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| Monumental Christianity; or, The art and symbolism of the primitive church. CHAPTER VIII - CHAPTER VIII. JESUS CHRIST AS HUMAN. |
Page 2 of 6 CHAPTER VIII. JESUS CHRIST AS HUMAN. The Manhood of Christ, Who was Conceived by the Holy Ghost ^ Born of the Virgin Mary, — Pagan and Christian Madonnas compared, — I sis and Horus. — Lakshmi- Narayana, — Juno-Lucina and Child. — Det'aki and Krishna. — Mary rising front the Sea as Venus, — Androgynous Deities. — Coronation and Adoration of Mary and Bhavani. — Dr. J. H. Newman s Opinion. PARHELIA is the term which Archbishop Trench applies to all such gleams and anticipations and types of Divine truth in ancient Paganism as have been disclosed in the last chapter. And it is well that his wise observation respecting this important matter is receiving due attention, at least from a few thoughtful per- sons, in the controversy of Christianity with atheism and infidelity. His remark is this, viz.: "The heathen religions boasted of their virgin-born, as of Buddha and Zoroaster, as of Pythagoras and Plato. It much concerns us to determine in what relation and connection we will put their legend and our history; whether we will use the truth to show that the falsehood was not all falsehood, and for the detecting the golden grains of a true anticipation which lay concealed amid all its dross; or whether we will sufler the falsehoods to cast a slight and suspicion upon the truth, as though that was but the crowning falsehood of them all. In the present position of the controversy with infidelity we cannot let these parallels alone if we would, — even if we were willing to forego the precious witness for the glory and truth of the Christian Faith which they contain. We cannot ignore them ; if they are not for us, they will be used against us. But they are for us, since we may justly ask, — and it is no playing with imperfect analogies, for the question may be transferred from the natural to the spiritual world, — Are the parhelia, however numerous, to be accepted as evidence that all is optical illusion, that there is no such true body of light as the sun after all; or rather, does not the very fact of their delusively paint- ing the horizon, tell of and announce a sun, which is surely travelling up from 198 Monumental Christianity. behind ? " * It is in this sense that all such Pagan types and anticipations of Christ, as Agni, Krishna, Mithra, Horus, Apollo, and Orpheus, are to be understood. The true Sun must have been somewhere to produce such remarkable phenomena as these on all the ancient Pagan horizon. The Incarnation or Humanity of the Son of God now claims our notice. And the remarkable eagerness with which the Pagans embraced Christianity when first preached to them is best explained by the fact that it was exactly that one grand truth which their religious systems imperfectly taught. It explained the mystery of their own creeds. The birth of a man-God was the common faith of humanity — the one great dogma, which, under forms more or less mysterious, and often gro- tesque and hideous, appears in the oldest modes of worship, and may be traced in the most ancient traditions and monuments. The Messiah, the Redeemer, promised to fallen man, had been announced uninterruptedly from age to age." And when Christ appeared, it was not only in Judea, among the Hebrews, that he was looked for; He was expected also at Rome, among the Goths and Scandinavians, in China, in India, in High Asia especially, where almost all religious systems are founded on the dogma of a Divine Incarnation. Zoroaster had foretold it, as he learned it from the Brahmins of Upper India; and Zoroaster's disciples, the Persian Magi, following the brilliant star, of which he, like Balaam, spake as the precursor of " that Holy One who came from the womb of an Immaculate Virgin,'* and which should guide them to the place of His nativity, were the first to go and worship Him. And Confucius, lamenting in his writings the loss of the sacred Tripod, by which he probably meant the idea of the tri-une God, at the same time announces to the Hundred Families, u e,, (the Chinese nation,) Si Fam Yen Xim Gim^ i, e,. The Holy One shall appear in the West} And after He appeared the Chinese government sent ambassadors to Rome to seek the friendship of Augustus, thinking perhaps that he was the great King and Holy One who was to deliver men from evil ; but finding out their mistake, another embassy was sent, A. D. 65, which also failed of its object by being persuaded that Buddha was the Divinely Incarnate One; and so Buddhism became the national religion of China, however early Christianity was also preached there, as well as in India.* In the two early Christian representations of the Nativity which precede this chapter, it will be noticed that there are three Magi proper with the pointed cap of Mithra on their heads, and wearing precisely such garments as Mithra and his priests are represented to have worn. There is no doubt, therefore, * Star of the Wise Men^ pp. 27-8. Phila., 1850. • Hue's Christianity in China, &c., I. pp. I and 2, &c. * Maurice's Hist, of Hindustan y II. p. 276. Hue's Christianity in China, I. p. 4. * Hyde's Hist. Per., pp. 392. Hue. I., p. 10-30. yesus Christ as Human. 199 that these Magi were Persian priests come to do homage to One who, in their es- timation, was the antitype of Mithra and the Holy One, foretold by Zoroaster Hyde thinks they were from Parthia. In one of the Sarcophagi, viz., the upper one, a fourth person stands by with a roll in his hand, differently clad, and without the Phrygian cap of Mithra. It has been explained as representing and personifying the ancient prophecy respecting the Nativity, perhaps Zoroaster's or Isaiah's, and as leading the magi to Christ. Observe, too, that in both these exam- ples, out of many like them, the worship is directed to the Child exclusively, accord- ing to St. Matthew, ii. ; and yet Aringhi can say this, in explanation of the obvious difficulty of the subject to a modern Romanist, viz., Beata virgo impensum parvulo latriae cultum excipit, i, e,, T/ie blessed Virgin receives the superior worship of latria for the Child? But how is it that in all cases the Child either receives the worship or the gifts Himself? It is an admission that the Child is entitled to the highest worship, but it is also an assertion that it must be paid through the Virgin. In the lower one of these sarcophagi, the Virgin sits quite apart, in a thought- ful mood, as if already forecasting the fate of her Son, while the cattle and the Magi join together in worship. And in the upper one, it is the Child who reaches forth His hands to receive the gifts. In every instance of early Christian art, the Child is the central figure and the sole object of supreme regard. If the interven- tion of the Blessed Virgin were necessary, it would have been indicated in some way, either by placing her between the suppliant and her Divine Child, or by her own previous reception of the gifts for Him. But of such treatment of the subject as this, there is not a single known example in ancient Christian art. It would have been considered blasphemous. The Virgin Mother is, indeed, a necessary ac- cessory, and is always present in the scene of the Nativity ; for how could the Son of God come into the world and become the Son of Man, enter the sphere of our own humanity, and become like one of us, without a mother? Therefore, of all human beings, she holds the first place ; is entitled to the highest consideration ; all nations call her blessed, and have types of her high and holy maternity ; she was highly favoured; the Lord was with her; she was the blessed among women ; and yet she was only a pure-minded, sweet, and modest Jewish maiden, chosen of God to become the channel of Christ's Incarnation. There is no evidence that early Christianity ever dreamed of her as a mediatress between us and her Son. Juno and other Pagan goddesses were sorry mediatresses ; they were sometimes very ter- magants in the courts above ; and they were not always chaste and pure. The Primitive Church, while so deeply impressed with a sense of Christ's ' Rom, Subt, I. pp. 320-1. 2CX) Monumental Christianity. essential Divinity as to make the ver}^ Child of the manger the recipient of Divine honours, is also just as explicit in manifesting her concern about His real and proper humanity ; and therefore the Holy Mother is always present, looking like her who was deemed worthy by an early council of the Church to receive the title, since then greatly abused and perverted, Theotokos, Mater Deiy Mother of God. In an age of such intense faith as the first three or four centuries of the Christian era were, it is not to be wondered at, that art was called -in to record and express in every possible variety of fresco, sculpture, mosaic, glass-enamel, intaglio, and cameo, the two great leading facts of Christ's Divinity and humanity. And the expression is very explicit. The Divinity and the humanity are never confounded. It is no Pagan mixture of the Divine and the human, the good and the bad, as in Krishna and Mithra ; but it is simply the union in One Person of the Son of God, with our own nature in its purity and perfection. It is neither the deification of man, nor the humanizing of God ; but the two natures coexist side by side in one and the same Person, as mind and matter do in ourselves, or as vital force exists in all external nature. And therefore it is, that the early Church has taken such pains to teach this doctrine by the oft-repeated subjects of the youthful Divinity, that never grows old, and the Nativity, or other records of Christ's true and proper manhood. |