WAS CHRIST MISTAKEN?

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20448, 30 June 1928, Page 2

WAS CHRIST MISTAKEN?

Written for the Otago Daily Times. By the Rev. D. Gardner Miller. Last week I made brief mention of a new estimate of Jesus, appearing in a London daily (and now also in book form) by the eminent biographer, Emil Ludwig. Since then the find daily instalments have come to hand, and the all too obvious prophecy which I permitted myself has been justified. You will perhaps remember that I stated that Ludwig, in stressing the humanity of Jesus, really dwarfed Him. I ventured to go further and state that the final instalment would not be difficult to write. It seems to me that the test of any writer who attempts to appraise Jesus is found when he comes to the crucifixion. The Cross has either an eternal significance both for the victim and for the rest of the world, or else it is but a common execution, the memory of which touches the heart of humanity. It is the crucial test of any biography of Jesus, even more so than the Resurrection, for the Resurrection has no meaning whatever apart from the Cross. B this test, Ludwig is true to the picture ho has drawn of Jesus. The Cross is the end of a brave life, but that is about all. The biographer had already pictured Jesus vacillating, stirred by pride, and sometimes appearing a very helpless figure. When the crucifixion is about to be an actuality, Jesus is made to appear in a dazed, almost half-insane condition. Up to the very lust moment —the moment when He was seized and placed lengthwise on the Cross as it lay on the ground —Jesus is pictured as expecting God to intervene and save Him. On the way to the place of crucifixion Jesus is made to say: “No cross needed .o carry Him into the Kingdom of Heaven, through the blue sky; nothing but the Father’s grace. When will it b~ vouchsafed? Will His face bo hidden in the clouds, or plainly visible? Will He wrap the Cross in mist, and lift it up with its living burden?” Anything more unlike the mind of the Jesus of the Gtspels I have never read, and when the two thieves have been nailed to the Cross and their boards affixed, Jesus wonders if there will be one for Him. “Yes, that thick-set little soldier, the one who had kicked Him just now, is nailing it to His cross, ‘Rex Judacvrum.' Had He ever used that name of Himself? Perhaps the whole thing is the illusion of men whom God has struck with blindness.” On the Cross Jesus faints, and, when He comes to Himself is amazed that He has not awakened in heaven. Ho feels His influence is at an end! All had been in vain! Perhaps, after all, He was just such a man as His own brothers, who deemed Him possessed! The world is a lost world; the Son is alone; the Father is no Father. Lonely and helpless, a human body is parching, and a human heart is breaking.” The cry of dissolution is interpreted ns: This cry of agony and despair ends a life which for thirty years has expressed itself in the gentle tones of love that bring solace to others, in the voiceless song of rn affectionate human heart.’ Naturally, such an interpretation of the Cross makes it imperative that the Resurrection be considered as unreal as a vision. Thus the writer says, The women, who love Him, believe that in waking dreams they have seen the risen Jesus in the flesh.” The presentation of Christ by Ludwig, while graphic, is not true to fact. Such a “ So » ® f Ma " could never be the Saviour or the worm. Christianity, the most robust religion in the world, is not the expression of one who did not know His own mind; it is what it is because its Founder was a “ Son of Fact.” Jesus knew what the Cross meant, tie was not mistaken ns to, its meaning. Moreover, He left posterity in no doubt ns to what it meant to Himself and to God. Jesus as a half-crazed sufferer on the Cross is a mistaken idealist whose whole belief has fallen to the ground like a pack of cards. Not so do the Gospels picture Him. I cannot for the life of me understand how Ludwig, or any other humanist, can eliminate the eternal—trie supernatural if you like —from the life and purpose of Jesus without grievously distorting the only authentic record which wc possess'. Jesus was not mistaken, because He knew that the Cross, as the ultimate expression of the love of God, dealt with the UGLY FACT of sin. A religion that does not deal with that fact becomes a mere bundle of platitudes. As one writer (Dr Hough, of America) puts it, “ The only God who can capture the human heart is One Who will let sin do its worst to Him and yet keep on loving.” It is such a God that Jesus reveals. The God in Ludwig’s book is One Who is as hopeless and helpless in the face of human pain and disaster as Jesus Himself is dec pictecf as being. Christianity is permanent because it has in itself, and sounds it out far and wide, the note of the Infinite. Chiflslianity, considered as mere humanism, is a well-furnished temple without the Presence. If I have caught the meaning of the Gospels aright, it is a revelation of God’s passionate adventure for the rescue of men. History and the life experience of millions attest the fact that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself. Anything other than that is less than the truth. Through Christ, men and women have the experience of a crushing burden being lifted, a new sense of freedom and self-mastery—in short, they became a new creation. Looked at deliberately, the life of Jesus does not convey the idea of misdirected genius nor His death that of the result of a mistaken choice. Rather does it convey the sense of purpose and achievement. The Cross is not the ignoble end of a dreamer; it is the throne of a Redeemer.