It also follows of necessity from both the genealogies,' that their compilers entertained no doubt that Joseph was the father of Jesus. Otherwise the descent of Joseph would not have been in the least to the point. All attempts to reconcile this inconsistency with the doctrine of the Angel-Messiah has been without avail, although the most learned Christian divines, for many generations past, have endeavored to do so. So, too, of the stories of the Presentation in the Temple,' and of the child Jesus at Jerusalem,' Joseph is called his father. Jesus is repeatedly described as the son of the carpenter, or the son of Joseph, without the least indication that the expression is not strictly in accordance with the fact." If his parents fail to understand him when he says, at twelve years old, that he must be about his Father's business; if he afterwards declares that he finds no faith among his nearest relations; if he exalts his faithful disciples above his unbelieving mother and brothers; above all, if Mary and her other sons put down his prophetic enthusiasm to insanity;-then the untrustworthy nature of these stories of his birth is absolutely certain. If even a little of what they tell us had been true, then Mary at least would have believed in Jesus, and would not have failed so utterly to understand him.10 The Gospel of Mark-which, in this respect, at least, abides most faithfully by the old apostolic tradition-says not a word about Bethlehem or the miraculous birth. The congregation of Jerusalem to which Mary and the brothers of Jesus belonged," and over which the eldest of them, James, presided," can have known nothing of it; for the later Jewish-Christian communities, the so-called Ebionites, who were descended from the congregation at Jerusalem, called Jesus the son of Joseph. Nay, the story that the Holy Spirit was the father of Jesus, must have risen among 1 Matt. and Luke. "The passages which appear most confirmatory of Christ's Deity, or Divine nature, are, in the first place, the narratives of the Incarnation and of the Miraculous Conception, as given by Matthew and Luke. Now, the two narratives do not harmonize with each other; they neutralize and negative the genealogies on which depend so large a portion of the proof of Jesus being the Messiah-the marvellous statement they contain is not referred to in any subsequent portion of the two Gospels, and is tacitly but positively negatived by several passages-it is never mentioned in the Acts or in the Epistles, and was evidently unknown to all the Apostles-and, finally, the tone of the nar the Greeks, or elsewhere, and not among the first believers, who were Jews, for the Hebrew word for spirit is of the feminine gender.' The immediate successors of the "congregation at Jerusalem” --to which Mary, the mother of Jesus, and his brothers belongedwere, as we have seen, the Ebionites. Eusebius, the first ecclesiastical historian (born A. D. 264), speaking of the Ebionites (i. e. "poor men "), tell us that they believed Jesus to be "a simple and common man," born as other men, " of Mary and her husband." The views held by the Ebionites of Jesus were, it is said, derived from the Gospel of Matthew, and what they learned direct from the Apostles. Matthew had been a hearer of Jesus, a companion of the Apostles, and had seen and no doubt conversed with Mary. When he wrote his Gospel everything was fresh in his mind, and there could be no object, on his part, in writing the life of Jesus, to state falsehoods or omit important truths in order to deceive his countrymen. If what is stated in the interpolated first two chapters, concerning the miraculous birth of Jesus, were true, Matthew would have known of it; and, knowing it, why should he omit it in giving an account of the life of Jesus?' Al The Ebionites, or Nazarenes, as they were previously called, were rejected by the Jews as apostates, and by the Egyptian and Roman Christians as heretics, therefore, until they completely disappear, their history is one of tyrannical persecution. though some traces of that obsolete sect may be discovered as late as the fourth century, they insensibly melted away, either into the Roman Christian Church, or into the Jewish Synagogue,' and with them perished the original Gospel of Matthew, the only Gospel written by an apostle. "Who, where masses of men are burning to burst the bonds of time and sense, to deify and to adore, wants what seems earth-born, prosaic fact? Woe to the man that dares to interpose it! Woe to the sect of faithful Ebionites even, and on the very soil of Palestine, that dare to maintain the earlier, humbler tradition! Swiftly do they become heretics, revilers, blasphemers, though sanctioned by a James, brother of the Lord." Edward Gibbon, speaking of this most unfortunate sect, says: "A laudable regard for the honor of the first proselytes has countenanced the belief, the hope, the wish, that the Ebionites, or at least the Nazarenes, were 1 See The Bible for Learners, vol. iii. p. 57. Christ of Paul,” tə gated this subject in his " distinguished only by their obstinate perseverance in the practice of the Mosaic rites. Their churches have disappeared, their books are obliterated, their obscure freedom might allow a latitude of faith, and the softness of their infant creed would be variously moulded by the zeal of prejudice of three hundred years. Yet the most charitable criticism must refuse these sectaries any knowledge of the pure and proper divinity of Christ. Educated in the school of Jewish prophecy and prejudice, they had never been taught to elevate their hope above a human and temporal Messiah. If they had courage to hail their king when he appeared in a plebeian garb, their grosser apprehensions were incapable of discerning their God, who had studiously disguised his celestial character under the name and person of a mortal. "The familiar companions of Jesus of Nazareth conversed with their friend and countryman, who, in all the actions of rational and human life, appeared of the same species with themselves. His progress from infancy to youth and manhood was marked by a regular increase in stature and wisdom; and after a painful agony of mind and body, he expired on the cross.' "1 The Jewish Christians then-the congregation of Jerusalem, and their immediate successors, the Ebionites or Nazarenes-saw in their master nothing more than a man. From this, and the other facts which we have seen in this chapter, it is evident that the man Jesus of Nazareth was deified long after his death, just as many other men had been deified centuries before his time, and even after. Until it had been settled by a council of bishops that Jesus was not only a God, but "God himself in human form,” who appeared on earth, as did Crishna of old, to redeem and save mankind, there were many theories concerning his nature. Among the early Christians there were a certain class called by the later Christians Heretics. Among these may be mentioned the Carpocratians," named after one Carpocrates. They maintained that Jesus was a mere man, born of Joseph and Mary, like other men, but that he was good and virtuous. "Some of them have the vanity," says Irenæus, "to think that they may equal, or in some respects exceed, Jesus himself.""" 3 These are called by the general name of Gnostics, and comprehend almost all the sects of the first two ages. They said that "all the ancients, and even the Apostles themselves, received and taught the same things which they held; and that the truth of the Gospel had been preserved till the time of Victor, the thirteenth Bishop of Rome, but by his successor, Zephyrinus, the truth had been corrupted." Eusebius, speaking of Artemon and his followers, who denied the divinity of Christ, says: 1 Gibbon's Rome, vol. iv. pp. 488, 489. * See Lardner's Works, vol. viii. pp. 395, 396. Ibid. p. 806. • Ibid. p. 571. “They affirm that all our ancestors, yea, and the Apostles themselves, were of the same opinion, and taught the same with them, and that this their true doctrine (for so they call it) was preached and embraced unto the time of Victor, the thirteenth Bishop of Rome after Peter, and corrupted by his successor Zephyrinus." There were also the "Cerinthians," named after one Cerinthus, who maintained that Jesus was not born of a virgin, which to them appeared impossible, but that he was the son of Joseph and Mary, born altogether as other men are; but he excelled all men in virtue, knowledge and wisdom. At the time of his baptism, "the Christ" came down upon him in the shape of a dove, and left him at the time of his crucifixion.' Irenæus, speaking of Cerinthus and his doctrines, says: "He represents Jesus as the son of Joseph and Mary, according to the ordinary course of human generation, and not as having been born of a virgin. He believed nevertheless that he was more righteous, prudent and wise than most men, and that the Christ descended upon, and entered into him, at the time of his baptism.” * The Docetes were a numerous and learned sect of Asiatic Christians who invented the Phantastic system, which was afterwards promulgated by the Marcionites, the Manicheans, and various other sects. They denied the truth and authenticity of the Gospels, as far as they related to the conception of Mary, the birth of Jesus, and the thirty years that preceded the exercise of his ministry. Bordering upon the Jewish and Gentile world, the Cerinthians labored to reconcile the Gnostic and the Ebionite, by confessing in the same Messiah the supernatural union of a man and a god; and this mystic doctrine was adopted, with many fanciful improvements, by many sects. The hypothesis was this: that Jesus of Nazareth was a mere mortal, the legitimate son of Joseph and Mary, but he was the best and wisest of the human race, selected as the worthy instrument to restore upon earth the worship of the true and supreme Deity. When he was baptized in the Jordan, and not till then, he became more than man. At that time, the Christ, the first of the Eons, the Son of God himself, descended on Jesus in the form of a dove, to inhabit his mind, and direct his actions during the allotted period of his ministry. When he was delivered into the hands of the Jews, the Christ forsook him, flew back to the world of spirits, and left the solitary Jesus to suffer, to Eusebius: Eccl. Hist., lib. 5, ch. xxv. Lardner: vol. viii. p. 404. complain, and to die. This is why he said, while hanging on the cross: "My God! My God! why hast thou forsaken me?"" Here, then, we see the first budding out of-what was termed by the true followers of Jesus-heretical doctrines. The time had not yet come to make Jesus a god, to claim that he had been born of a virgin. As he must, however, have been different from other mortals-throughout the period of his ministry, at least-the Christ must have entered into him at the time of his baptism, and as mysteriously disappeared when he was delivered into the hands. of the Jews. In the course of time, the seeds of the faith, which had slowly arisen in the rocky and ungrateful soil of Judea, were transplanted, in full maturity, to the happier climes of the Gentiles; and the strangers of Rome and Alexandria, who had never beheld the manhood, were more ready to embrace the divinity of Jesus. The polytheist and the philosopher, the Greek and the barbarian, were alike accustomed to receive as we have seen in this chapter-a long succession and infinite chain of angels, or deities, or cons, or emanations, issuing from the throne of light. Nor could it seem strange and incredible to them, that the first of the cons, the Logos, or Word of God, of the same substance with the Father, should descend upon earth, to deliver the human race from vice and error. The histories of their countries, their odes, and their religions were teeming with such ideas, as happening in the past, and they were also looking for and expecting an Angel-Messiah.' Centuries rolled by, however, before the doctrine of Christ Jesus, the Angel-Messiah, became a settled question, an established tenet in the Christian faith. The dignity of Christ Jesus was measured by private judgment, according to the indefinite rule of Scripture, or tradition or reason. But when his pure and proper divinity had been established on the ruins of Arianism, the faith of the Catholics trembled on the edge of a precipice where it was impossible to recede, dangerous to stand, dreadful to fall; and the manifold inconveniences of their creed were aggravated by the sublime character of their theology. They hesitated to pronounce that God himself, the second person of an equal and consubstantial Trinity, was manifested in the flesh,' that the Being who pervades the universe had been confined in the womb of Mary; that his 1 See Gibbon's Rome, vol. iv. pp. 492–495. Not a worldly Messiah, as the Jews looked for, but an Angel-Messiah, such an one as always came at the end of a cycle. We shall treat of this subject anon, when we answer the question why Jesus was believed to be an Avatar, by the Gentiles, and not by the Jews; why, in fact, the doctrine of Christ incarnate in Jesus succeeded and prospered. "This strong expression might be justified |