Rumball, Edwin A.

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JESUS: A SYMBOL.BY THE REV. EDWIN A. RUMCALL.[This short article comes from the pen of the minister of the UnitedChurches of Waterford, Maine, and was called forth by the perusal of Dr.Moxom's article "Jesus's View of Himself in the Fourth Gospel" in the MayOt^cn Court. Mr. Rumball says, "While I agree in the main with Dr. MoxomI feel that the Johannine portraiture is not so peculiar to the Fourth Gospelas he implies. The idealizing elements can be found in the Synoptics as wellas in John. The difference between them is not so great as some critics aver,the old traditional contention that the two portraits are not contradictoryand do not exclude each other is not so far fetched as we at times imagine.Because of this I am sending you a short paper which may tend to help thediscussion from another point of view."—Ed.]" 'T^ HE religion of one age is often the poetry of the next.-L Aroimd every Hving and operative faith there Hes a regionof allegory and imagination into which opinions frequently pass, andin which they long retain a transfigured and idealized existence aftertheir natural life has died away." Thus the historian Lecky wrotein 1865. In no Christian age can the truth of this be better seenthan in the present. Historical criticism is making all thoughtfulpeople, from the scholar in his library to the mechanic at his bench,realize that not only arc we creed-makers, but by some instinctwhich demands a poetry in life, legend-builders and myth-makers asever were the primitive Christians. The very men who set them-selves the task of writing the history of the "real" Jesus, betray thisinstinct before they close, by some idealizing. For many years wehave been in the habit of charging Renan of writing a history of theIdeal Frenchman, but have not always realized that in perhaps asmaller degrees more recent writers of lives or histories of Jesushave yielded their historical sense to the poetical.In two of the most recent books upon Jesus—Bousset's Jesus,and Schmidt's Prophet of Nazareth,—the interpolations, legends,and myths are cast aside and by learned reverent critics we are pre-sented with the "real" Jesus as far as it is possible at this day toknow him. As you draw near, however, to the close of each book andthe critical parts are gradually being left behind, you feel the beautifulJESUS A SYMBOL. 373and attractive influence of the advancing poetry. It is hard to castblame on such idealizations, but one often feels that the influencewe have received from contemplating the real is canceled bv beingwafted again to the ideal little altered from the one we started outwith.Now we have no fault to find with the possession of ideals,rather would we urge the counting of all things as loss in the en-deavor of untiring moral energy to attain the life of God ; but thereare many men and women in this world, who belong to some of thestrongest moral forces of society, who. by the way. often are out-side our churches, who demand that we "call a spade a s]jade."One such wrote in the Hibbcrt Joiinial a }'ear or two ago the follow-ing: "Let us not be ashamed to acknowledge that by which we reallylive. Let us have done with pretence. Let us cease to call ourselvesChristians when we do not follow Christ. Let us cease attemptingto reduce Christianity to a metaphor and to make the words ofChrist mean to us what they never meant to him." Alanv of us to-day find fault with those ministers and churches who read into anancient materialistic symbol some modern scientific ideal, but do wealways remember that Jesus himself has become such a svmbol tous?Jesus is a symbol and has tended to become more and more sofor many years. It is very questionable, however, whether in theultimate religion of mankind Jesus will hold such a place. Ratherdo we think that the eternal religion which has expressed itself inpast history will be looked for more in contemporary history. Thereis no one person who stands before us as the infallible eternal ex-ample to mankind. In no one life is embodied the manifold life ofGod. "The man has never lived who can feed us ever."Every attempt to gather round Jesus the ideals of the ages islikely in ages like the present to impede rather than help forward topure religion and undefiled. We are likely to be discovered flounder-ing amid history, legends and our own ideals, barely able to under-stand which is which sufficiently to give to him who asketh "a rea-son" for the hope that is within us. The religion of those who fol-low the latest attempt to deny the historicity of Jesus, in affirminghim to have been the deity of a small Syrian gnostic sect, is far moresatisfactory, than the possession of a religion which brings suchconfusion of ideas as that which treats Jesus as historical and yetunconsciously makes him a symbol. I mean that it is more con-sistent.Some may feel that up to the present we have been too bold in374 THE OPEN COURT.speaking of Jesus as a symbol. Are not the lovely ideals we haveeach formed, in harmony with the historic picture given us? Thatwe may be reminded that there is a difiference between the Jesus ofA. D. 30, and A. D. 1907, let us study him more in detail.We might begin by thinking of the kingdom of God whichformed one of the chief elements in his evangel. In this theocraticideal Jesus looked for the exaltation of the Jewish nation. Some ofthe characteristics of this kingdom, as non-resistance, lose theirseeming extravagances, when it is remembered that Jesus was think-ing of peasant Galilee and not of modern London or New York.He expected this kingdom to grow quickly as a mustard seed. Somehave afifirmed that his kingdom was altogether a spiritual reign ofGod and that the references of an earthly kingdom are due to dis-ciples, but, as the most recent history of Jesus shows, the earthlykingdom of God is too closely connected with Jesus for us to doubtit. At the present day, however, in this matter we have left Jesusbehind. We use his form, but we have spiritualized the content.When the modern Christian prays "Thy kingdom come," he looksforward to the ideal world where God shall be all in all. The pros-pect of Jesus was nothing so large, he was thinking of his ownpeople. This is akin to the modern missionary ideal expressed inthe words of "Christ for the World." Jesus of Nazareth, however,had no such universal relationship. Grand and glorious as is the ex-tension of goodness and piety through this world, the idea is for-eign to Jesus. Only towards the close of his life when he beganto see that his hopes for the Jewish nation were meeting with noresponse, did he hint of foreigners coming to God instead of them,it was no essential part of his message. The so-called missionarycharge of "baptizing all nations," and the world-purposes of theFourth Gospel do not belong to the historic Jesus. In them we seethe beginning of the ideal Jesus.Again, in an age like our own when social reform is occupyingthe minds of many good men and women, it is not to be wonderedat that Jesus is found by many to be the founder of modern socialschemes. When we come to view the facts we wonder that men donot realize that their leader is an ideal and not a historic person.It is nice to think of Jesus at the marriage in Cana, but the allegor-izing methods of the Fourth Gospel forbid us speaking of it as his-tory. There is also, no doubt, a great deal of truth in contrastingthe "gluttonous man and wine-bibber" with the ascetic Baptizer,but the contrast is carried too far. Jesus was by no means the manof society we like to think him. His enthusiasm for his ideals cutJESUS A SYMr.OL. 375him off from his fellows ; he was cut off from the rich and culturedby the views which a poor reformer often holds of such people. Hedid not exemplify for us a holy home, for he remained unmarried,and although his little band of disciples in no way approached therules of the Essenes, his calling them to xicld home, father, mother,children for his sake, his call to some io sell all and join liim, ratherplaces him with those saintly souls who have sought some earthlyUtopia, but who have always failed to realize it. There are elementsin the historic Jesus that tend to make the man who has his wife andchildren to think of. and who day after da\' has to meet a world ofbusiness that Jesus never knew, and never expected would be, thattend to make the man allow the historic Jesus to drop from his life.Jesus thought it best that he and others should be celibates for thekingdom of heaven's sake. "Our fragmentary record of his sav-ings does not tell us whether Jesus ever suggested that men mightmarry, and women bear children, and parents bring up their littleones for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Would that it did !"The Christ of our homes is an ideal, not Jesus of Nazareth.Last but not least, our ideal Jesus is always a sinless Jesus.There is every reason why he should be ; but we err when we at-tribute this to Jesus of Nazareth. He disclaimed the possession ofabsolute goodness and affirmed one alone as good and that, God;and further we should always remember that one of the thingswhich seemed to open his work was taking part in John's baptismof repentance. It is not until we reach the idealizing tendencies ofthe apostles as found in the b^ourth Gospel and the Epistles that wefind sinlessness attributed to Jesus.These are some of the reasons, roughly put it is true, for speak-ing of Jesus as a symbol. Among large sections of the Church thetruth will be long spreading. In fact, among the uncultured classes,it is a question, which I leave casuists to decide, whether the aspira-tion towards an ideal without basis in history is the most beneficial.An idealized historical person seems not at all misplaced in somestages of the evolution of mankind. To minds that ever wish to"have done with pretence," it may seem as though such a stage inevolution is barely honest. God, however, moves in a mysteriousway and much of his mystery is composed of what we call unfair-ness and unreality. Jesus of Nazareth is passing from us, but theideal Jesus is the contemporary of all ages. If we would knowhow long we shall call our ideal by the name of Jesus, let us answerthis question first: With whom doth history tell us is God, the his-torian or the poet? the man of reason or the man of faith?

Jesus: A Symbol.

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Jesus: A Symbol.

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