The Cradle of the Christ: A Study in Primitive ChristianityFrothingham, Octavius Brooks
Religion
The Cradle of the Christ: A Study in Primitive Christianity
Frothingham, Octavius Brooks
Christianity -- Controversial literature
The hypothesis of mental and sentimental development in the experience
of Jesus comes to the aid of the believers. Signs of such an interior
progress do certainly appear, or can be made to appear by force of
enthusiastic exegesis. The teacher who admonishes his disciples not to
cast their pearls before swine, relates, with approval, the parable of
the sower who flung his seed right and left, heedless that some fell on
thorns that grew up and choked them, and some on stony ground, where
having no root, they withered away. The man who twice frigidly repulsed
the Canaanite woman who begged on her knees the boon of his compassion,
telling her that he was not sent, save to the lost sheep of the house of
Israel, adding, "it is not meet to take the children's bread and cast it
to the dogs," not only extends his effectual sympathy to her in her
immediate need, but is found afterward, seeking and saving these very
lost, going into the wilderness to find them that had gone astray,
visiting the country of the pagan Gergesenes, and opening the blind eyes
of Samaritans. The twelve disciples called and sent to the twelve tribes
of Israel, one to each tribe, none to spare for the people beyond the
borders of Palestine, became later seventy apostles commissioned to
carry the message of the kingdom to all the tribes of the earth. The
exorciser of evil spirits begins by casting devils into the herd of
swine, thus "spoiling the pig-market" of a village, herein showing
himself a true Jew, and ends by sitting at meat with publicans and
sinners. By ingenious piecing, light skipping over dates and
discrepancies careless of sequence and consequence, with resolute
purpose to extract from the documents, by all or any means, a consistent
human character, the development theory may be pushed a little way. But
it soon comes against an insurmountable difficulty; the stream narrows
just where it ought to widen, namely, as it approaches the ocean. It is
towards the end of his career that the fanaticism discloses itself. The
terrible outbreaks of anger, the invectives, the diatribes, the superb
claims of authority, the horrid descriptions of the day of judgment, the
discouragement and despair, come at the last. The serenity disappears;
the sunlight pales; the day closes in mist. The man shrinks, instead of
expanding, as he grows.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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