilic
Judaism, with its great care for the Scriptures, and its
energetic attempts to instil them into the minds of the people,
that formed the environment of Jesus and His work.
But we must now return to the great prophet who spoke
consolation to the exiles in Babylon, and study his ideas. His
conception of God is very lofty. He illustrates in many ways His
holiness, His faithfulness, His tender sympathy, His omnipotence,
His absolute sway among nations, and His power of foretelling
future events by the mouth of His prophets. On the other hand,
the prophet’s conception of the duty and destiny of the people of
Jehovah is correspondingly high. Israel has been created and
chosen by Jehovah, and therefore is precious in His sight; but
He did not choose them out of favouritism, nor was it His purpose
to heap blessings on them merely for their pleasure and aggrandizement.
Israel is the Servant of Jehovah. The service they
have to render is to reveal God’s character and purposes to all the
nations of the earth. This is the end of their election and of their
long training. But, as in the past the nation has fallen far short of
Jehovah’s ideal, so now in Babylon the people as a whole is very far
from fit for the work which God has for them to do: “Who is
blind but my servant? or deaf as my messenger that I send?”[#]
Consequently there is a further choice within the chosen
people. The use of the title, the Servant of Jehovah, is narrowed.
The prophet knows that God’s ends will be worked out, that
through Israel Jehovah’s name will be carried to the ends of the
earth; he also sees as clearly that the nation as a nation is
unfit for this lofty duty; so he recognises that the Servant who shall
do this work will be found within the people. Whether he
identified the Servant of Jehovah in this narrower sense with the
small group of really God-fearing men who formed the soul of
Israel in his own day, or whether he thought of an individual to
be specially prepared for the task by Jehovah, we do not know.
Most probably this point was not clear to the prophet himself.[#]
// File: 038.png
.pn +1
It is in four poems of peculiar dignity and surpassing
spiritual penetration that this narrower use of the title occurs. In
the first[#] of these Jehovah describes His Servant’s character and
work; in the second[#], the Servant tells how Jehovah prepared
him for his task; in the third,[#] we have a portrait of the Servant
as a martyr; while in the fourth[#], he is represented, though
righteous himself, as dying a shameful death as an atonement for
the sins of the unrighteous. It is to this fourth poem that we
would direct the attention of our readers.
.sp 2
.h3
THE ATONING DEATH OF THE SERVANT OF JEHOVAH.
.sp 2
.pm verse-start
Jehovah.—
.sp 2
Lo, My Servant shall deal wisely;
He shall rise, be uplifted, and be exalted exceedingly.
Even as many were amazed at him,—
So marred from a man’s was his appearance,
And his form from that of the sons of men!—
So shall he startle many nations;
Before him kings shall shut their mouths.
For what had not been told them they shall see,
And what they had not heard they shall consider.
.sp 2
Israel.—
.sp 2
Who believed what was heard by us?
And the arm of Jehovah, to whom was it revealed?
He grew up like a sapling before us,
And like a shoot out of parched ground.
He had no form, nor majesty, that we should look upon him,
Nor appearance, that we should desire him.
He was despised and forsaken by men,
A man of pains and familiar with sickness;
And as one from whom men hide their face
He was despised, and we held him of no account.
// File: 039.png
.pn +1
Yet it was our sicknesses that he bore,
And our pains that he carried;
While we accounted him stricken,
Smitten by God, and afflicted.
But he was pierced because of our transgressions,
Crushed because of our iniquities;
Chastisement to secure our peace was laid upon him,
And through his stripes healing came to us.
We all like sheep had gone astray,
We had turned each one to his own way;
And Jehovah made to light on him
The iniquity of us all.
.sp 2
The Prophet.—
.sp 2
He was oppressed, yet he let himself be afflicted,
And opened not his mouth,
As a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
And as a sheep that is dumb before her shearers,
And opened not his mouth.
By a tyrannical judgment he was taken away;
And, as for the men of his time, who considered,
That he was cut off out of the land of the living,
That for the transgression of my people he was stricken?
And his grave was made with the wicked,
And his tomb with the unrighteous,
Although he had done no violence,
And there was no deceit in his mouth.
But it was Jehovah that willed to crush him,
That laid on him sickness:
If he should lay down his life as a guilt-offering,
He would see a posterity, he would lengthen his days,
And the will of Jehovah would prosper by his hand;
After the travail of his soul he would see it,
And would be satisfied with his knowledge.
// File: 040.png
.pn +1
.sp 2
Jehovah.—
.sp 2
My Servant, the righteous one, shall make many righteous;
For he shall bear their iniquities.
Therefore I will give him a share with the many,
And with the strong he shall divide the spoil;
Inasmuch as he poured out his life-blood to death,
And let himself be numbered with the transgressors;
Yet it was the sin of the many he bore,
And for the transgressors he interposed.
.pm verse-end
In this marvellous poem we have four successive vignettes
of the Servant. There first rises in the prophet’s mind a vision of
the awe-struck wonder with which the nations and their kings
shall gaze on the Servant of Jehovah, when after unequalled
humiliation he shall be uplifted in surpassing glory. The next
picture takes us back to his life of humiliation: he grows up with
nothing in him to strike the eye or attract the attention of men;
nay, rather all turn their back on him as worthless, contemptible,
smitten with divine punishment. But along with this
sorrowful portrait there comes the passionate confession of the
men of Israel, that the Servant in all his sufferings had been
bearing their sins. The third picture shows us the suffering
Servant in uncomplaining meekness enduring a criminal’s death
with all its shameful associations; yet this death is explained as
occurring in accordance with God’s will, and as being a guilt-offering.
The series ends in triumph: the righteous Servant by
bearing iniquity will make many righteous and will achieve the
glory and the reward of the conqueror.
In this prophecy the remarkable thing is that the sufferings and
death of the Servant are construed throughout, not as a martyrdom,
but as much more. In his death he lays down his life as a guilt-offering;
and all his sufferings, inclusive of his death, are, from
Jehovah’s point of view, chastisement laid on him on account of
the sins of others, from the Servant’s point of view, a voluntary
bearing of their iniquities. His willingness to endure and his
meekness under oppression are very vividly put before us; but
God’s purpose to crush him is insisted on with equal emphasis.
The awful tragedy happens within Israel; but after it is
// File: 041.png
.pn +1
consummated, the Servant, once so despised, neglected and oppressed,
startles the nations, and kings in amazement shut their
mouths in his presence. The purpose of the dread sacrifice is
TO BRING MEN TO RIGHTEOUSNESS; and that end, we are told,
will be widely accomplished.
Whence did the prophet draw the ideas of his prophecy? If
any piece of literature bears signs of inspiration, this does; but the
experience which enabled him to become the vehicle of inspiration
in this particular case may also be conjectured. The sufferings,
which many of the prophets, and especially Jeremiah, had
endured at the hands of their fellow-countrymen, had made a
profound impression upon the best minds in Israel; and the
affliction of the exiles in Babylon was manifestly not merely
penal, but also purificatory.
.fn #
The Bible, complete or in part, is printed and published to-day in
454 languages and dialects. The number of Bibles, New Testaments and
portions sold by the various Bible Societies of Europe and America, in
lands outside Europe, amounted in 1901 to 3,286,834. (Centennial Survey
of Foreign Missions by the Rev. James S. Dennis, D.D.) These figures do
not include the Bibles sold by the ordinary publishers of Christian countries,
nor the Bibles sold in Europe by Bible Societies. If it were possible to gather
all the statistics, we may be certain the figures would amount up to five or six
millions. What a book that must be, which circulates in 454 languages, and
is sold at the rate of 5,000,000 copies per annum!
.fn-
.fn #
Hosea, 11, 1.
.fn-
.fn #
Amos, 3, 2.
.fn-
.fn #
2 Kings, 17, 1-23; the figures are from an inscription of Sargon, the
victorious Assyrian King: see Authority and Archæology, 101.
.fn-
.fn #
2 Kings, 19, 35-36; Wellhausen, Israel and Judah, Chap. VII;
Authority and Archæology, 105-108.
.fn-
.fn #
Jeremiah, 25, 1-14.
.fn-
.fn #
2 Kings, 25, 1-22.
.fn-
.fn #
Psalm 137.
.fn-
.fn #
The details have now been read in Cyrus’s own inscriptions: Hastings,
Dictionary of the Bible, I, 541.
.fn-
.fn #
From Chap. 40 onwards. See Driver, Introduction, 217.
.fn-
.fn #
Isaiah, 40, 1-10; 44, 24-28.
.fn-
.fn #
Authority and Archaeology, 123-126.
.fn-
.fn #
Ezra, Chap. 1.
.fn-
.fn #
Isaiah, 42, 19.
.fn-
.fn #
For the ideas of this great prophet, see the Cambridge Bible for Schools,
Isaiah, Vol. II, pp. XXII-XXXIX.
.fn-
.fn #
Isaiah, 42, 1-4.
.fn-
.fn #
Isaiah, 49, 1-6.
.fn-
.fn #
Isaiah, 50, 4-9.
.fn-
.fn #
Isaiah, 52, 13-53, 12.
.fn-
// File: 042.png
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h2 id=chap4
CHAPTER IV. | VIRGIL’S NEW AGE OF JUSTICE AND PEACE.
.sp 2
The slow but steady rise of an obscure inland Italian town, first
to the rule of all Italy, and finally to imperial sway over the whole
Mediterranean world, is as full of problems for the intellect as of
fascination for the imagination. Whence the extraordinary vigour
and practical genius of this city? What gave it so much capacity
in comparison with any other Italian town? Does the secret lie
in the Roman character, the Roman intellect, or in the constitution
of the republican city itself? But other questions still more serious
press for answers: How did the Roman government affect the
subject provinces? How did it react upon the Roman character
and upon the life of the capital? Could a single city furnish men
of character and ability in sufficient numbers for such a prodigious
task?
The answer to these grave questions must be sought in the
history of the last century of the existence of the republic. From
about 145 B. C. to about 48 B. C. Rome was never at rest: violent
political strife, faction, proscriptions and civil wars eclipse everything
else in the internal history of the imperial city during these
years. The old state machinery was getting worn out; the old
families, corrupted by the immeasurable success of the Rome
which was their making, were grinding the provinces by their
cruelty and greed, and would not budge an inch from their privileges,
nor indeed lift a finger, to save Rome and Italy from the
moral and economic ruin with which they were threatened. The
wrongs of the slave, the Italian and the provincial cried aloud for
redress; scarcely less urgent was the need for the introduction
of a great deal of fresh blood into the governing classes; but
the latter were bitterly hostile to every change. Hence the violent
// File: 043.png
.pn +1
struggles throughout the century between the Government and
the other classes. The empire had proved too much for the old
Roman character.[#] The only force that remained really efficient
was the army.
Who shall describe the ruin, bloodshed, misery, desolation,
wrought by these years? The national character suffered a frightful
fall also: corruption in public, immorality in private, became
all but universal. The weariness and the hopelessness generated
by the seemingly unending strife made men forget their old
passion for freedom and sigh even for tyranny, if only it would
bring peace.
Relief came when Julius Cæsar crushed Pompey at Pharsalus
in B. C. 48. There was fighting here and there for two years
more, but it was of little consequence. Pharsalus made Cæsar
the monarch of Rome. He lived barely four years after his
victory; for the daggers of the conspirators found his heart on the
15th of March, 44 B. C.; yet by a series of masterly administrative
and legislative acts he laid in great broad lines the foundation of
the new empire and set in motion the healthy forces that were
needed for the regeneration of Rome and Italy. His work is
Titanic both in conception and execution. Seldom has such a
great man executed such a mighty task.
But his murder loosed all the old fiends again, and they
worked wilder woe than ever. For now the whole gigantic empire
was drawn into the whirlpool, and the provinces were only a little
less miserable than Italy. During Cæsar’s own struggle his
mighty genius and his magnanimity had thrown a glory upon the
murky clouds of the storm; but now that the sun was set, black
darkness settled over the unhappy empire.[#]
There was a pause in the strife, when, in B. C. 40, a treaty
was drawn up between Octavian and Antony at Brundisium and
confirmed by the marriage of Antony to the sister of Octavian.
Men hoped that the end had come at last and that the world
would enjoy a lasting peace.
// File: 044.png
.pn +1
It was during this bright moment that Virgil, who later was
to write the Aeneid, and so earn for himself a very great name in
European literature, composed a short poem, which finds a place
among his Pastorals, and is named Pollio. Here is a translation
of lines four to twenty-five, which will be found quite sufficient to
bring the main ideas of the poem before us:—
.pm letter-start
“The last epoch of the Sybil’s prophecy has come at length; the great
series of the ages is being born anew; at length the virgin, Justice, is returning,
returning too the reign of Saturn; at length a new race of men is being
sent down from heaven high. Do thou, Lucina, but smile thy chaste smile
upon a boy with whose coming at last ceases the iron race and the golden
springs up throughout the world; do so, Lucina: it is thine own Apollo that
now reigns. It is in thy consulship, Pollio, that this glorious age will come
in, and the months of the great year will begin their march. Under thy
leadership all traces that remain of Roman crime in civil strife shall pass
away, and passing, free the lands from constant fear.
“He shall receive the life of the gods, and shall behold gods and heroes
mingling together; and himself shall be beheld by them; and with his father’s
virtues he shall rule the world at peace.
“Unasked the earth shall shower upon thee, sweet boy, thy first baby
gifts, the gadding ivy with the fox-glove, and lily-bean entwined with smiling
bear’s-foot. The goats shall bring home uncalled their milk-filled udders;
the harts shall no longer fear great lions; and flowers shall spring to caress
thee where’er thou liest down. The asp shall perish; the treacherous, poison
herb shall perish too; and everywhere shall spring Assyrian balm.”[#]
.pm letter-end
The Greeks and Romans had a great system of cycles and
ages, not unlike the Hindu Kalpas and Manvantaras. One cycle
follows another, the beginning of each being marked by the sun,
moon and stars all occupying their original positions. The
Roman phrase for cycle is “great year.” Each great year is subdivided
into “months,” that is ages. The first age of each great
year is the golden, when Saturn reigns, and a divine race of men
occupies the earth; the last is the iron age, when Apollo reigns,
and men are sinful.
Virgil declares, then, that the end of the old cycle has come,
and that the new cycle is about to begin with all the splendour of
the golden age. Saturn will reign; Justice and Peace will return
to the earth; a god-like race of men will spring up all over the
// File: 045.png
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world; nature will be redeemed; and primitive simplicity and
innocence will reappear. Idyllic scenes of peace and plenty—trade
and manufacture all forgotten—give the poem a wonderful
charm.
The most outstanding idea of the prophecy, however, is that
the new age opens with the birth of a boy, who is to receive
special divine help, and is to be at once the pattern and the prince
of the new time. Who the boy was that Virgil had in mind, the
critics have not been able to decide.[#] Clearly he was a son born
in 40 B. C. to one of the leading Romans; but we can say no
more. Evidently Virgil believed that the civil wars were over,
that a new era of peace had begun, and that this boy might be
looked forward to as the ruler who should effectively transform
the empire, revive primitive virtue and simplicity, and banish the
foul demon war forever.
His prediction was not verified: no boy born in 40 B. C.
became a world-ruler and regenerator; and, besides, nine long
years of doubt and fear, horror and blood, had to be endured,
before Octavian became, by the battle of Actium, the acknowledged
master of the Roman world; and, while he completed the task
of Cæsar, and succeeded in doing the work of a great ruler in a
marvellous fashion, no one would dream of saying that he fulfilled
the ideal of this poem.
It is an unfulfilled prophecy; yet it is not without interest
and value for men to-day. First of all it is of interest as a revelation
of the ideas and the hopes that filled men’s minds in
Virgil’s time. “The anticipation of a new era was widely spread
and vividly felt over the world; and this anticipation—the state
of men’s minds at and subsequent to the time when this poem
was written—probably contributed to the acceptance of the great
political and spiritual changes which awaited the world.”[#] But it
is of still greater interest as a revelation of what Virgil himself
thought, Virgil, who was perhaps the purest and most interesting
personality in the Græco-Roman world then. Men generally
were looking for a regeneration of the world; we have here
// File: 046.png
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Virgil’s own thoughts on the great subject. He shared with
others the idea that the world was on the verge of the dawning of
a new day, a day of renewed justice and peace; but he had an
idea of his own, that of a great personality, a man of high moral
character, specially endowed by the gods for his great task as
leader and ruler of the new time. Scarcely less prominent is his
idea of the nobler race of men that shall spring up in the new
era. It is no picture merely of good government such as
Augustus gave the world that we have here; but a prophecy of
the moral regeneration of mankind under the influence of a
divinely prepared leader.
.fn #
Froude, Cæsar, 12-19.
.fn-
.fn #
For the whole picture see Mommsen, especially the very last page of his
history.
.fn-
.fn #
Virgil, Eclogues, IV, 4-25.
.fn-
.fn #
Sellar, Virgil, 146; Simcox, Latin Literature, Vol. I, 257.
.fn-
.fn #
Sellar, Virgil, 145. Cf. Boissier, La Religion Romaine.
.fn-
// File: 047.png
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h2 id=chap5
CHAPTER V. | JESUS OF NAZARETH.
.sp 2
I. The difference between ancient and modern times in
Europe is vital. Human society is never stagnant; development
in one direction or another is constant; so that in the course of a
few centuries changes, both numerous and noticeable, take place
everywhere. Thus the Europe of the middle ages differs very
markedly from the Europe of to-day. Yet the one is the direct
outcome of the other. On the other hand, the civilizations of
Greece and Rome, although we owe them an incalculable debt, are
marked off from modern civilization by differences which can only
be spoken of as essential. For it is not any single element that
has been added externally to ancient life so as to produce modern
society; it is rather a subtle spirit, which has modified all thinking,
altered the values of things, produced organic changes in
government and society, and recreated art and literature. The
unexampled development of science and invention, and the
extraordinary activity and vigour of European commerce and arms,
which are often spoken of as the chief characteristics of modern
civilization, are rather to be regarded as indications of unparalleled
vitality and efficiency in the social organism than as essential
products of its spirit. Science and invention flourished among
the Greeks; the Roman empire was as vigorous as any modern
state in matters of war. These things prove the healthy vitality
of the society of the West; its essential spirit is to be sought
elsewhere.
A comparison of ancient and modern life reveals differences
at once very numerous and greatly significant. The economics
of Europe have been revolutionized; for the labour, the manufacture
and the commerce of ancient times rested on a basis of
// File: 048.png
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slavery.[#] Government has been turned upside down; for the ruling
principle of ancient politics was hereditary and exclusive citizenship
in a city-state;[#] while modern politics have been created by
the great principles of the equality of men irrespective of birth
or station and the indefeasible sovereignty of the people.[#] In
ancient society human life as such had no value: infanticide was
practised openly by all as a right and proper thing necessary for
the well-being of the family and the state;[#] prisoners taken in
war, if not killed, were made slaves, and as slaves their lives and
persons were absolutely at the mercy of their masters;[#] aliens
had a place in the state only on sufferance: society stood in no
relation to them and had no duties towards them.[#] The social
organism of modern times, on the other hand, is a new creation,
produced by the conception of the inherent sanctity of human
life and the divine dignity of the human personality.[#] Modern
education is in form and method Greek; but the results it
produces are altogether new; first, because it carries the modern
spirit within the ancient forms, and secondly, because modern men
regard education as part of the birthright of every human being.
Moral ideals show very important differences, chiefly in the
direction of the elevation of humility, meekness, sympathy,
forgiveness and self-sacrifice, and the extraordinary advance in the
conception of the right of individual freedom. In ancient times
the individual citizen had no rights as against the State;[#] now we
demand not only freedom in matters of profession and business,
as against caste restrictions, but intellectual, moral and religious
liberty. The differences between ancient and modern
religion are very extraordinary in many ways. For the present
we need only note the one far-reaching distinction, that to the
// File: 049.png
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ancients religion was a political duty, which the citizen was
bound to fulfil, and a civic privilege, which only those in whose
veins ran the sacred blood of the community could share;[#]
while modern religion is the loftiest activity of the human spirit,
as far transcending the narrow limits of the State as it does the
petty distinctions of race and blood. The differences, then,
between ancient and modern life are not accidental but essential.
A second thing to be noticed is the altogether unexampled
vitality and pervasiveness of modern civilization. During the
nineteenth century alone, while the population of the rest of the
world remained nearly stationary, the actual numbers of the
European peoples rose from 170,000,000 to 500,000,000.[#] Here
is physical life on a gigantic scale. Let readers think, next, of
the extraordinary advances made during the nineteenth century
in every province of natural science, from mathematics and
physics up through the biological sciences to psychology and
the science of religion, the swift upward progress made in literary,
historical and philosophical method, and the innumerable inventions
that have been produced for facilitating every form of human
activity. Are not these facts evidence of an amazing store of intellectual
vitality in the society of the West? Think also of the
buoyancy, the hope, the youthful delight in action, the glance
into the future, which characterize the progressive peoples of
Europe and America. Colonization, on the other hand, exploration,
missions, world-wide commerce, domination over other races,
whether you call them bad or good, are incontestable proofs of
energy, physical, moral and intellectual. Further, these forms
of vital force are clearly of the greatest practical importance in
the world. In the process of natural selection which, whether we
like it or not, is ceaselessly being carried on among the races
of mankind, the possession of such energy is one of the crucial
factors in the struggle. But this civilization has also an altogether
unique power of entering into other civilizations and working
revolutionary changes there: its pervasiveness is almost as
// File: 050.png
.pn +1
remarkable as its vitality. We need only point to India and
Japan to-day for proof of this.
Western civilization, then, is a thing by itself, not more
clearly distinguished from ancient life than from the civilizations
that have arisen in other parts of the world. What is it that has
made the difference? What subtle spirit is it that appears in
every aspect of the civilization, that assumes so many forms, and
generates such transcending energies?
There can be but one answer: it is Christianity. In every
community religion is the life principle, the central fire, which
fills the whole with living force, and communicates its own spirit
to every cell of the organism.[#] That is a law which is becoming
ever more apparent in all anthropological, sociological and
religious science. From this general law we might conclude in
this particular case, that it is the religion that gives the civilization
its character. But we need not appeal to general principles;
history tells us in the clearest tones that the peculiarities which
distinguish Western civilization from every other spring directly
or indirectly from the Christian faith.
Now one way of classifying religions is to divide them into
two groups, spontaneous and founded. The former are results of
the united unconscious action of a tribe or people: for example,
the religions of Greece and Rome. The latter spring from some
particular man, and are inseparably connected with his life: for
example, Buddhism, Christianity and Mohammedanism.
That Christianity is a founded religion, and that it springs
from Christ, admits of no question. Tacitus, the Roman historian,
in speaking of the great fire at Rome in 64 A. D., which devastated
ten of the fourteen districts into which the Imperial city was divided,
says that the people got their heads filled with the suspicion,
that the Emperor himself (Nero was then on the throne) had used
his agents to set the city on fire. He then continues:—
.pm letter-start
“Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and
inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations,
called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its
origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the
hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous
// File: 051.png
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superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judea,
the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and
shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.
Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon
their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the
crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort
was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn
by dogs and perished; or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames
and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired.
“Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle, and was exhibiting a show in
the circus, while he mingled with the people in the dress of a charioteer or
stood aloft on a car. Hence, even for criminals who deserved extreme and
exemplary punishment, there arose a feeling of compassion; for it was not,
as it seemed, for the public good, but to glut one man’s cruelty, that they
were being destroyed.”[#]
.pm letter-end
Christ, then, is a historical person. He was a Jew; He
founded Christianity; and He was executed by Pontius Pilatus
during his procuratorship of Judæa, i.e., between 27 and 37
A. D.[#] Other facts enable scholars to fix the date of His death
within narrower limits: a few adopt 30 A. D., but by far the
greatest number prefer 29 A. D.;[#] and that date we adopt here.
Here, then, are the facts: Christ was put to death by the
Roman Governor of Judæa in 29 A. D., but this did not extinguish
Christianity; for it spread not only in Judæa but beyond; so
much so, that in 64 A. D. “an immense multitude” of Christians
were found in Rome, and were for their faith put to death with
horrible barbarities.
Such is the first chapter of the history of Christianity in
Europe. From this point onwards the facts are well known.
The furious hostility visible here in the spirit of the Roman
Empire against the Christian faith ended in the victory of the
latter, in its gradual acceptance by the races of Europe, and the
continuously increasing infiltration of Christian ideas into the
minds of the people. The process is far from complete; for the
contrast between the old spirit and the new is so extreme that
// File: 052.png
.pn +1
only long ages of discipline and the slow processes of evolution
will suffice to work the transformation. We have seen how
essentially different the spirit in our modern life is from the spirit
of Græco-Roman life: how much greater would be the contrast,
if one were to oppose the pure spirit of Christ to the spirit of
Paganism! When men accept Christ, they are conscious of the
authority of His perfect character and His heavenly life, and they
know that He claims their complete submission to Him; but
they have no idea how far-reaching this claim is. Christ demands
that not only every part of the individual’s life—thoughts, feelings,
words, deeds—but every aspect of social and political life as well
should be made subject to His law of love. This is easily stated:
how hard is it to work it out, except in a long series of generations!
But imperfect as has been the perception of Christ’s aims,
and still more imperfect the execution of these by the peoples of
Europe, yet the results of even their very partial submission to them
have been, as we have seen, momentous in the highest degree.
Christ has made modern Europe.
Now we found from our study of Virgil’s prophecy that he
believed that a new age was just about to open. Like other
thinking men of his day, he felt that the civilization under which he
lived was played out, that new life was needed, new morals and a
fresh organization of society. He believed that in the new age the
leader and king would be a great Roman, and that under him the
world would be transformed.
Further, it is sufficiently striking that, while his prophecy
received no literal fulfilment, yet the new age did actually begin
shortly after the time when he wrote, an age which has produced
a new race of men, new moral ideas and an altogether fresh
organization of society, and vitality and virility, besides, such as
Virgil never dreamed of. He spoke of a great leader favoured of
the gods, a noble Roman. The new age did come in under the
guidance of a new leader, but he was no aristocratic Roman, but
a Jew, and a man of the people, Jesus of Nazareth.
.tb
II. Christ’s name and life are well-known outside Christendom.
He is spoken of in very high terms in the book which all
Mohammedans revere; and contact with the West has brought a
// File: 053.png
.pn +1
certain amount of knowledge about him to the peoples of India,
China and Japan. Now the most striking fact in this connection is
this, that while most of these Mohammedans, Hindus, Buddhists,
and Confucians condemn Christians violently, and many write
against Christianity, they one and all speak with the highest praise
of the character of Christ. The same is true of sceptics and agnostics
in Christian lands. One might compile a most fascinating
volume consisting merely of extracts from non-Christian writers,
in which Christ is spoken of as the best of men, as the ideal man,
as the man whom all men should not only admire, but imitate.
Now we have in this a most remarkable fact. There is no
other character in history that is so universally revered. There is
no other man whom all men join in praising with so much heartiness.
Charles Lamb speaks for the human race when he says:
“If Shakespeare were to enter this room, we should all spring to
our feet; if Christ were to enter, we should all fall on our knees.”
But HE WAS CRUCIFIED. This, the purest and noblest
of men, was subjected to the most shameful form of death possible.
Nor was there only the bare execution: every circumstance that
could make death bitter to the noble human spirit was added. He
was betrayed by one of His own chosen Twelve; the remaining
eleven deserted Him; one plucked up heart and followed at a distance,
but only to deny him. Indeed the universal breakdown of
human character around Him is one of the saddest things in history.
The Jewish priests and scribes, the common people, the Roman
Governor and the common soldiers, all reveal their worst passions
in the presence of Christ, while He stands amongst them in all the
silent majesty of innocence.[#]
We here quote three short paragraphs from St. Matthew’s
Gospel.[#] The first describes what took place after the members
of the Jewish Sanhedrin had decided that Jesus deserved to be put
to death:—
.pm letter-start
“Then did they spit in His face, and buffet Him; and some smote Him
with the palms of their hands, saying, Prophesy unto us, Thou Christ: who
is he that struck Thee?”[#]
.pm letter-end
// File: 054.png
.pn +1
Then those model judges carried their prisoner before Pontius
Pilate, the Roman Governor, and after much persuasion got him
to condemn Jesus to death, when the following scenes took
place:—
.pm letter-start
“Then the soldiers of the Governor took Jesus into the palace, and
gathered unto Him the whole band. And they stripped Him, and put on Him
a scarlet robe. And they plaited a crown of thorns and put it upon His head,
and a reed in His right hand; and they kneeled down before Him, and
mocked Him, saying, ‘Hail, King of the Jews!’ And they spat upon Him,
and took the reed and smote Him on the head. And when they had mocked
Him, they took off from Him the robe, and put on Him His garments and
led Him away to crucify Him.”[#]
“And as they came out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name;
him they compelled to go with them, that he might bear His cross. And
when they were come unto a place called Golgotha, that is to say, The place
of a skull, they gave Him wine to drink mingled with gall: and when He had
tasted it, He would not drink. And when they had crucified Him, they parted
His garments among them, casting lots: and they sat and watched Him
there. And they set up over His head His accusation written, THIS IS
JESUS THE KING OF THE JEWS. Then are there crucified with Him
two robbers, one on the right hand, and one on the left. And they that
passed by railed on Him, wagging their heads, and saying, ‘Thou that
destroyest the temple and buildest it in three days, save Thyself: if Thou art
the Son of God, come down from the cross.’ In like manner also the chief
priests mocking Him with the scribes and elders said, ‘He saved others:
Himself He cannot save. He is the King of Israel; let Him now come down
from the cross, and we will believe on Him. He trusteth on God; let Him
deliver Him now, if He desireth Him: for He said, I am the Son of God.’
And the robbers also that were crucified with Him cast upon Him the same
reproach.”[#]
.pm letter-end
How was it that of all men Jesus should be the man subjected
to all this? How can we reconcile His character and His
destiny?
Let us recollect what Plato had written 400 years earlier:—
.pm letter-start
“The just man will be scourged, racked, fettered, will have his eyes
burned out, and at last, after suffering every kind of torture, will be
crucified.”
.pm letter-end
Now we do not insist on the correspondence in detail between
the words of Plato and the death of Christ, although that, while
// File: 055.png
.pn +1
not complete, is sufficiently remarkable; but we wish to emphasize,
with all possible force, this most extraordinary fact,
that Plato foresaw that a man of the character of Jesus would
suffer as He did.
How are we to explain the fact? What is the reason why
the men of Christ’s day treated this most humane of men with
such barbarous inhumanity? The answer is that it was inevitable.
Jesus is the revelation of the uttermost holiness of God, and His
attempt to lay that standard upon the human spirit[#] roused to its
utmost fury against Him all the sinfulness of our common human
nature. It is the same contest of which we are each conscious
in our daily life between inclination and conscience; only, in the
case of Jesus, it seems as if all the little battles of every individual
life had met in one gigantic struggle between sinful human
nature and its Lord. And the same struggle necessarily continues
wherever Christianity goes. The persecutions of the Roman
Empire are merely the external signs of the convulsive efforts of
the spirit of Paganism to resist the march of the Spirit of God.
In every land Christ is met by the same opposition. Everywhere
selfishness, self-interest and passion dissuade men from following
the Man of Sorrows; and the struggle is there, terrible in its
reality and intensity, even if it never break out into open persecution.
But, in surveying these surging battles, the careful observer is
much struck with this fact, that, while human passions inevitably
fight against Christ, yet He has in Conscience an ally, which neither
by bribes nor by bullying can be made to desert Him. He is
the objective conscience of the human race. He is Plato’s just
man.
.tb
III. Let us now try to realize what kind of a being the
founder of Christianity was. Our chief sources of information
are the Gospels; for from the other books of the New Testament
and from outside literature we learn only scattered facts about
His life on earth. We shall not appeal to the fourth Gospel, for
// File: 056.png
.pn +1
there are still numerous questions with regard to it unsettled, but
shall confine ourselves to Matthew, Mark and Luke, books recognized
on all hands as of high historical value, and as having
been written between 65 and 95 A.D.[#] Anyone may very speedily
convince himself of the splendid historical reliability of these
simple narratives. From Josephus and other Jewish writers of the
first and second centuries, and from casual remarks in Greek and
Roman books, we are able to learn what the life of these days
was like;[#] but nowhere do we get such vivid, detailed, realistic
pictures as in the Gospels. “They are full of feeling for the
time; they understand its men, schools, classes, parties; they
know the thoughts that are in the air, the rumours that run along
the street; they are familiar with the catchwords and phrases of the
period, its conventions, questions, modes of discussion and style
of argument. And all is presented with the utmost realism, so
grouped round the central figure as to form a perfect historical
picture, He and His setting being so built together as to constitute
a single organic whole.”[#]
How then does Christ appear in them?—His name was Jesus;[#]
Christ is a title springing from his teaching, as we shall see. He
lived in the small town of Nazareth, in the district of Galilee[#] in
Palestine, and worked as a carpenter there.[#] At length, in 26 A.D.,
He gave up carpentry and began His public career as a preacher.[#]
The picture given of Him in the Gospels is a most attractive
one. Wherever He goes, the sick, the suffering, the distressed
crowd around Him. Blind beggars, outcast lepers, hopeless
paralytics, even uncontrollable lunatics, receive help from His
healing power. He feeds the hungry, breathes hope into the
downcast, lifts up the enfeebled patient, helps the helpless. But
while every form of suffering and sorrow appeals to His compassion,
His heart is set on winning the souls of men. So we
find Him preaching in the synagogue and by the sea, on the
// File: 057.png
.pn +1
mountain-side and in the busy street, now stirring vast crowds,
now dealing with an individual, and again pouring His rich
teaching into the ears of the chosen Twelve. No man ever had
such power of convincing men of sin and leading them to repentance:
the simple fisherman,[#] the fallen woman,[#] the wealthy
custom-house officer[#] and the dying robber,[#] all felt condemned
in His presence, and through Him entered into the new life.
The character revealed in His words and deeds is beautiful
beyond comparison. The most outstanding feature of it is His
love for God and the perfect and unbroken serenity of His
intercourse with Him. Love for man also shines out everywhere.
But the most extraordinary point is this, that He in whom the
moral ideal was so lofty, so deep and so broad, He who was so
keenly conscious of sin in others, and had such power to make
them feel it, betrays absolutely no consciousness of sin Himself,
never asks for pardon, and never speaks of having repented,
or of having passed through any crisis of the nature of
conversion.[#] On the other hand the perfect balance of His
character is almost as marvellous as His sinlessness: judicial
severity controlled by perfect love; supreme authority that is also
supreme gentleness; strength filled with tenderness; regal dignity
shown in acts of lowliest service; holiness that led Him among the
unholy;(sublimest self-consciousness, never leading to anything
but self-effacement and self-sacrifice.) And yet again, is there
anything about Him so wonderful as His power of winning human
love? The Gospels are full of instances of it, and to-day how
many millions of men, women and children would count it a
supreme joy to die for His sake!
His teaching is a perfectly articulated and unified whole, as
may be seen from the scientific studies of it that have been published
during the last twenty years.[#] But we must not attempt to
deal with that fascinating subject here, except in so far as the
whole is implied in what He says about Himself. For it is only
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that part of it, namely, His account of Himself and His mission,
that we propose to touch on.
We shall understand it best, if we begin with what happened
at His crucifixion; for it was only at the end of His life that He
made perfectly clear to the whole world what His claims were.
People often wondered whether He were not THE CHRIST,
i.e., The Messiah, the Anointed One, the great national deliverer
whom the Jews were so earnestly expecting and praying for;[#]
but during the three years of His public life He seldom openly
made the claim.[#] When, however, He went to Jerusalem for the
last time, He made a royal entry into the sacred city,[#] cleansed
the Temple from the desecration of its cattle-market,[#] and began
to teach in the Temple courts,[#] thus by both word and act
publicly claiming recognition as the Christ.
The Jewish leaders had been often bitterly incensed by His
teaching and His actions before. His bold seizure of authority
now decided them: they resolved on His death.[#] He was apprehended[#]
and brought before the Sanhedrin,[#] i.e., the High
Court of Judæa. Evidence was led against Him, but it proved very
unsubstantial;[#] so the High Priest, the president of the court,
formally asked Him, “Art thou the Christ, the Son of God?”
and He answered in the affirmative.[#] Since they did not believe
His claim, they could only come to the conclusion that He was
an irreligious impostor, impiously arrogating divine authority to
Himself. Consequently they declared that He ought to be put
to death for blasphemy against God.[#]
But the Sanhedrin could not put anyone to death; the sanction
of the Roman Governor was necessary.[#] He was therefore
dragged before Pilate. Here they did not charge Him with
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blasphemy, but with rebellion against the Roman Emperor. ‘The
King of the Jews’ was a synonym for ‘the Christ’; so they argued
that Jesus, in claiming to be the Christ, claimed the sovereignty
of the Jews, and was therefore guilty of rebellion against Tiberius.[#]
Pilate knew perfectly well that the Jewish leaders were jealous of
Jesus, and that the charge was a mere pretence;[#] his Roman
sense of justice revolted against the execution of an innocent man;
and he wished to save Him; but they played upon his fears, and
finally succeeded in wringing a condemnation from him.[#] It was
because the Roman soldiers were struck with the extreme absurdity
of the idea of Jesus being a rival of Tiberius, that they got
up their pitiable comedy of a court, and did Him mock homage
as King of the Jews.
So He was led away to Calvary and crucified, and above His
head on the cross was written, in three languages (Hebrew, Greek
and Latin), the charge against Him,—
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JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS.
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Thus Jesus took good care that there should be no doubt as
to what He claimed to be: He did not write a book, nor cut an
inscription on a rock, but He let Himself be crucified, that all men
to the end of time might know that He claimed to be the Christ.[#]
.tb
Now let us see what He meant when He called Himself the
Christ. To get to understand this fully would be to learn the
complete meaning of His teaching; for it is such a perfect organism
that every member of it is closely related to every other
member; yet we may gain sufficient insight for our purpose from
a broad survey.
The subject of the whole teaching of Jesus was the Kingdom
of God. He held that God had been working from the very
beginning for the winning of man to Himself, and that especially
among His own people Israel He had shown His hand.
They had not only come to know Him as the God of righteousness
whose law was holiness; they had enjoyed His love;
they had experienced His mercy and His power to redeem. But
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with the coming of Jesus Himself a new era of the world had
opened:[#] God was now drawing near to all men, in a new relationship
of love and mercy, with the purpose of saving them.[#]
This was the coming of the Kingdom of God.[#] The history of
Israel had been a long discipline in preparation for this.[#] On the
ground cleared in Israel, and on the basis of the revelation already
made to them, God would now reveal Himself to all men. The
destiny of Israel—“I will give thee for a light to the Gentiles”[#]—would
now be fulfilled.[#]
God, then, was about to enter into a new relationship with the
whole human race. That new relationship would be, like the
old one with Israel, characterized not only by His righteousness,
but by His redeeming love. His eternal purpose, which had been
in contemplation all through the centuries of Israel’s training, would
now be unfolded. The childhood of the world was over: its first
simple lessons had been learned; the real business of Time could
now be begun. The partial unveiling of God’s face which it had
been Israel’s privilege to behold would now become a full revelation
in the sight of the nations. The King of Israel would be seen
to be the Father of men. Further, as Israel had learned her
lessons through Jehovah’s redemptive acts at the Red Sea, on
Zion, and in Babylon, so mankind would learn the Father’s love
through the great redemptive acts involved in the coming of the
Kingdom.
The chief conviction that Jesus had about Himself was that
in and through and by Him the Kingdom of God was coming:
this it was that constituted Him THE CHRIST. His self-consciousness
is the most marvellous phenomenon within the compass
of history; there is nothing else comparable with it. The
primary element in it seems to have been the knowledge that He
was the true man, man as God wishes Him to be, faultless both
morally and religiously.[#] Closely connected with this is another
element, quite as unparalleled in human experience, a feeling of
// File: 061.png
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close kinship to all men, a consciousness of solidarity with the
whole race and of personal connection and sympathy with every
individual.[#] These two elements of His nature—His perfection as
man, and His relationship to the race as a whole—He summed up in
the phrase which He used so often to describe Himself, THE SON
OF MAN.[#] Correspondent to this double relationship to man
stands a double relationship to God: first, He stands in the closest
personal kinship to God—the Son with the Father—; so that He
alone can reveal God, and God alone can reveal Him;[#] and
secondly, He is God’s representative to the human race.[#] This
dual relation to God He expressed by calling Himself THE SON
OF GOD.[#]
The life of a being of this order, standing in great, pregnant
relations to God on the one hand and to the human family on
the other, would necessarily be of transcendent significance. So
we find that He regarded His own words and acts and all the
great experiences of His life as of supreme importance in the
history of the world:[#] His coming opens a new era;[#] His public
life is a wedding feast in the otherwise grey experience of men;[#]
His teaching is the final revelation of God;[#] His acts are glimpses
of the divine activity;[#] His death, which to the casual observer is
but a coarse judicial murder, is the solemn sacrifice that ratifies the
establishment of the new relationship between God and man.[#]
Since such were the chief convictions Jesus held about
Himself and His mission, authority was naturally the chief note
of His teaching. His hearers marked that characteristic at the
very outset;[#] and a modern student cannot fail to be impressed
with it as he reads the Gospels. He states quite frankly that
He has come to fulfil the law and the prophets;[#] He sets up His
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own “I say unto you” not only against the Jewish traditions,[#]
but against the definite provisions of the Mosaic law;[#] and over
and over again He demands from men such love, faith, submission,
obedience, as can be rightly given only to a Divine Master.[#]
In Jesus of Nazareth, then, we have a historical person, whose
time and environment are well known to us, and whose teaching
and life also stand out clear and unmistakable; and the most
prominent thing about Him is this, that, by word and deed, and
finally by His crucifixion, He made it clear to all men that He
claimed to be both Son of Man and Son of God.
Here, then, we have the secret of that similarity which we are
all so clearly conscious of, when we read a Gospel alongside of the
Gītā. In the Gospels we have in historical form the authoritative
utterances of the historical Jesus; in the Gītā we have the
imaginations of a poet-philosopher who was clear sighted enough
to realize that an incarnate god would have many things to say
about himself, and that his teaching would bear the note of
authority. When, however, we look for exact parallels between
the two, they are hard to find: the books are so utterly diverse
in origin and teaching that they have little in common except the
tone of the master. In a few cases, however, the resemblance is
rather striking: here, then, we place side by side the words of
Jesus and the imaginations of the writer of the Gītā.
.pm letter-start
Sayings of Jesus.
All authority hath been given
unto me in heaven and on earth.
Matt., 28, 18.
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Verses from the Gītā.
Nature gives birth to movables
and immovables through me, the
supervisor, and by reason of that
the universe revolves. IX, 10.
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All things have been delivered
unto me of my Father: and no one
knoweth who the Son is, save the
Father; and who the Father is,
save the Son, and he to whomsoever
the Son willeth to reveal him.
Luke, 10, 22.
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I know the things which have
been, those which are, and those
which are to be; but me nobody
knows. VII, 26.
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Come unto me, all ye that labour
and are heavy laden, and I will
give you rest. Matt., 11, 28.
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Forsaking all duties, come to me
as thy sole refuge. I will release
thee from all sins: do not grieve.
XVIII, 66.
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But that ye may know that the
Son of Man hath authority on earth
to forgive sins,—Mark, 2, 10.
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Of all mortals, he who knows me
to be unborn, without beginning, the great Lord of the world, being
free from delusion, is released from
all sins. X, 3.
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If any man would come after me,
let him deny himself, and take up
his cross, and follow me. Mark,
8, 34.
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In thought renouncing all actions unto me,
intent on me, applying thyself to the yoking
of thine intellect, be thou always thinking of
me. XVIII, 57.
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So, therefore, whosoever he be of
you that renounceth not all that he
hath, he cannot be my disciple.
Luke, 14, 33.
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Having thyself yoked by the yoke of renunciation, thou shalt
come to me. IX, 28.
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Come unto me, all ye that labour
and are heavy laden, and I will give
you rest. Matt., 11, 28.
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In him seek shelter with all thy might: by his grace thou shalt
attain supreme peace, the eternal
dwelling-place. XVIII, 62.
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If they have called the master of
the house Beelzebub, how much
more shall they call them of his
household? Matt., 10, 25.
.pm letter-start
hating me in their own bodies and in those of others.
XVI, 18.
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And blessed is he, whosoever
shall find none occasion of stumbling
in me.