and on the same theme, by the most eloquent | were his cousins-german. Mary, in fact, had Unitarians.

To give even an abridged account of the story which M. Renan sets forth in his volume-beginning with Jesus, as he supposes him to have been at first, "the young carpenter of Galilee," acted on by the circumstances of his nativity, neighborhood, nation, and time, but with a certain grand and original conception of his own moral mission and of God as "the Father," and proceeding

His

a sister, named also Mary, who married a certain Alpheus or Cleophas (these two names seem to designate one person), and was the mother of several sons, who played a considerable part among the first disciples of Jesus. These cousins-german, who adhered to the young master while his true brothers opposed him, took the name of "brothers of the Lord." The true brothers of Jesus were, as well as their mother, of no sisters married at Nazareth, and there he importance till after his death. thence to the modifications, some of them passed the years of his first youth. Nazarstrong and awful, which M. Renan supposes eth was a small town the populawere gradually effected by successive influen- tion at present is from three to four thousand ces in Christ's character and his views of his souls; and it cannot have changed much. mission, till they ended in the majestic proc- The cold there is keen in winter, and the lamation of the coming "Kingdom of Hea- climate very healthy. The town, as at that ven and the world's final revolution-would epoch all the smaller Jewish towns, was a collection of huts built without style, and here be quite impossible, with any satisfacmust have presented the dry and poor aspect tion to the reader. Only from M. Renan's which villages in the Semitic countries still own work, read continuously, can his version offer. The houses, as far as appears, did not of the Gospel history be adequately gathered. differ much from those cubes of stone, withThe following selected extracts, however out elegance either exterior or interior, (which we make longer and more numerous which now cover the richer parts of the Lithan usual, because the work is still untrans- banus, and which, mingled with vines and lated), may serve to give an idea of its gene-The surrounding country, on the other hand, fig-trees, have still a very agreeable look. ral spirit and style, as well as to bring out some of the more important points of M. Renan's theory: :

is charming; and no spot in the world was so fitted for dreams of absolute happiness. Even in our days Nazareth is still a delicious place of residence-the only spot, perhaps, His Family and Native Place-He came in Palestine where the soul feels itself somefrom the ranks of the people. His father, what relieved from the burden which opJoseph, and his mother Mary, were persons presses it in the midst of desolation uneof middling condition, belonging to the class qualled. The people are amiable and of artisans living by their labor, in that cheerful; the gardens are fresh and green. state, common in the East, which is neither Antoninus Martyr, at the end of the sixth cenone of easy circumstances nor of misery. tury, drew an enchanting picture of the ferIf we set aside something of the sordid tility of the country round, comparing it to and the repulsive which Islamism everywhere Paradise. Some valleys on the western side carries with it, the town of Nazareth, in the fully justify his description. The fountain, time of Jesus, did not differ much, perhaps, round which were gathered the life and from what it is at present. The streets gayety of the small town, is destroyed; its where he played as a child, we see them still choked-up channels give now only turbid in those stony paths or those small crossways water. But the beauty of the women who which separate the huts. The house of Jo- meet there in the evening--that beauty. seph much resembled, doubtless, those poor which was already remarked in the sixth shops, lighted by the door, serving at once as century, and in which people saw a gift of working-booth, kitchen, and bed-chamber, the Virgin Mary-is preserved in a striking and having for their furniture a mat, some manner. It is the Syrian type, in all its eushions on the ground, one or two clay ves- grace, so full of languour. Doubtless, Mary sels, and a painted chest. The family, pro- was there almost every day, and took her ceeding from one or more marriages, was place, the urn on her shoulder, in the string numerous enough. Jesus had brothers and of her fellow-countrywomen who have left no sisters, of whom he seems to have been the name. Antoninus Martyr remarked that eldest. All the others remain obscure; for the Jewish women, elsewhere disdainful to it appears that the four persons represented Christians, are here full of affability. Even as his brothers, and of whom at least one, to the present day religious animosities are James, became of great importance in the less keen at Nazareth than elsewhere. first years of the development of Christianity,

His Youth and Education.-He learned

LIFE OF JESUS."

His

cc RENAN'S to read and write, doubtless according to continuator of the time of the Captivity, were, the method of the East, which consists in with their brilliant dreams of the future, their placing in the child's hands a book, which impetuous eloquence, their invectives mingled he repeats in cadence with his little com- with enchanting pictures, his true masters. rades until he knows it by heart. It is He read, doubtless, also some of the apocrydoubtful, however, whether he knew well the phal works-that is to say, of those writings Hebrew Scriptures in their original tongue. sufficiently modern, the authors of which, in His biographers make him quote them from order to give themselves an authority more The school- willingly allowed to the very ancient writings, the Aramean translations. master in the small Jewish towns was the sheltered themselves under the names of Hazzan or reader in the synagogues. Jesus prophets and patriarchs. One of these books, frequented little the higher schools of the above all, struck him; it was the Book of Betimes his character in part scribes, or Soferim (Nazareth, perhaps, had Daniel. not one of them); and he had none of those revealed itself. The legends delight in showtitles which confer, in vulgar eyes, the rights ing him, from his childhood, revolting against of knowledge. It would nevertheless, be a paternal authority, and walking from comgreat error to imagine that Jesus was what mon paths in order to follow his calling. It we should now call uneducated. . . . It is is certain, at least, that the relations of kinnot probable that he had learned Greek. dred were to him of small concern. That language was little spread in Judea be- family do not seem to have liked him; and, yond the classes which shared in the govern- at times, he is found hard towards them. ment, and the towns inhabited by pagans, Jesus, like all men exclusively preoccupied like Cesarea. The idiom proper to Jesus was by an idea, came to regard the ties of blood the Syriac dialect, mixed with Hebrew, then as of small account. Galilee and Southern Judea.-Every people Neither directly nor spoken in Palestine. . indirectly did any element of Hellenic culture called to high destinies ought to be a small reach Jesus. He knew nothing beyond Ju- complete world, enclosing opposed poles daism; his mind preserved that frank naïvetè within its bosom. Greece had, at a few which an extended and varied culture always leagues from each other, Sparta and Athens, enfeebles. Nay, within the bosom of Judaism, two antipodes to a superficial observer, but in he remained a stranger to many efforts that reality rival sisters, necessary the one to the had been made, often parallel to his own. other. It was the same with Judea. Less On the one hand, the asceticism of the Esse- brilliant in one sense than the development nians or Therapeuta, on the other, the fine of Jerusalem, that of the north was on the essays of religious philosophy made by the whole much more fruitful; the most living Jewish school of Alexandria, and of which performances of the Jewish people always his contemporary Philo was the ingenious in-came thence. A complete absence of the terpreter, were unknown to him. . . . Hap- sentiment of nature, bordering somewhat on pily for him he knew nothing of the strange the dry, the narrow, the sullen, struck all scholasticism which was being taught at Jerusalem, and which was ultimately to form the Talmud. If some Pharisees had already brought it into Galilee, he did not attend them; and, when, afterwards, he came in contact with this silly casuistry, it inspired him only with disgust. One may suppose nevertheless, that the principles of Hillel were not unknown to him. Hillel, fifty years before him, had uttered aphorisms which had much analogy to his own. By his poverty humbly endured, by the sweetness of his character, by his opposition to hypocrites and to priests, Hillel was the true master of Jesus, if it is lawful to talk of a master when one is concerned with so high an originality.

works of purely hierosolymite origin with a character grandiose indeed, but sad and repulsive. With her solemn doctors, her insipid canonists, her hypocritical and atrabilious devotees, Jerusalem could not have conquered humanity. . . The north alone produced Christianity; Jerusalem, on the contrary, is the true native country of the obstinate Judaisin which, founded by the Pharisees and fixed by the Talmud, has traversed the Middle Ages and reached our own days. A ravishing natural scenery contributed to form this spirit, much less austere, less fiercely monotheistic, if I may so say, which impressed upon all the dreams of the Galilean mind something idyllic and charmThe reading of the Old Testament made far ing. The saddest country in the world is, more impression upon him. . . . The Law perhaps, the region near Jerusalem. Galiappears not to have had much charm for lec, on the other hand, is a land very green, him; he believed that a better could be made. very shady, smiling all over-the true land But the religious poetry of the Psalms was in of the Song of Songs and of the chants of the wonderful accord with his lyrical soul; they Well-beloved. During the two months of remained, all his life, his food and sustenance. March and April the champaign is a dense The Prophets, in particular Isaiah and his thicket of flowers of incomparable freshness

and colors. The animals there are small, but | watchword thenceforward was "Good tidof extreme docility. . . . In no country in ings"-news that the Kingdom of Heaven is the world do the mountains lay themselves at hand. Jesus will no longer be merely a out with more harmony or inspire higher delightful moralist, aspiring to enclose subthoughts. Jesus seems to have particularly lime lessons in some loving and brief aphor loved them. The most important acts of his divine career took place on the mountains; there was he best inspired; it was there that he held secret communion with the ancient prophets, and that he showed himself to the eyes of disciples already transfigured. . . Jesus lived and grew up in this intoxicating medium; but, from his infancy, he made almost annually the journey to Jerusalem for the festival.

isms; he is the transcendent revolutionist who strives to renew the world from its foundations, and to found on earth the ideal which he has conceived. To "wait for the Kingdom of God" will be the synonym for being a disciple of Jesus. Who is to establish this Kingdom of God? Let us remember that the first thought of Jesus-a thought so profound with him that it had probably no origin, but belonged to the very The Theology of Jesus.-A high notion of roots of his being-was that he was the Son Deity, which he did not owe to Judaism, and of God, the intimate of his Father, the doer which seems to have been in all its parts the of his will; and then the answer of Jesus to creation of his own great soul, was, in a man- such a question will not be doubtful. The ner, the principle of his whole power. conviction that he would cause God to reign The highest consciousness of Deity that has possessed itself of his spirit in a manner quite ever existed in the breast of humanity was absolute. He considered himself as the uni that of Jesus. One sees, on the other hand, versal reformer. Heaven, earth, all nature," that Jesus, starting from such a disposition madness, malady, and death are but his inof soul as his, never could have been a spec-struments. In his access of heroic will he ulative philosopher like Cakya-Mouni. Noth- believed himself all-powerful. If the Earth ing is farther from scholastic theology than is not ready for this last transformation, the the Gospel. The speculations of the Greek fathers on the divine essence came from quite another spirit. God conceived immediately as Father-this is all the theology of Jesus. It is probable that, from the first, he regarded himself as being to God in the relation of a son to his father. Here is his great act of originality; in this he is not like one of his race. Neither Jew nor Mussulman has understood this delicious theology of love. The God of Jesus is not that fatal master who kills us when he pleases, condemns us when he pleases, saves us when he pleases. The God of Jesus is Our Father.

Earth will be burnt, purified by fire and the breath of God. A new Heaven will be created, and the whole world will be peopled with the angels of God. A radical revolution, embracing even physical nature itselfsuch was the fundamental thought of Jesus.

Inadequate Modern Appreciation of great Characters and Movements.-Our principles of positive science are hurt by the dreams which the plan of Jesus embraced. We know the history of the earth; cosmical revolutions of the kind which Jesus expected are produced only by geological or astronomical causes, the connection of which with moral Matured Notion of his Mission.—This name matters has never been ascertained. But, to "Kingdom of God," or 66 Kingdom of be just to great creative minds, it is necesHeaven," was the favorite term with Jesus sary not to stop at the prejudices they may for expressing the revolution which he brought have shared with their time. . . . The deism into the world. Like almost all the other of the eighteenth century and a certain kind Messianic terms, it came from the Book of of protestantism have accustomed us to conDaniel. According to the author of that ex-sider the founder of the Christian faith only traordinary book, to the four profane king- as a great moralist, a benefactor of humanity. doms, destined to sink, a fifth empire was to succeed, which should be that of the Saints, and should endure forever. This kingdom of God upon the earth had naturally received diverse interpretations. . . . All that Jesus owed to John was, to some extent, lessons in preaching and popular action. From that moment, in fact, he preached with much more force, and imposed himself on the crowd with authority. It seems, also, that his sojourn near John, less by the action of the Baptist than by the natural progress of his own thoughts, greatly matured his ideas respecting the Kingdom of Heaven." His

We see in the Gospel only good maxims; we throw a prudent veil over the strange intellectual state in which it was born. There are people, also, who regret that the French Revolution went more than once out of the track of principles, and was not the work of wise and moderate men. Let us not impose our small plans of middle-class good sense upon those extraordinary movements so greatly beyond our stature. Let us continue to admire the "morality of the Gospel ”— let us suppress in our religious instructions the chimera that was the soul of it; but let us not believe that, by simple ideas of good

those distant lands

ness or individual morality, the world is ever | belief in the higher nature of Christ, have stirred. The idea of Jesus was much more an interest in these aspects of his history; profound; it was the most revolutionary idea we also find ourselves thinking fondly of that was ever conceived in a human brain; it must be taken in its totality, and not with those timid suppressions which retrench from it precisely that which made it effective for the regeneration of humanity. Fundamentally, the ideal is always a Utopia. When we wish at present to represent the Christ of modern consciousness, the consoler, the judge of these new times, what do we do? That which Jesus himself did 1830 years ago, We suppose the conditions of the real world altogether other than they are; we represent a moral deliverer breaking, without arms, the chains of the negro, ameliorating the condition of the poor, freeing the oppressed nations. We forget that this supposes a world turned upside-down, the climate of Virginia and that of Congo modified, the blood and race of millions of men changed, our social complications brought back to a chimerical simplicity, the political stratifications of Europe tilted out of their order.

Over whose acres walked those blessed feet, That, eighteen hundred years ago, were nailed, For our advantage, to the bitter cross,' and longing that they were less vague to us, and that their scenery, and the whole social and intellectual movement of which they were the theatre at that momentous epoch when Christ walked over their acres, were presented to us afresh by some modern pen in minute connection with his sacred biography." And so, we can fancy, many a pious reader of M. Renan's book will feel his horror at what he finds denied or set aside in it partly compensated by the vivid positive pictures which it does exhibit of Christ's human history-fit to be appropriated thankfully by any Christian imagination, and to be wrought with rich effect into a form of religious faith quite different from M. Renan's.

In the second place, it cannot be but that skeptics of that harder and more determinate

Our desire, it will be scen, has rather been to give some account of M. Renan's book than to criticise it. But a word or two re-school which Strauss may still be taken to specting the effects which the book is calculated to produce on the different classes of readers that are likely to take it up may now be added in conclusion.

represent, and along with them, many educated Christians who have been instructed in the principles of historical criticism, but have never found their faith in the Gospel That general Christian opinion will be History substantially shaken by the applicashocked by the leading peculiarity of the tion of them, will have a serious objection book as avowed in it from the outset, and to make to M. Renan's book as a whole. shocked in detail over again by many sepa- They will ask by what right, other than his rate passages in it, we have already said. own mere instinct, his mere pleasure, at the We are not sure, however, but that the most moment to vote this true and that false, he pious and orthodox Christians who may read accepts the non-miraculous parts of the Evanthe book through will find, and will acknowl-gelical narratives while rejecting the miracedge that they find, something like a com- ulous parts. If there is such a thing as pensation in it for all the strain and pain it myth-making in the world, there will, it may must give them; and we are confirmed in be said, be non-miraculous myths as well as this by what we have already heard of the miraculous myths, and perhaps in greater impression made by the book on some candid abundance. The miraculousness of a story orthodox minds, "Why was it left," they is not the sole test of its being a myth; and may say," to this skeptical French thinker a legend may be non-miraculous and yet lack to do what orthodox Christians would have been glad, at any time for a century or two past, to have seen done for them-to follow, with reverent care the human history of Christ as it enacted itself in Galilee and Judea, and to tell that his history circumstantially, in the modern manner, and with the aid of modern geographical and antiquarian knowledge, so as to rivet the imagination and elucidate the Gospels? We also with all our

all evidence of being true. Simply to weed a written story, therefore, of its miraculous particles, and then, with an occasional “It seems or "As I fancy," to comb out the rest into possible sequence and order, is an utterly unhistorical proceeding. And all this, with some show of justice, both the classes of critics we have mentioned may urge against M. Renan's "Life of Jesus." They may maintain that it is simply M.

Renan's imagination of the life of Jesus, as- ces populations bienveillantes et naives, ne sisting itself by a treatment of the materials savait échapper." And again, in another entirely arbitrary, and not in the least criti- place, "Sa prédication était suave et douce, cal. They may, at least, demand from M. toute pleine de la nature et du parfum des Renan a more detailed explanation than he champs. Il aimait les fleurs, et en prenait has given in his book of the principles which ses leçons less plus charmantes. Les oiseaux have guided him in retaining so much as his- du ciel, la mer, les montagnes, les jeux des torical while he has rejected so much else as enfans passaient tour à tour dans ses ennon-historical. seignements." These passages, indeed, do Lastly, there are not a few, we fancy, who, not representthe final and complete impreswhile not objecting to M. Renan's method, sion which M. Renan leaves of his concepand quite willing to accept an adequate ac- tion of the character of Christ. More count of the human character and history of especially towards the end of the book, eleChrist arrived at by such a method, will still ments of severity and even of terror are refuse M. Renan's account, as being, with infused into those sweeter and more idyllic all its carefulness and all its reverence, essen-representations of the beginning. We are tially inadequate. They will have their own not sure, however, but that the Teutonic imagination of Jesus formed from the rec- soul generally will object to M. Renan's total ords; and that imagination will not be M. imagination of the character of Christ that Renan's. Unless we are mistaken, the com- it lacks tremendousness and strength. Alplaint in this quarter will generally be that bert Dürer and the German painters generalM. Renan's interpretation of the character ly had quite a different ideal of Christ from and life of Christ is too merely sweet, too that of the painters of the Latin nations, idyllic, too French. Son caractère aim- and rejected or greatly subordinated the able," says M. Renan in one place, "et, sans" ravissante figure" and the "prédication doute, une de ces ravissantes figures qui ap- suave et douce" by which these painters set paraissent quelquefois dans la race juive, so much store. In this matter, among the faisaient autour de lui comme une cercle de readers of M. Renan's book, there will, we fascination auquel personne, au milieu de fancy, be Albert Dürers yet

rather sarcastic significance. The pretence of obedience to St. Paul in upholding Slavery and resorting to Secession, certainly does sound something too much like the combination of a snuffle and a sneer.—Punch.

OUR DUTY TOWARDS OUR NIGGER.-The dif-practising just what the Apostle tells them a ferent clergy of the Confederate States have addressed a manifesto to their "Christian Brethren" throughout the world against the Yankees. As against the Yankees, there is perfect truth in this protest; but there is one part of it which asserts Slavery to be a providential institution. This winds up with a quotation from the First of Paul and Timothy on the very different matter of servitude as it was in Timothy's diocese, prescribing rules for the conduct of servants, denouncing any man who should teach otherwise, and ending with the words "from which withdraw thyself." Whereupon these evangelical gentlemen subjoined the following observa

tion:

"That is what we teach; and obedient to the last verse of the text, from men that teach otherwise-hoping for peace-we 'withdraw' ourselves."

The inverted commas with which these reverend divines accentuate their extracts from the

apostolic text in taking them to themselves, appear to give their profession of preaching and

THE stream of Anti-Renan publications still flows on in France. There have been several fresh ones last week, though not so many as in the preceding week. One of M. Renan's opponents, M. Delaporte, "Professeur de Dogme a la Faculté de Bordeaux," has published, in addition to a pamphlet against M. Renan, another tract, with this special title, "Le Diable existet-il, et que fait-il?" a tract which should be worth seeing.

THE second volume of the Baron de Bazancourt's French military history of the Crimean expedition has just left the press.

As was to be expected, M. Renan's "Vie de Jésus" has been prohibited by the "Congregation of the Index" at Rome.