SECTION I

general survey

The special historical records of the life of Jesus are the four Gospels. They form the centre of all evangelical testimony to Jesus, and exhibit the direct impression made by His wondrous personality in the sphere of literary composition. But this centre was no isolated phenomenon. The contents of the Gospels are assumed, required, and supported by the whole of the New Testament, and especially by the Acts of the Apostles, just as the historical books of the Old Testament are assumed by the contents of the Psalms and the Prophets. Roses and lilies do not grow rootless out of the earth: as little does the testimony of the theocratically inspired life of the Old Testament, or the life of Christ in the New Testament. The whole New Testament, however, may again be looked upon as only the conclusion and climax of a more general organism, namely, of the Holy Scripture. The Old Testament does not contain its conclusion within itself. They who would separate the New Testament from the Old, have this enigma to solve, how it happened that the robust oak thus suddenly stopped short in the midst of its growth—why it terminated in a gnarled stump, instead of attaining its appropriate leafy crown? The essential contents of the Bible are accredited by the two greatest religious phenomena which ever appeared, and which have endured to the present day, viz., Christianity and Judaism. That line of theocratic Monotheism which forms the key-note in the history of the religious life of all mankind, leads, both by its bright side, Christianity, and its reverse side, Talmudism, to the high region of biblical facts and institutions. But it is not so easy to infer the nature of the former blossom from the broken shell of the fruit, as from the fruit itself. The Christian Church, as the fruit of that wondrous blossom, the facts and teachings of the Bible, is a great and lasting testimony to their truth. As in the vegetable world, the kingdom of the flowering plants rests upon that of the leafy, so is it itself again the bright circle supported by the darker ground of the general religious consciousness of mankind. It is not possible to imagine the present world deprived of the Christian Church, without regarding it as maimed, deprived of its powers of development, and orphaned. Thus the four Gospels form the centre of a series of spheres indissolubly linked with each other. If the jewel is torn out of a brilliant ring, the setting becomes worthless and unmeaning; and it is thus with the Gospel history, with regard to its setting. Since, however, the life of the Lord Jesus is thus connected with those more general circles of life which concentrically surround it, it must have left a more or less distinct impression on all these enclosing circles. And they may thus all be called records of the life of Jesus. The order, then, of the general records of the life of Jesus appears to be as follows: (1.) The New Testament; (2.) the Old Testament; (3.) the theocracy, especially the Christian Church; (4.) the religious life of the human race.

───♦───

Notes

The bright side of the history of mankind stands fundamentally in the closest connection with the glorious history of the Gospel, while even its dark side points towards it; and when once the scientific knowledge of that great organism, humanity, is as mature as the knowledge of animal organisms, an organic prophecy, pointing to the Gospel history, will at length be discovered in every greater fragment of history. Thus, e.g., cannibals, as representing the deepest degradation of humanity, furnish a significant hint of the compass of the human gamut. As the depth of the water on a rock-bound coast represents with tolerable accuracy the height of the overhanging precipices, so do those depths of degradation point upwards past the middle regions of civilisation, to a heavenly perfection of humanity. In a narrower sphere, the same inference may be made of Israel’s crowning point, from Israel’s degradation. Many important nations have a far less extended scale of spiritual variation than the most important: the former are of average talent; the latter exhibit, as it were, hills and valleys in giant-like masses, as, e.g., the German nation. The Israelitish nation is, so to speak, a nation with two rows of keys. This applies in a higher degree to mankind in general.