In this wonderful romantic dialect, M. Renan describes the beginning of our Lord's ministry. He is embarrassed, however, by the fact that, as Jesus goes on, He Himself makes claims, and sets up pretensions, and exercises powers, which are totally at variance with the proposed explanation. M. Renan cannot deny that He claimed to be the Son of God, the Messiah, the Son of David, that He claimed to work 'miracles,' to possess supernatural powers, to be somewhat altogether different from the amiable, sentimental, young carpenter of his modern biographer.
How is this to be got on with? Why, by declaring boldly that Jesus was half deceiver and half deceived! by accepting the difficulty, and confessing that He cheated men for their goodthat, as they wished to be deceived, He stooped to deceive them, and at last half deceived Himself!
We know nothing more thoroughly immoral than is M. Renan on this matter. This Jesus of his, about whom he sentimentalizes, whom he declares a thousand times to be so 'charming,' and so 'divine,' and the rest, turns out to be a deliberate cheat and quack, putting out claims He does not Himself believe, and acting in sham miracles which people coax Him, according to his biographer, to perform.
The raising of Lazarus, for instance, which M. Renan would like to turn out of the Gospels, but which he is forced to confess must stayaccording to him, was a deliberate, planned, stage performance, a gross piece of juggling imposition. Now we do not object per se to M. Renan's taking that view of it. He has a perfect freedom of choice. We do object to the immorality, the essential blindness to right and wrong, which lead him to apologize for the cheat, and try to prove it a perfectly innocent and justifiable thing. We protest against confounding eternal distinctions, against debauching conscience by proving wrong right, and a cheat an innocent bit of acting, against claiming an impostor and a liar as the high priest of the world's 'absolute religion'!
But few of us, in this part of the world, can appreciate the transcendental reasoning that makes an impostor half divine, or a cheat holy. 'Good faith and imposture,' to quote our author, 'are words which, in our rigid conscience, are opposed like two irreconcilable terms,' though, he says, it is not so in 'the East,' from which our religion came, and was certainly far from being so with our Teacher! We cannot admire M. Renan here. The writing is very fine. He exhausts himself in his 'charming' style to make it all right, and show us that we have profound reason to admire this lying teacher, this cheating miracle monger, whom he holds up between us and the pure 'Son of Mary.' But it does not answer. In this cold climate a lie is a lie, a cheat is a cheat, and a mountebank and impostor is not the teacher of 'the absolute religion of humanity!'
As M. Renan writes His life, that is the way in which the Founder of Christianity develops Himself. First we have the young man, amiable, sweet, 'charming,' enacting a 'beautiful pastoral' in the 'delicious climate of Galilee,' where it appears that nobody has anything to do save to enact 'pastorals,' although we are told 'brigandage was common in Galilee,' which seems a strange accompaniment to 'pastorals.' Where He got His wisdom, how He came by these 'transcendent utterances,' which, we are told, 'some few' only, even now, are lofty enough to appreciate, we are not informed. There they are. But, right in the midst of them, this wonderful young man, uttering these 'charming' lessons, and these 'delicious' sayings, sets to work miracle-mongering, trying His hand at thaumaturgy and legerdemain, becomes an impostor and a mountebank, pretending, among other things, to raise a man who puts on a shroud, gets into a grave, and shams dead! At last He is taken, and then, in view of death, becomes penitent, reforms, and recovers His purity!
Now Thomas Paine was, in a way, an honest man. We can say that of him. Voltaire was, in his degree, honest too. Having said what M. Renan says, they did not stultify themselves logically. They honestly pronounced Christianity a delusion. We have respect for their consistency. But our modern man says that a cheat in religion is no cheat, a lie no lie, that a true saving faith can be built on a foundation of deception and trickery! He says it, and undertakes to prove it by the convincing logic of sentimentality!
M. Renan here is just disgusting. There are a few things in this world that do not mix. Right and wrong have something of a ditch between them. A lie is not own brother to the truth. If he thinks it worth while to write the life of an impostor, very well; only, when he has declared him so, and insisted on his being so, we humbly beg he will not turn round and insist on it that the religion he taught is divine!
If the credulity of believers is great, what shall we say of the credulity of Messieurs the philosophers, the unbelievers? But what shall we say of their morality?
But if this new theory fails to account for Christianity as a true system of religion, what shall we say of its coherence with Christianity as a successful system in action? This sentimental impostor conquers the civilized world. This 'charming' worker of sham wonders becomes a God to the millions who to-day lead mankind!
Here is where M. Renan's theory utterly breaks down, where it becomes not only utterly illogical and incoherent, but where it becomes too gross for any mortal credulity, and too blasphemously wicked for any ordinary sinfulness.
It is utterly incoherent, for it requires us to believe that a system, begun in fraud and deception, has proved itself the truest and most beneficent and sacred treasure to the world. M. Renan insists on both. From such a premise he drags such a conclusion.
Is there any plain Christian who dreads a sneer at Christian credulity? Let him be comforted. What credulity is like this? What miracle in the 'Four Gospels' begins to be wonderful compared with this miracle of the modern thaumaturge? The religion which has taught men truthabove all things, truthwhich teaches utter horror of a lie, which insists on the bare, bald reality in heaven and earth, which has taught men hatred of the false as the meanest and most unmanly thing existingthis religion took its rise in claptrap miracles, was puffed into popularity by boasting pretensions, was born in trickery and nurtured by legerdemain! Its loftiest hopes, its deepest consolations are the offspring of clumsy jugglery and cheap prestidigitation!
But more: this religion, so born and nurtured, becomes the mistress of the earth. It is of no consequence that only a minority of men accept it. That minority hold the world in their hands. In fact, it seems from history, that any number of men, with this religion in their hearts, become half omnipotentthat twelve can take it and master humanity by its power. To-day the men who profess it can do what they will on the face of this planet. It has so seized temporal power, so moulded blind force, so mastered strengthit has so conferred wisdom and valor and might on men, that those who have accepted it have been crowned above their kind, that they go everywhere as the acknowledged leaders and lords of the race, the vanguard of humanity.
And a deception has brought all this to pass, a delusion has produced these stern realities! Here's where the wickedness stands out nakedly! Is there a true God in heaven, or is Ahriman rightful lord? Is the lying devil, after all, supreme? Is a lie as good as the truth? Why, the very earth reels beneath us! Is there any God at all? Are truth and good and God mere dreams, that a cunning fraud like this can so prosper and prevail under the white heavens!