A Homiletic Analysis of the Gospel by Matthew

The fact that Christian doctrines have on the one hand been considered too sacred for purely intellectual analysis, and on the other have been confined to the excited sphere of polemical divinity, has almost entirely concealed the argument which is involved in the ideal completeness of Christianity when strictly regarded as an appeal to the imagination. If in this attempt partially to develop that argument, the foregone conclusions of the dogmatic theologian are overlooked, it is through no defect of reverence for settled Christian conviction; and if we assume the attitude of students of what (for want of a better term) may be described as the artistic side of Christianity, it is through no desire to determine the scope of Divine inspiration by the uncertain and debateable canons of human criticism. To dismiss from recollection every remembrance of theological doctrine and every trace of theological bias is almost essential to a just appreciation of the artistic argument. We put no inquiry as to the historic credibility of the New Testament writers; we do not discuss any questions in grammar or exegesis; we know nothing of commentators or schools of interpretation; we hardly care,

IB in fact, in the first instance, to make any inquiry into the moral import of New Testament teaching: our business is simply to ascertain how far the reported life of Jesus Christ is consistent with itself; is there any law of harmony between the parts; is the progress of the narrative merely a high monotony, or is there in it an ascending motion carrying each point to higher significance, and covering the whole with accumulating glory? As a work of fiction, is the written life of Jesus Christ ideally complete? Is there anything so peculiar in its ideal completeness as to destroy the theory that it is a work of fiction? This is the one line along which it is proposed to carry an inquiry, and if again and again the reader be reminded of this fact it will be to save him from wandering into collateral questions which would distract attention from the main issue.

The miraculous conception of Jesus Christ at once addresses the boldest challenge to the imagination, and determines the unique and perilous line of artistic judgment. How can such a beginning have a corresponding progress and an appropriate culmination? Under the ancient economy God had elected his ministers in a manner which was directly inverted in the birth of Jesus Christ; in the ministers of the Old Testament God had sought to call up the human to the Divine, but in the Minister of the New Testament God brought down the Divine to the human. Viewing the Old Testament dispensation as an elaborate attempt to train a Man who should so far overcome all natural and incidental difficulties as to exert upon society the influence of a life absolutely perfect in its purity and aspirations, we are driven to the conclusion that the attempt, though conducted by the mysterious power of the Holy Ghost, was partially unsuccessful; in Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and David, it is not difficult to find the blemish which proves this, and in proving it suggests the impossibility of training an ideally perfect ministry. In reading the Old Testament we cannot escape a sense of gloomy and humiliating disappointment with the defective quality of its foremost men. They have great excellencies, and they have also great blemishes; they have excellencies, and yet are not excellent; their character can be spoken of in sides and aspects, not in its unity and indivisible massiveness; only momentarily do they get away from the common herd of men, and afterwards they are the weaker for their transient elevation. The prophet and the minstrel often descend from their ecstacy, and resume the ordinary associations of life; the warrior never quite advances to victory; and the sufferer always falls a little short of the perfection of patience. Under these circumstances the promise of a New Testament jdoes not altogether allay the anxiety of hope so long deferred, and so vexed and mortified. Through forty centuries God has failed to train “a man;” He “looked and there was no man;” He bade His messengers run to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem and seek in the broad places thereof if they could find “a man;” He sought for a man that should make up the hedge and stand in the gap before Him, but He found none; He saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor; how, then, will He proceed? Let imagination pause awhile at the last of the prophets, and attempt the task of outlining a Testament that shall be New; New and yet related to the Old; that shall be faithful to the great purpose of the former dispensation, yet bring to bear upon it an order of instrumentality that shall neither make a machine of man, nor convict God of capricious changeableness in His methods of working. A great task will thus fall to the lot of imagination; let us see what it is: imagination has

b 2 before it, in the Old Testament, a written account of the creation of man, the giving of law, the establishment of family life, the appointment of ritual, worship, and service, and the history of mankind for thousands of years; on the other hand, the world is disquieted and tormented exceedingly, every method of alleviation seems to have been exhausted, and every new proposition is treated with angry or sorrowful distrust. It is now required of Imagination to propose a Testament that shall be New. Abandoning the task as intellectually hopeless, Imagination may justly be allowed to encounter with the severest criticism any suggestion that may be offered as a solution of the difficulty. Now, it must be admitted that the writers of the New Testament do instantly address themselves to the one point which the Old Testament failed to reach; with most startling abruptness they invert the ancient method, so that instead of man being made by God, God Himself becomes man — a virgin is found with child of the Holy Ghost, and for “thus saith the Lord” we have thus is the Lord! True or not true, is not the immediate question; here is progress; the first page of the New Testament presents a more wonderful revelation than all the pages of the Old, and that is at least an encouragement to inquire whether God has not thus answered the inarticulate, yet not the less urgent and painful, desire of the world. The whole Christian argument must stand or fall with the Incarnation, and so must the collateral argument which is now being attempted. If the account of Jesus Christ’s birth is fabulous, Jesus Christ’s life must, in all its higher bearings, be fabulous too; if Jesus Christ could have been what He was without miraculous conception, then the Old Testament method of training men was an elaborate mockery, because their life might have been made as pure as His: if, on the other hand, the account of Jesus Christ’s birth is true, there can be no lack of illustrative and confirmatory evidence in the life and doctrine detailed in the New Testament. A miraculous birth cannot be followed by a common-place life, yet there must be in that life, if its mission be to recover and sanctify the world, such simplicity and approachableness as shall secure for it a position in ordinary society; it must proceed to its loftiest acts with the stoop of condescension, and do its lowliest work with original and inimitable dignity. With a test so unique the least flaw in homogeneousness must be instantly detected.

Keep reading