Now, in passing to the gospel story, the evangelist says that Jesus brought or himself was the true light, while John's duty was merely to announce his coming beforehand. This is certainly a great step—it is the Christian recognition of the Word or of the Son of God in the historical Jesus, whose historical character is confirmed by the character of John the Baptist. The people believed in John, and John believed in Jesus. Of course we must not assume that the philosophical significance of the Word, or of the Logos, was ever clearly and completely present to the people in the form worked out by the Neo-platonists. That was impossible at the time, and it is so even now with the great mass of Christians. On the other hand, the many subtleties and oddities which have made the later Neo-platonism so repulsive to us, hardly existed for the consciousness of the masses, which could only adopt the fundamental ideas of the Logos system with a great effort. Religion is not philosophy; but there has never been a religion, and there never can be, which is not based on philosophy, and does not presuppose the philosophical notions of the people. The highest aim, toward which all philosophy strives, is and will always remain the idea of God, and it was this idea which Christianity grasped in the Platonic sense, and presented to us most clearly in its highest form, in the Fourth Gospel. To John, if for brevity we may so call the author of the Fourth Gospel, God was no longer the Jewish Jehovah, who had created the world in six days, formed Adam out of the dust, and every living creature out of the ground; for him God had acquired a higher significance, his nature was a spiritual nature, his creation was a spiritual creation, and as for man the Word comprehends everything, represents everything, realises everything that exists for him; so God was conceived as being in the beginning, and then expressing Himself in the Word, or as one with the Word. To God the Word, that is the all-comprehensive Word, was the utterance, the actualising or communicating of His subjective divine ideas, which were in Him, and through the Word passed out of Him into human perception, and thereby into objective reality. This second reality, inseparable from the first, was the second Logos, inseparable as cause and effect are inseparable in essence. As the highest of all Logoi was man, the most perfect man was recognised as the son of God, the Logos become flesh, the highest thought and will of God. In this there is nothing miraculous. Everything is consistently thought out, and in this sense Jesus could have been nothing else than the Word or the Son of God. All this sounds very strange to us at first, because we have forgotten the full meaning of the utterance or the Word, and are not able to transfer the creation of the Word and the Thought, even though only in the form of a similitude, to that which was in the beginning. A similitude it is and must remain, like everything that we say of God; but it is a higher and more spiritual similitude than any that have been or can be applied to God in the various religions and philosophies of the world. God has thought the world, and in the act of thinking has uttered or expressed it; and these thoughts which were in Him, and were thought and uttered by Him in rational sequence, are the Logoi, or species, or kinds, which we recognise again by reflection in the objective world, as rationally developing one from another. Here we have the true “Origin of Species” long before Darwin's book.

To the philosophers this is all perfectly intelligible. The step taken by Christ and his disciples (those, namely, who speak to us in the Fourth Gospel) was this, that they believed they recognised in the historical Jesus, the son of the carpenter of Nazareth, the highest Logos “Man” in his complete realisation. It was entirely natural, but it can only have occurred after overpowering experiences, for it must have signified more than we understand under the “ideal of a man,” although originally both expressions are derived from the same source. Nor was the designation of the Saviour as the Word, or, in more human fashion, the Son of God, intended so much for him conceived purely spiritually, but rather for his personality as inspired by the highest ideas.

In all these matters we must think of the ever changing medium, in which these expressions moved. Word and Son in the mouths of the people might coalesce or be kept quite apart; Son of David, Son of Abraham, might at times take the place of Son of God, and all these phrases might appear in popular intercourse to express only what others called the Messiah or Christ. In any case, all these were the highest expressions which could be applied to man or to the son of man. To the ordinary understanding, still permeated with heathen ideas, it was certainly monstrous to elevate a man to Olympus, to transform him into a son of God. But what was there for man higher than man? Intermediate beings, such as demons, heroes, or angels, had never been seen, nor did they answer the purpose. One step, however small, above the human, could only lead to the divine, or bring into consciousness the divine in man. What seemed blasphemy to the Jewish consciousness was just that truth which Christ proclaimed, the truth for which he laid down his human life. If we enter into this thought, we shall understand not only the occasional expressions of the Synoptics, but the Fourth Gospel especially in all its depth. How it was possible to make this last Gospel intelligible without these ideas, is almost incomprehensible.

What, then, did the readers think of the Word, that was in the beginning, that was with God, that even was God, of the Word, by which all things were made? And what was understood when Jesus was called the Word, that was in the world, without the world knowing him, while those who recognised and acknowledged him as the Word, thereby became like him sons of God? We must ascribe some meaning to these words, and what can we ascribe if we do not take the philosophic term “Logos” in its historic sense? One need only attempt to translate the beginning of the Fourth Gospel into a non-Christian language, and we shall realise that without its heathen antecedents the words remain absolutely unintelligible. We find translations that mean simply, “In the beginning was the substantive.” That may seem incredible to us; but what better idea has a poor old peasant woman in reading the first chapter of the Fourth Gospel, and what better idea can the village preacher give her if she asks for an explanation?

For us the greatest difficulty remains in verse 14, “The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us.” But what grounds have we for setting our opinion against the unhesitating acceptance of contemporaries, and later even of the Alexandrian philosophers? They must have felt the same difficulties as ourselves, but they overcame them in consideration of what they had seen in Jesus, or even only heard of him. They could not comprehend him in his moral elevation and holiness, except as the Logos, the Word, the Son of God. If we follow them, we are safe; if not, we can no doubt say much in excuse, but we place ourselves in the strongest opposition to history. We may say that men have never seen any divine idea, any divine word, any divine thought of any kind realised on earth; nay, that man can never have the right to pass such a deifying judgment, of his own sovereign power, on anything lying within his actual experience. We so easily forget that if God is once brought near to humanity, and no longer regarded as only transcendent, humanity must, at the same time, be thought and brought nearer to the divine. We may acknowledge this and still maintain that others, like the apostles and the philosophers of Alexandria after them, must have felt the same difficulty, perhaps even more strongly than we, who never were eye-witnesses nor Platonic philosophers. Yet they still insisted that Jesus in his life, conduct, and death demonstrated that human nature could rise no higher than in him, and that he was all and fulfilled all that God had comprised in the Logos “man.” Jesus himself declares, when Peter first called him the son of God, that flesh and blood had not revealed it unto him, but his Father which is in heaven (Matthew xvi. 17). And this was perfect truth and applies to us also.

We may go through the whole Fourth Gospel, and we shall find that it remains incomprehensible, except from the standpoint that we ascribe to the author. When we read (i. 18), “No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him,” shall we then think only of the son of the carpenter, the bodily Jesus, and not rather of the Word that was in him, and that was as near to the Father as He to himself; that was in the bosom of the Father, and that declared to us the Father, who was in the beginning? Has not Jesus himself stated (iii. 13) that no man hath ascended up to heaven except him who came down from heaven, that is from God, and that no one has seen the Father, save he which is of God, that is the Son (vi. 46)? These are, of course, figurative expressions, but their meaning cannot be doubtful. When Nathanael called Jesus, Rabbi, King of Israel, and Son of God, his ideas may still have been very immature, but in time the true meaning of the Son of God breaks through more and more clearly.

The declaration of Jesus to Nicodemus, “Ye must be born anew,” is a remarkable one—remarkable, because the Brahmans from the earliest times make use of the same expression, and call themselves the reborn, the twice born (Dvija), and both no doubt attributed the same meaning to the second birth, namely, the recognition of the true nature of man, the Brahmans as one with Brahman, that is, the Word; the Christians as one with the Word, or the Son of God. And why should this belief in the Son give everlasting life (ii. 16)? Because Jesus has through his own sonship in God declared to us ours also. This knowledge gives us eternal life through the conviction that we too have something divine and eternal within us, namely, the word of God, the Son, whom He hath sent (v. 38). Jesus himself, however, is the only begotten Son, the light of the world. He first fulfilled and illumined the divine idea which lies darkly in all men (see John viii. 12, xii. 35, 46), and made it possible for all men to become actually what they have always been potentially—sons of God.

Further reading in the Fourth Gospel will of course show us many things that are only indirectly connected with this, which I believe to be the supreme truth of Christianity. To the woman of Samaria Jesus only declares that God is a spirit, and that he must be worshipped in spirit, bound neither to Jerusalem nor to Samaria. She knows only that the Messiah will come, she was scarcely ready for the idea of a son of God, but like the Pharisees (v. 18) would have considered this only as blasphemy (x. 33). But again and again the keynote of the new teaching breaks through. When Jesus speaks of his works, he calls them the works of his Father (v. 19); even the resurrection from the dead is explained by him, as clearly as possible, to be an awakening through the Word, “He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life” (v. 14), which means that he is immortal. He, however, who did not recognise the Word and his divine nature, as Jesus taught it, does not yet possess that eternal life, for which he is destined, but which must first be gained through insight, or belief in Jesus. Can anything be clearer than the words (John xvii. 3), “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent”? Of course many of these expressions were not understood by the masses, or were even misunderstood. The words were repeated, and when necessary, especially in the questionings of children, they had to be explained somehow, often by a parable or story, which the mother invents at the moment, to quiet them. All this is inevitable; it has happened everywhere, and happens still. Whoever wishes to learn how tradition or common report treats historical facts, should compare the Günther or Etzel of the Nibelungen with the Gundicarius or Attila of history, or Charles the Great crowned by the Pope with the Charlemagne who besieged Jerusalem, or Hruodlandus with Roland, or Arturus with Arthur. Or, to come to later days, we need only recall the wonderful tales of the French journals during the last Franco-German War, and we shall be astonished at the manner in which, quite unintentionally, the people adapt all tidings to their own views. Nineteen hundred years ago there were no newspapers. Why should it have been different then?

What the children had heard and believed, they remembered when they had grown older, or themselves had become parents. It was convenient and natural to tell their children again what they had heard in their own childhood, and like a rolling stone, with each repetition the tradition constantly took up new miraculous elements. There is scarcely a miracle in the New Testament that did not account for itself spontaneously in this way, and that did not in its original form reveal to us a far higher truth than the mere miracle itself. And when the time came for a record, was it not quite natural that everything available should be gathered together, according to the tales told and believed from house to house, or village to village? In this process, moreover, the appeal to a voucher, if possible to a contemporary or eye-witness, was not at all surprising, especially if there was a still living tradition, that this or that had been heard from one of the apostles, and could be traced back to him from son to father. Why should we put aside, nay, indignantly reject, this simple, natural theory, suggested by all the circumstances, and capable of at once removing all difficulties, in order to prefer another, which has the advantage, it is true, of having been generally accepted for centuries, but nevertheless was originally nothing more than a human appeal to a superhuman attestation? It must not be forgotten that if a voice were really heard from heaven, it lies with man to understand it, or, on his own authority, to declare it the voice of God or an angel. With one-half of Christendom the doctrine of the verbal inspiration of the four Gospels never became an article of faith. It was first made so among the Protestants to provide something incontestable in place of the councils and the Pope. But this only drove Protestants from Scylla into Charybdis, and landed them in inextricable difficulties, because they withdrew the Gospels from the historical soil out of which they sprang. But we do not escape Charybdis by steering again into Scylla, but by endeavouring to rise above Charybdis, ay, even above the Gospels. In our human shortsightedness we may believe that it would have been better for us had Jesus or the apostles themselves left us something in writing. But as this did not happen, why should we not be content with what we have? The ruins of the true Christianity still remain; why should we not endeavour with their help to restore the ancient temple?

Why should we contemptuously reject the tradition which arose in the mouths of the people? Should we be worse Christians if it were clearly and plainly demonstrated that we only possess popular traditions, out of which we must ourselves form a conception of the career and teaching of Christ? Is it not good for us, that we are free in many points to decide for ourselves what Jesus was and what he taught?

And in a world in which everything develops, everything grows and changes, why should religion alone be an exception? Do we not all freely confess that certain precepts which are ascribed to Jesus in the Gospels are no longer adapted to our times and to our circumstances? Does any Christian turn his left cheek when he has been struck upon the right? Do we give our cloak when our coat has been taken from us? Do we hold everything that we possess in common as the first Christians did? Do we sell all that we have and give it to the poor (Matthew xix. 21)?

It is quite true that under this method a certain personal freedom in the interpretation of the Gospels is unavoidable, but is not this freedom at the same time accompanied by a very important feeling of personal responsibility, which is of the utmost significance for every religious conviction? It cannot be denied, that this open and honest acknowledgment of the undeniable influence of popular tradition has far-reaching consequences, and will take from us much to which we are accustomed, and that has become near and dear, even sacred, to us. But it has this advantage, that we feel we are candid and honest in our faith, to which we may add that we are never forced in dealing with human hypotheses to give our assent blindly, but may follow our own judgment. We may adopt or reject the view that in the development of the gospel story much must be ascribed to popular tradition, and I can readily believe that many who do not know, either through the study of legends or their own experience, the transforming influence which school and family traditions exercise on the form of historical narratives, find it incredible that such a carbonising process could have taken place also in the evangelical tradition as related by the men of the next generation. They must then content themselves with the alternative, that the laws of nature, which they themselves ascribe to the Deity, must have been abrogated by their own founder in order that the truth of the teaching of Christ might gain a certain probability in the eyes of the people by so-called miracles.

Let us take an example in order to see what we shall gain on the one side and lose on the other. The original meaning of making the blind see, Jesus has himself told us (John ix. 39), “For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see not might see; and that they which see might be made blind.” This refers to spiritual, not physical blindness, and which is the more difficult to heal, the spiritual or the physical? But when Jesus was repeatedly said to have healed this spiritual blindness, to have opened the eyes of the blind and unbelieving, how was it possible that the masses, especially the children, should not misunderstand such cures, and interpret and repeat them as cures of physical blindness? Certainly such an idea carries us a long way. We must then, for instance, explain such an expression as that placed in the mouths of the Pharisees (John x. 21), “Can a devil open the eyes of the blind?” as a further extension of a popular notion already in the field. Nor can it be denied that cures of the physically blind have this in their favour, that so exceptional a personality as Jesus may also have possessed an exceptional healing power. It then depends only on the character of the blindness, whether it was curable or incurable, and the solution of this question we may be content to leave to the medical man. I only remark, that if the medical man should deny such a possibility, a true Christian would lose nothing in consequence, for under all circumstances a spiritual healing power in Christ would stand higher with all of us than one merely physical.

This may be called shallow rationalism, but surely the human ratio or reason cannot be entirely rejected. Many know of their own experience that a man of high moral energy can even now drive out devils and base thoughts. Why not also believe that through his appearance and words Jesus made such an impression upon those possessed, for instance, upon the man or the two men who herded swine in the country of the Gadarenes or Gergesenes, that they came to themselves and began to lead new lives? That on such a conversion the swine-herds should forget their swine which rushed headlong into the lake, is easily understood, and when these two incidents came to the ears of the people, what was more natural than the story which we find in Matthew (viii. 28), Mark (v. 1), and Luke (viii. 26), but not in John? We need not now enter into the discrepancies between these three narratives, striking as they would be in a divinely inspired book. Of course it will be said again, that this is a shallow, rationalistic explanation, as if the word “rationalist” contained within itself something condemnatory. At all events, no one can now demonstrate that Jesus did not bewitch the unclean spirits out of the two demoniacs into the two thousand swine; but I confess that the shallow rationalistic explanation seems to me far better calculated to bring clearly to light the influence which Jesus could exercise over the most abandoned men.

One more instance. How often does Jesus say that he is the bread that really satisfies man, and the water that quenches all thirst (vi. 48): “I am the bread of life. This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof and not die. Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.” Would any one, even the woman of Samaria, take these words literally? Does not Jesus himself help us to a correct understanding of them when he says (vi. 35), “I am the bread of life; he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst,” and again, (vii. 37), “If any man thirst let him come unto me, and drink.” And in order to shield his words against any misunderstanding he himself says (vi. 63), “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing; the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life.” And are we resolved in spite of all this not to understand the deep meaning of his words, to remain blind and deaf; and do we, like the Pharisees, prefer the story of how Jesus by magic means fed thousands with five or seven loaves and two fishes (vi. 9), so that in the end twelve baskets of bread remained after all were satisfied? We can readily comprehend how in the mouths of the people the great miracles of Jesus, the real mira wrought by his life and teaching, became small miracula. But if we surrender these small miracula, is not something far better left us, namely, that Jesus, who so often called himself the bread and the wine, who even at the Last Supper, as he broke bread with his disciples, commanded them to eat the bread which was his body, and drink the wine which was his blood,—that this teacher could by his teaching satisfy, content, and convert thousands, who came to him and believed in him! It is true that the story of the feeding of thousands with five loaves of bread is more intelligible to women and children, and makes a stronger impression than the metaphorical words of Christ; but nothing is more easy to understand than the transformation of a tale of the conversion or spiritual satisfying of thousands, into a parable of the feeding of thousands with five loaves. But have not the truly devout and conscientious thinkers rights of their own in the community? Must they really hold themselves aloof from the church, because they have too deep a reverence for the true teaching of Christ? Grand and beautiful as are St. Peter's in Rome, St. Mark's in Venice, or the Cathedral at Milan, it is heartbreaking to observe the so-called divine service in these buildings. Let us not be deceived by the sayings, that the kingdom of heaven belongs to the children, or that a childlike faith is best. That is quite true, but it has absolutely nothing to do with our question. Of course in every generation millions of children are born, and milk must be provided for these as well; but this milk is not for men, and these should not permit themselves to be frightened by mere words, such as shallow enlightenment, rationalism, unbelief, etc. The worst of it is that we have permitted our ministri to become our masters instead of our servants, and that the weak among them far outnumber the strong. In history, however, the minority is always victorious. Popular legend has certainly at times grievously obscured the gospel of Christ, but not so much as to prevent those who are familiar with its nature and effect from discovering the grains of gold in the sand, the rays of truth behind the clouds. At all events, popular legend refuses to be ruled out. A knowledge of it and its influence on historical events in other nations, and especially a familiarity with the modes of expression in Oriental languages, are of the greatest use in all these investigations. Only let no one confound legend and metaphor with mythology. When Jesus says that he is the water, and that whoever drinks of this water shall never thirst again, every one readily perceives that he speaks metaphorically. And likewise when he says that he is the vine or the good shepherd. But here the transition from parable to reality very soon begins. Among so many pictures of the good shepherd it need occasion no surprise that it is commonly imagined that Jesus actually was a shepherd and carried a lamb on his shoulders. What occurs now was of course equally possible in the earliest times. When the common people saw daily, in old mosaic pictures, a sword coming forth from the mouth of God, they formed a representation of God corresponding to these pictures (Rev. i. 20). And thus many readers of the Gospel suppose that Jesus was really carried up into the air by the devil and placed on the summit of the temple or of a high mountain, that he might show him all the kingdoms of the earth, and tempt him to establish an earthly realm. Is it reverent to imagine Christ borne through the air by the devil, instead of simply learning that Christ himself, as we read, was not a stranger to inward trials, and that he freely confessed them to his disciples? Many parables are represented in the Gospels, as though they had really occurred at the time. Thus, in the parables of the kingdom of heaven, the phrase always runs that it is like seed which a man sowed, and while he slept an enemy came and sowed tares. Or the kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, or like a treasure found by a man in a field, or like a merchant seeking goodly pearls, etc. In listening to these parables or looking at pictorial representations of them, there develops almost unconsciously, especially among the young, a belief in their reality, in their actual occurrence at the time of Christ. In many cases this belief is widely spread, as, for example, in the story of the good Samaritan, Now it is quite possible that some such incident as Jesus related had occurred in his time, or shortly before it; but it is just as likely to have been a parable invented for a specific purpose. And why should not this be true of other things, which the Gospels ascribe to Jesus himself?

Is it necessary to believe, that Jesus saw the Pharisees casting their gifts into the treasury with his own eyes (Luke xxi. 1), and the poor widow who threw in two mites, or is it possible to consider this, too, as a parable, without insisting that Jesus really sat opposite the sacred chest, and counted the alms, and knew that the widow had put in two mites, and had really nothing left? Of many things, as of the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus, or between Jesus and the woman of Samaria, no one could have had any knowledge except those who took part in it. We must therefore assume that Jesus communicated these conversations to his disciples, and that these have reported to us the ipsissima verba. In this manner we are constantly involving ourselves in fresh difficulties of our own making, which we may indeed leave out of consideration, but which would never exist at all if we would only consider the circumstances under which the Gospels arose. I have previously expounded this view of the popular origin of the evangelic narratives in my Gifford lectures before an audience, certainly very orthodox; and although a small number of theologians were much incensed against me,—it was their duty,—the majority, even of the clergy, were decidedly with me. The things themselves and their lessons remain undiminished in value; we merely acknowledge a fact, quite natural from an historical standpoint, viz. that the accounts of the life and teachings of Jesus have not come to us direct from Christ, nor from the apostles, but from men who, as they themselves tell us, received the report from others by tradition. Their narratives, consequently, are not perhaps fictitious, or prepared with a certain object; but they do show traces of the influence that was unavoidable in oral transmission, especially at a time of great spiritual excitement. This is a problem which in itself has nothing whatever to do with religion. We have the Gospels as they are. It remains with the historian alone to pass judgment upon the origin, the transmission, and the authenticity of these texts, just as the reconstruction of the text lies solely with the philologist. For this he need not even be a Christian, merely an historian. Whatever may be the judgment of the historical inquirer, we must learn to be content with what they leave us. In this, too, the half is often better than the whole. Quite sufficient remains, even when the critical historian assures us that the Gospels as we possess them were neither written by Christ nor the apostles, but contain the traditions of the oldest Christian communities, and that the manuscripts in which they have reached us were not written till the fifth or at the earliest the fourth century. We may deal with these materials as with all other historical materials from that period; and we do so rather as independent historians than as Christians.

The view that the four Gospels were miraculously revealed to their authors, miraculously written, miraculously copied and finally printed, is a view no doubt deserving of respect, but it leaves the contents of the Gospels untouched. The difference between the historical and the conventional interpretation of the Gospels comes out most clearly in the doctrine of eternal life. What Jesus understands by the eternal life that he has brought to mankind, is as clear as the sun. He repeats it again and again. Eternal life consists in knowing that men have their Father and their true being in the only true God, and that as sons of this same Father, they are of like nature with God and Christ (John xvii. 3).