Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/703

CHRISTIANITY 689- Christianity cannot help powerfully affecting the whole of the intellectual side of man s life. The spiritual events on which it rests must have their rationale, and the spiritual forces which course through it must have their rule, and man must more or less comprehend them, and assimilate them. The Christian cannot help having a very different idea of God from that held by Aristotle or Plato. The Christian regards sin as something which affects the whole human race, while the pagan believes it to be the mistake or misfortune of individuals. Christianity cannot help remoulding the beliefs and opinions of mankind, but theology and Christianity are two very different things. The Christian is moved by moral impulses and guided by moral principles which are peculiar to himself. He cannot look on marriage, for example, from either the purely economic or the purely sensuous point of view. He cannot help reorganizing the scheme of virtues, and giving to the principle of love a pre-eminence which it has not in pagan ethics. Christianity cannot help putting a new face on morality, but Christian ethics and Christianity are still not one and the same thing. Christianity includes all these and much more besides. It is nothing less than the whole round of human life in all its various departments in so far as it is related to and illumined and dominated by the divine love revealed in Jesus Christ. It is the presence of Jesus among His people and all that is implied in such a presence. Ckristi- The close and inseparable connection between Jesus anity and Christ and Christianity, which is implied in the name, and which study only makes more and more evident, produces the inevitable consequence that our view of the nature and characteristics of Christianity must depend on the answer which we give to the question which Jesus himself put to His disciples " Whom do ye say that I, the Son of man, am 1 " There are different theories of Christianity, because there are different theories of Christ, and in order to know how various conceptions of the nature of Christianity arise it is necessary to be familiar with the various views which men have held and hold about the nature and work of Christ. For example, different theories of Christianity arise when we ask what was the relation existing between Jesus and what went before Him, what was the relation in which Jesus stood to His contemporaries and His im mediate followers, what is the connection which subsisted between Jesus and the future. All these inquiries reveal different theories about the nature and work of Christ, which are reproduced in different theories of the essential nature of Christianity, and enable men whose opinions and principles are widely different to call themselves, to their own satisfaction at least, Christians. I ll..- ivla- Jesus Christ claimed to have a definite relation to the f ion of past history of that people among whom He was born. In ,and jjj g teaching He put himself at the end of the Old Testa- , ||it to ment, and declared that He came to fulfil the Law and the what went Prophets. Christianity, therefore, however it be explained, " has a close connection with Judaism, and the religion of Jesus cannot be considered without regard to the religion of Moses. This is now universally acknowledged, however variously the relation between the two may be explained. Criticism finds an ample confirmation of the claims of Christ in the intimate connection in which His teaching, life, and work stand to the Old Testament and the past life of the inspired Hebrew people. The whole of the Mosaic dispensation, the whole of the Jewish economy, with its prophecy, priesthood, and kingship, is recognized as summed up in the person and work of Christ. The Old Testament, which without Christ is but a collection of sacred books written at different times and in various manners, is re garded when looked at through Christ as an harmonious whole of anticipatory revelation. Indeed, one of the chief differences which critical apologetic finds between the Old. Testament and other so-called sacred books is, that Christ is at the end of the Old Testament, and that no other scrip tures have such a conclusion. But all this implies thafc Christianity is a development from Judaism, and that out idea of the one will be modified by our conception of tho other. Those who refuse to admit that Judaism is more than one of the many natural religions of mankind can- hardly admit the supernatural character of Christianity, or regard it in any other light than as the outcome, perhaps the highest outcome possible, of that side in man s nature which has been called by some the religious faculty. Those who attempt to derive Mosaic institutions from Egypt, who seek the basis of Hebrew prophecy in epileptic tendencies, and see nothing in the theocratic idea which was not suggested by ordinary kingship, cannot have much difficulty in analyzing Christianity into the natural develop ment of the religious sentiment aided by a somewhat extravagant enthusiasm. Those, on the other hand, who find it impossible to accept the assumptions, and to get over the innumerable difficulties attending the naturalist theory of the Old Testament and of the history of the Hebrew people, find in Christianity something different in kind as well as in degree from all natural religions. Modern criticism even of the negative kind often indirectly supports the supernaturalist theory of the Old Testament and of Christianity, for its fundamental maxim, that waters cannot rise higher than their source, has proved the impossibility of explaining away Old Testament institutions and New Testament truths into merely the natural outcome of the religious faculties of a peculiar people. It has proved that the Old Testament religion contains materials which were not got from the intercourse of the Jews with other nations, and which did not arise naturally from the geographical position or the ethnographical characteristics of the Hebrew people. It has shown that the Old Testa ment religion was not a natural stream gathered from many a smaller rill, but came forth gushing, like the water of Hebrew history, from the Eock which contained it ; and in doing so it has given its testimony to the altogether unique and supernatural character of Christianity. The relation of Jesus to His contemporaries, and of His Tie rela- disciples and their writings to the founders of the various tion f ethnic religions, is another point whence proceed various Jes " st0 ^ views of the nature of Christianity. The old deist view, praries", adopted and intensified by the Encyclopedists, that Jesus was a charlatan, that His disciples were partly cheats and partly dupes, and that Christianity was founded in fraud and perpetuated by deceit, has to all intents and purposes- disappeared. But many believe that Christianity is only one of the many religions which are all of them true though none of them contain the whole truth. The- modern notion of evolution has been called in to enforce- this view, and Christianity is explained to be the most perfect development yet reached by the religious spirit of mankind ; while the character of Jesus and the New Testament writings are explained on the same principle. On theories of this kind Christianity is the production of" the natural forces of the period which gave birth to it, and- contains nothing which cannot be traced back to the circumstances of the time, and the conditions of humanity. All such theories commonly rest on the general principle that the supernatural is impossible, and that whatever involves a miracle is r/wo/arto incredible, and then proceed- by means of some special principle to explain the presence- of facts which seem to imply the supernatural. (See- article APOLOGETICS.) These principles are used to explain not so much the origin of Christianity itself as the origin of the Christian writings of the New Testament, and the production of the scheme of doctrine and morals therein

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