the Gospels unmistakable traces of a multiplicity of narrators, and yet the work of all possesses a substantial unity, and combines into an harmonious portrait. Is such a result conceivable, unless there was one real original, whose likeness they all sought to represent? As well suppose that our portraits of Washington were formed by a multitude of artists, each making independently a fancy sketch of a single feature of an ideal Father of his Country! Many of Mr. Row's minor points and arguments, however, we should object to. He is apt to make Jesus more superhuman than the records justify, and many of his statements in this direction are too unqualified. He argues a great deal from the union in Jesus of a divine and a human consciousness. *Now, many who hold to the authenticity of the Gospels, do not find there any proof of a divine nature in Christ. Mr. Row's aim is to conduct his argument upon the basis solely of grounds admitted by all sides, or of facts which are patent. He should not, then, rest so much as he does upon a supposition so unanimously rejected by his opponents, and even by many who agree with him in his conclusion, as the supposition of the divine nature of Jesus is. It is the original form of Strauss' theory, - that, namely which found the origin of the gospel narratives in myths exclusively spontaneous and unconscious, that Mr. Row combats. The change which Strauss has made in his theory in his New Life of Jesus, by supposing the agency of conscious and designed invention, as well as unconscious, would obviate somewhat, though not entirely, the objections to the mythic theory which Mr. Row has set forth. The supposition of intentional fabrication by the authors of the Gospels is, however, so repugnant to the mind of almost every one, so inconsistent with the lofty moral and spiritual tone of the Gospels, and the sacrifices and sufferings to which their adhesion to the gospel history and doctrines exposed the early Christians, as to be incapable of ever gaining much acceptation. The supposition is an injury instead of an improvement to the unhistorical theory of the origin of the Gospels. Mr. Row's is, then, an able refutation of the position, that VOL. LXXXVII. -NEW SERIES, VOL. VIII. NO. Ι. 3 the evangelical records have little or no truthfulness, and that the portraiture of Jesus in them is not a true representation, for the most part, of an historic reality and original. So far, Mr. Row has, we think, been successful in his demonstration. But our author has endeavored to push his argument to the disproof of any mythical or legendary ingredients at all in the Gospels, and to the demonstration that Jesus must have been more than human. For this his argument seems to us quite insufficient. The view that there is no mythical or legendary ingredients in the Gospels, is beset with as many difficulties as the view that it is entirely mythical or legendary. The objections which lie in the way of the latter view do not exist against some mixture of legendary or mythical elements, in accounts mainly historical. In such a case, the al-" ready existing historic representation would serve as a fixed concrete pattern for imitation by the legendary ormythical additions, and enable them to exhibit the same general features in unity with each other and with the historic original. The theory of a mixed origin of the Gospels is the only one that escapes both Scylla and Charybdis : it is easy and natural. Such legendary or mythical exaggerations, or additions, are common halos, which form spontaneously round almost every great genius. There are few great men of antiquity, few illustrious saints of the Middle Age, few extraordinary men of modern times, even, in regard to whom characteristic fictitious stories have not been current within a generation after their death, often during their own lifetime. They are the gigantic images of mist which always attend a man who walks the broken heights of history. As Hermann Grimm has said so well in his Life of Michael Angelo, "Occurrences do not remain stable and unchangeable in the bosom of the general memory, but it rolls the facts to and fro until they become rounded and worn into a new shape." The more characteristic of its subject a story is, the more likely, almost, is it to be an invention. It is the concrete form in which the popular idea of a man has embodied itself; as, for example, the well-known fictions that Napoleon ran with the colors in his hand over the bridge of Arcola in the mouth of the Austrian cannon; that Cambronne said, "The guard dies, but never surrenders;" that Racine died of chagrin because he had fallen into disfavor with the king; that Nero set Rome on fire to see it burn; and other similar examples. In the chapter on "the influence of the supposed purely human character of the historical Jesus," - the least satisfactory chapter in the book to us, - Mr. Row takes the position that Jesus, if merely human, could not have been independent of, or risen above, the national, mental, or moral ideas which surrounded him. Certainly he could not, if he had been an ordinary man. But no one supposes him to have been an ordinary man: no one supposes him to have been any other sort of man than a most extraordinary one. To say that his character is not within the possibilities of humanity, is to assume that we know already all the capabilities and powers of humanity; a supposition the same in character as that of the sceptic, who will not allow that there has ever been a miracle, because a miracle is not within the possibilities of nature. In point of fact, Jesus does not appear so independent of the environment of his age and nation as Mr. Row asserts. The critics have pointed out many decided traces of its influence in his life and ideas, and have found the elements of his teaching, and parallels to many of his most striking sayings in the Jewish Scriptures and literature. In regard to those ideas of his which were opposed to the prevalent ones of his times, it should be remembered that a reaction against current ideas is not uncommon, and as much a natural result of them and an evidence of their influence, as conformity to them. That wonderful and incomparable flower, whose beauty streams from Galilee over the whole world, did not, nevertheless, grow suspended in the air, but was sprung from a Jewish root, elaborated by Jewish nutriment, and tinted with Jewish hues. Only so could Jesus have come enough in contact with his age and nation to get any purchase upon them. Only so could he have got into such nearness and relation with them, as to gain the leverage whereby to fulfil his providential mission of giving to it a motion and a revolution that should in time extend to the whole world. ART. III. - ON THE ALLEGED UNATTRACTIVENESS OF THE CHRISTIAN PULPIT. Ar the dedication of the First Unitarian Church in New York, on Saturday, Jan. 20, 1821, the records of the Society do not tell us who officiated in the other services; but on the printed programme we find, in the beautiful handwriting of the first clerk, against the sermon, the then already brilliant, the now illustrious, name of Edward Everett. Although only twenty-seven years old at that time, Mr. Everett had lately returned from a European tour, and become established as Greek Professor at Cambridge, after having been for two years the distinguished pastor of the Brattle-street Church, in Boston, following with not unequal steps in the shining pathway of the lamented Buckminster, - of all American preachers, perhaps, the most fragrantly embalmed in the memory of the lovers of eloquence, scholarship, and piety. At that early age, Mr. Everett had attained the full maturity of a great local reputation as a scholar and a Christian preacher; and, when the best and most attractive talent New England could furnish was wanted to adorn so important an occasion, he was selected for the honorable duty. It is not our purpose at this late day to reopen the question of Mr. Everett's merits and services. But in offering some thoughts on the alleged unattractiveness of the pulpit to the highest abilities in our generation, it seems not unnatural to adduce Mr. Everett's example. Some light may be thrown upon the general disposition of men of shining ability to avoid, or to forsake the Christian ministry, by simply asking the question why Mr. Everett, so fitted and furnished by nature and grace to the service of the Christian Church and the Christian ministry, quitted so early the pulpit he adorned, and left the profession he had so laboriously qualified himself to fill? Such an inquiry would be impertinent, conducted in a merely personal way, or pressed into particulars; and we have no such purpose. Nor would it be instructive if it were to end in discovering merely private and personal reasons for the change; such as broken health, sudden accession of fortune, modification of theological views, conscious disqualification for clerical functions, impatience of ministerial restraints, or ambition of more brilliant pursuits. But Mr. Everett was an example of a considerable class of scholarly, gifted, eloquent, and able men, who have forsaken the pulpit, to enter upon literary, philanthropic, or political vocations. It has become, to a certain extent, a reproach, that men of the first order, straying, under the self-ignorant proclivities of youth, into the liberal pulpit of this country, have soon found themselves out of place there, without adequate scope for their powers, and irresistibly tempted to leap over its narrow barriers into the open arena of public life. One thing we may fairly say at the very threshold, - that it has rarely happened that any men leaving the Unitarian pulpit, have disgraced their profession while in it, or after quitting it; exhibited any evidence of the declining power of moral or religious principle in their hearts and lives, after dropping their clerical robes; or given the least support to the worldly scandal, that they found their faith, on maturer consideration, a merely professional prejudice, or their purity and piety to be only badges of office. From what other body of men, in proportion to their numbers, has this country drawn so largely its men of letters, its poets, historians, and statesmen, as from the Unitarian denomination, and even the Unitarian pulpit? and in what class are we to look for more practical evidences of a controlling sentiment of moral and religious obligation? Certainly, we have no reason to say, that our ministers, ungowned only of their own choice, have disclosed the nakedness of their own religious characters, when taking again the place of laymen in the secular spheres of life. They have uniformly (in all the higher instances) retained all the respect and veneration they had as ministers; and, like Mr. Everett, testifying to the last his continued faith in the religious opinions he had taught in the pulpit, and his fidelity to the high standard of purity and piety he had there upheld, have lived and died in the communion of that church, |