The reli gion appa an end. whom it had been no sin, but rather an act of the highest virtue to murder the day before), the Sanhedrin gave their consent to a wealthy adherent of Jesus, Joseph, of the town of Arimathea, to bury the body. The sanction of Pilate was easily obtained: it was taken down from the cross, and consigned to the sepulchre prepared by Joseph for his own family, but in which no body had yet been laid (1). The sepulchre was at no great distance from the place of execution: the customary rites were performed; the body was wrapped in fine linen and anointed with a mixture of costly spice and myrrh, with which the remains of those who were held in respect by their kindred were usually preserved. As the Sabbath was drawing on, the work was performed with the utmost despatch, and Jesus was laid to rest in the grave of his faithful adherent. In that rock-hewn tomb might appear to be buried for ever both rontly at the fears of his enemies and the hopes of his followers. Though some rumours of his predictions concerning his resurrection had crept abroad, sufficient to awaken the caution of the Sanhedrin, and to cause them to seal the outward covering of the sepulchre, and, with the approbation of Pilate, to station a Roman guard upon the spot; yet, as far as the popular notion of the Messiah, nothing could be more entirely and absolutely destructive of their hopes than the patient submission of Jesus to insult, to degradation, to death. However, with some of milder nature, his exquisite sufferings might excite compassion; however the savage and implacable cruelty with which the rulers urged his fate might appear revolting to the multitude, after their first access of religious indignation had passed away, and the recollection returned to the gentle demeanour and beneficent acts of Jesus; yet the hope of redemption, whatever meaning they might attach to the term, whether deliverance from their enemies or the restoration of their theocratic government, had set in utter darkness. However vague or contradictory this notion among the different sects or classes, with the mass of the people, nothing less than an immediate instantaneous re-appearance in some appalling or imposing form could have reinstated Jesus in his high place in the popular expectation. Without this, his career was finally closed, and he would pass away at once, as one of the brief wonders of the time, his temporary claims to respect or attachment refuted altogether by the shame, by the ignominy, of his death. His ostensible leading adherents were men of the humblest origin, and, as yet, of no distinguished ability; men from whom little danger could be apprehended, and who might safely be treated with contemptuous neglect. No attempt appears to have been made to secure a single person, or to prevent their peaceful retreat to their native Galilee. The whole religion centered in the (1) Matt, xxvii, 57–60.; Mark, xv. 42-47.; Luke, xxiii. 50–56.; John, xix. 38—42. person of Jesus, and in his death was apparently suppressed, crushed, extinguished for ever. After a few days, the Sanhedrin would dread nothing less than a new disturbance from the same quarter; and Pilate, as the whole affair had passed off without tumult, would soon suppress the remonstrances of his conscience at the sacrifice of an innocent life, since the public peace had been maintained, and no doubt his own popularity with the leading Jews considerably heightened, at so cheap a price. All then was at an end yet, after the death of Christ, commences, strictly speaking, the history of Christianity. BOOK II. Christian of the im CHAPTER I. THE RESURRECTION, AND FIRST PROMULGATION OF CHRISTIANITY. THE resurrection of Jesus is the basis of Christianity; it is the doctring groundwork of the Christian doctrine of the immortality of the mortality soul. Henceforward that great truth begins to assume a new chaof the soul. racter, and to obtain an influence over the political and social, as well as over the individual happiness of man, unknown in the former ages of the world (1). It is no longer a feeble and uncertain instinct, nor a remote speculative opinion, obscured by the more pressing necessities and cares of the present life, but the universal predominant sentiment, constantly present to the thoughts, enwoven with the usages, and pervading the whole moral being of man. The dim and scattered rays, either of traditionary belief, of intuitive feeling, or of philosophic reasoning, were brought as it were to a focus, condensed and poured with an immeasurably stronger, an expanding, an all-permeating light upon the human soul (2). Whatever its origin, whether in human nature, or the aspirations of high-thoughted individuals, propagated through their followers, or in former revelation, it received such an impulse, and was so deeply and universally moulded up with the popular mind in all orders, that from this period may be dated the true era of its dominion. If by no means new in its elementary principle, it was new in the degree and the extent to which it began to operate in the affairs of men (3). (1) Our Saviour assumes the doctrine of another life, as the basis of his doctrines, because, in a certain sense, it was already the popular belief among the Jews, but it is very different with the Apostles, when they address the heathen, who formed far the largest part of the converts to Christianity. (2) I have found some of these observations and even expressions, anticipated by the striking remarks of Lessing. Und so ward Christus der erste zuverlässige praktische Lehrer der Unsterblichkeit der Seele. Der erste zuverlässige Lehrer. Zuverlässig durch seine Weissagungen, die in ihm erfüllt schienen zuverlässig durch die Wunder die er verrichtete : zuverlässig durch seine eigne Wiederbelebung nach einem Tode, durch die er seine Lehre versiegelt hatte. Der erste praktische Lehrer. Denn ein anders ist, die Unsterblichkeit der Seele, als eine philosophische Speculation, vermuthen, wünschen, glauben : ein anders seine innern und aussern Handlungen darnach einrichten. Lessing. Werke, ix. p. 63. (3) The most remarkable evidence of the extent to which German speculation has wandered away from the first principles of Christianity is this; that one of the most religious writers, the one who has endeavoured with the most earnest sincerity to reconnect religious belief with the philosophy of the times, has actually represented Christianity without, or almost without, the immortality of the soul; and this the ardent and eloquent translator of Plato! Copious and full on the moral regeneration effected by Christ in this world, with the loftiest sentiments of the emancipation of the human soul from the bondage of sin by the gospel, Schleiermacher is silent, or almost silent, on the redemption from death. He beholds Christ distinctly as bringing life, only of this doctrine. The calm inquirer into the history of human nature, as dis- Effects played in the existing records of our race, if unhappily disinclined to receive the Christian faith as a divine revelation, must nevertheless behold in this point of time the crisis, and in this circumstance the governing principle, of the destinies of mankind during many centuries of their most active and fertile development. A new race of passions was introduced into the political arena, as well as into the individual heart, or rather the natural and universal passions were enlisted in the service of more absorbing and momentous interests. The fears and hopes by which man is governed, took a wider range, embracing the future life in many respects with as much, or even stronger, energy and intenseness than the present. The stupendous dominion erected by the church, the great characteristic feature of modern history, rested almost entirely on this basis; it ruled as possessing an inherent power over the destiny of the soul in a future world. It differed in this primary principle of its authority from the sacerdotal castes of antiquity. The latter rested their influence on hereditary claims to superiority over the rest of mankind; and though they dealt sometimes, more or less largely, in the terrors and hopes of another state of being, especially in defence of their own power and privileges, theirsw as a kind of mixed aristocracy of birth and priestcraft. But if this new and irresistible power lent itself, in certain stages of society, to human ambition, and as a stern and inflexible lictor, bowed down the whole mind of man to the fasces of a spiritual tyranny, it must be likewise contemplated in its far wider and more lasting, though perhaps less imposing character, as the parent of all which is purifying, ennobling, unselfish, in Christian civilisation; as a principle of every humanising virtue which philosophy must ever want; of self-sacrifice, to which the patriotism of antiquity shrinks into a narrow and national feeling and as introducing a doctrine of equality as sublime, as it is without danger to the necessary gradations which must exist in human society. Since the promulgation of Christianity, the immortality of the soul, and its inseparable consequence, future retribution, have not only been assumed by the legislator as the basis of all political vaguely and remotely as bringing immortality, to light. I acknowledge that I mistrusted the extent of my own acquaintance with the writings of Schleiermacher and the accuracy with which I had read them (chiefly the Glaubenlehre and some of those sermons which were so highly admired at Berlin); but I have found my own conclusions confirmed by an author whom I cannot suspect to be unacquainted with the writings, or unjust to the character, of one for whom he entertains the most profound respect. So geschah es, das dieser Glaubenslehre unter den Händen der Begriff des Heiles sich aus einem wesentlich jenseitigen in einem wesentlich diesseitigen verwandelte.... Hiermit ist nun aber die eigentliche Bedeutung des alten Glaubengrundsatzes in der : that verloren gegangen. Wo die aussicht auf Style of the Evan institutions, but the general mind has been brought into such complete unison with the spirit of the laws so founded, that the individual repugnance to the principle has been constantly overborne by the general predominant sentiment. In some periods it has seemed to survive the religion on which it was founded. Wherever, at all events, it operates upon the individual or social mind, wherever it is even tacitly admitted and assented to by the prevalent feeling of mankind, it must be traced to the profound influence which Christianity has, at least at one time, exercised over the inner nature of man. This was the moral revolution which set into activity, before unprecedented, and endowed with vitality, till then unknown, this great ruling agent in the history of the world. Still, however, as though almost unconscious of the future effects gelists. of this event, the narratives of the Evangelists as they approach this crisis in their own, as well as in the destinies of man, preserve their serene and unempassioned flow. Each follows his own course, with precisely that discrepancy which might be expected among inartificial writers relating the same event, without any mutual understanding or reference to each other's work, but all with the same equable and unexalted tone. The women at the The Sabbath passed away without disturbance or commotion. The profound quiet which prevailed in the crowded capital of Judæa on the seventh day, at these times of rigid ceremonial observance, was unbroken by the partizans of Jesus. Yet even the Sabbath did not restrain the leading members of the Sanhedrin from taking the necessary precautions to guard the body of their victim their hostile jealousy, as has been before observed, was more alive to the predictions of the resurrection than the attachment of the disciples. To prevent any secret or tumultuous attempt of the followers to possess themselves of the remains of their Master, they caused a seal to be attached to the stone which formed the door to the sepulchral enclosure, and stationed the guard, which was at their disposal, probably for the preservation of the public peace, in the garden around the tomb. The guard being Roman, might exercise their military functions on the sacred day. The disciples were no doubt restrained by the sanctity of the Sabbath, as well as by their apprehensions of re-awakening the popular indignation, even from approaching the burial-place of their Master. The religion of the day lulled alike the passions of the rulers, the popular tumult, the fears and the sorrows of the disciples. It was not till the early dawn of the following morning (1) that sepulchre. Some of the women set out to pay the last melancholy honours at the (1) Matt. xxviii.; Mark, xvi; Luke, xxiv.; John, xx. |