Ecce Homo: such is the title of a work published anonymously, at London and at Cambridge in 1866, which produced on its appearance a great sensation in London, a sensation which still continues: all the papers and reviews, whether religious, philosophical, or simply literary, busied themselves with it, either to praise or attack it; the distinguished chief of the Liberal Party himself, perhaps soon to be the Prime Minister of England, Mr. Gladstone, has just made it the subject of three articles, which are remarkable alike for acuteness, elegance, and eloquence. They appeared in one of the most widely circulated periodicals in his country. [Footnote 50]

[Footnote 50: "Good Words," a Monthly Review, edited by Norman Macleod, one of the Chaplains of her Majesty Queen Victoria. The articles referred to appeared in the numbers of January, February, and March, 1868.]

"No anonymous book," says he, "since the 'Vestiges of Creation' (now more than twenty years old), indeed, it might almost be said, no theological book, whether anonymous, or of certified authorship—that has appeared within the same interval, has attracted anything like the amount of notice and of criticism which have been bestowed upon the remarkable volume, entitled 'Ecce Homo.'"

The anonymous author has expressed in a very short preface his intention in writing this volume, as well as its fundamental ideas. "Those who feel," says he, "dissatisfied with the current conceptions of Christ, if they cannot rest content without a definite opinion, may find it necessary to do what, to persons not so dissatisfied, it seems audacious and perilous to do. They may be obliged to reconsider the whole subject from the beginning, and placing themselves, in imagination, at the time when he whom we call Christ bore no such name, but was simply, as St. Luke describes him, a young man of promise, popular with those who knew him, and appearing to enjoy the Divine favour, to trace his biography from point to point, and accept those conclusions about him, not which Church doctors, or even apostles have sealed with their authority, but which the facts themselves, critically weighed, appear to warrant.

"This is what the present writer undertook to do for the satisfaction of his own mind, and because, after reading a good many books on Christ, he felt still constrained to confess that there was no historical character whose motives, objects and feelings remained so incomprehensible to him. The inquiry which proved serviceable to himself may chance to be useful to others.

"What is now published is a fragment. No theological questions whatever are here discussed. Christ as the Creator of modern Theology and Religion will make the subject of another volume; which, however, the author does not hope to publish for some time to come. In the meanwhile, he has endeavoured to furnish an answer to the question, 'What was Christ's object in founding the Society which is called by his name, and how is it adapted to attain that object?'"

On merely considering, even after a first perusal, the brief words which I have here extracted, it is, I think, impossible not to perceive how much there is that is artificial and embarrassed, I had almost said how much there is that is false, not only in the position in which the Author has placed himself at the very outset, but in the special intentions which he avows. To study the life and the aim of the life of Christ without considering him "as the Creator of Modern Theology and Religion," to defer all examination and conclusion upon this last subject; to aspire to know the person and the mind of Christ after thus separating him from his work; to inquire what he meant to accomplish when living, without considering what he in effect accomplished in the ages which followed his passage through the world; to treat him, in short, and to examine him as we should treat and examine a person unknown to us—a fossil man, so to say, of which the features might be traceable in some contemporary document, showing that he once existed, but who has left no other trace to supply us with argument or proof of what he intended, or what he performed;—this, undoubtedly, is a strange manner of proceeding, one which holds out very little chance of an accurate and true comprehension of the immense fact called Christianity, thus mutilated in its very cradle, Christianity of which the writer limits himself to a bare search after the germ in the nascent thought of its owner, whereas it might have been observed, and its nature verified in its positive and vast development.

This is a species of decomposition, of which the great facts of history and morality do not admit. We are not here, like anatomists, describing the autopsy of a corpse. To know and comprehend such facts really, we must study them in their different elements and in all the development of their life. They form a drama in which we are actors, not a manuscript which we are deciphering.

I can easily understand how the anonymous writer of the "Ecce Homo" came to conceive the idea of his book, and to confine it within the limits which he has himself assigned: I can also understand his motives. Like all his contemporaries, he is placed and lives in presence of the grave questions agitated in these days respecting Christianity and its author. What was Christ?—a man or very God, or God and man at once? How did the divine nature and the human nature manifest themselves in him? Did he really effect the miracles assigned to him? Can there be such things as miracles? What are we to understand by the supernatural? Is God a real being personal and free, existing and accomplishing his works in a region beyond that which we style Nature? Christianity and the life of its founder inevitably suggest all these questions, which in our days occupy and violently agitate men's minds. The anonymous author of the "Ecce Homo" did not wish to enter upon them; nay, it was his aim to study and comprehend Christ without touching them at all. Is it because upon these grave problems he entertains himself no positive and decided opinions? Or, because he wished, to a certain extent, to accommodate himself to the state of opinion of some of his contemporaries, and to treat Christ as those speak of him who only see in him a man, who regard Christianity as a fact not supernatural, owing its origin, like other natural facts, to the sole and proper force of mankind?

Upon this I can form no opinion; I neither know the anonymous author of the "Ecce Homo," nor the motives which actuate him: what is certain is, that he is quite right in entitling his book "Ecce Homo," for it is only the Man Christ that he has proposed to study, and it is by studying the Man Christ that he has proposed to explain Christianity.

I do not know if, after having written his book, he was aware of the result to which it leads, but the result is in effect a strange one,—it is condemnatory and destructive of the fundamental idea of the book, it demonstrates by a sincere and honest, although an incomplete and superficial study of the facts, the impossibility of explaining either Christ by the human nature alone, or the Christian Religion by any merely natural operations of humanity.

The work is divided into two parts, and contains altogether twenty-four chapters. The first part is devoted to the study of Christ personally, his peculiar character, his manner of dealing with men, the mission which he proposed to himself to accomplish, the nature of the society which he sought to found, and the authority which he counted upon exercising. In the second part, the Christian society itself, its points of resemblance to the systems of philosophy and its points of difference therefrom, its fundamental principles and positive laws, and the habits and sentiments which are developed by those laws, all become in turn the objects of the author's observations and descriptions. Observations often profound, descriptions often exact and striking, although somewhat minute and lengthy; everywhere, however, there breathes forth a sentiment unquestionably moral, and full of the gentlest sympathy for humanity.

All this gives to the work a real attractiveness, in spite of the vagueness of the ideas which reign there, and in spite of the perceptible incertitude of the author's conclusions upon the solemn questions which he approaches, but upon which he does not enter.

I have no intention of saying more; I have not to render an account in detail of this book or to discuss any of the author's opinions or assertions upon which I may not agree with him; my aim is only to determine the character of his work, and to show plainly, first its tendency and then its insufficiency. There precisely is his originality; in setting out, and dealing with the subject of the purely human nature both of Christ and of Christianity, he seems not far from participating the opinions of Rationalistic criticism; but the more he advances, the farther he departs from the goal at which the Rationalists arrive: he appears predisposed in their favour; the process of his thought seems often to conform to theirs; his conclusions are not clearly contrary, but in effect, under the empire either of his instincts or under the influence of his historical and moral studies, he is more Christian than he appears, perhaps even more so than he believes himself to be; and if the firm doctrines of Christianity find in him no sure and declared defender, neither do they encounter in him the consistent hostility of a severe logician or the indifferentism of a mere sceptic.

There are several passages of this remarkable work which are particularly distinguished by these characteristics. To these I feel pleasure in referring the reader. They are in both parts of the book; that is to say, in the first part, chapter fifth, entitled Christ's Credentials, and chapter ninth, [Footnote 51] entitled Reflections on the Nature of Christ's Society; in the second part, chapter tenth, entitled Christ's Legislation compared with Philosophic systems, and chapter the eleventh, The Christian Republic [Footnote 52] A perusal of these passages will, if I do not deceive myself, fully justify the impression which the work has made upon me, and satisfy the reader that I am right in what I have said of the author's inconsistency with respect to religion.

[Footnote 51: Ecce Homo, ed. 1866, pp. 41-51, 81—102.]
[Footnote 52: Ibid, pp. 108—119, 120—126.]

Without expressly referring to any other passages I simply remark, that there are in this book ideas expressed and particular assertions made, which suggest numerous questions and call for many observations. I find in the entire volume a singular mixture of plain and practical common sense with a subtlety sometimes tinctured with piety, and sometimes with philosophy. There reigns in it, upon the nature of man and of human societies, an intellectual elevation, both moral and religious, which embarrasses and obscures itself in a long and painful process of refinements. It bears the impress of a grandeur of thought and of sentiment, without presenting them, however, in a form sufficiently simple and vivid. But I have no idea of examining or discussing here in detail this remarkable work; my aim is only to make the result clear to the reader, to which I have already referred, and indeed it appears incontestable. The author's aim has been to study and portray the human part of Christ, the human part of his doctrine as well as of his life. He has declared this to be his aim by entitling his book "Ecce Homo," and by saying that he deferred to another volume "every theological question, every study of Christ as the Creator of Theology and of Modern Religion." He has already done much more than he is aware; the striking inference from his first volume being that there was in Christ much more than man, and that if he had been but man, however superior we may picture his nature to be to that of ordinary humanity, the work of Christianity, such as it in fact was and is, would have been to him a thing not only which he could not have accomplished, but which he could not even have conceived.

The End.

Bradbury, Evans, And Co., Printers, Whitefriars.