ART. VI. THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE OF JESUS.

FRA BEATO ANGELICO, the artist-monk of Fiesole, renowned for the spirituality and mystic charm of the saints and angels he portrayed, always painted the head of Christ and of the Virgin in a prayerful mood, and on his knees. A like reverence will characterize every proper attempt to represent the human aspects of the person of Jesus. Indeed, it is almost impossible to study the humanity of Christ without being so mastered by the sense of his divinity as to be incapable of conducting the inquiry impartially. By the faultlessness of his character Jesus has compelled the homage of men to such an extent that they shrink instinctively from that critical investigation which his human nature invites and challenges, and which may be pursued by his disciples with the utmost propriety. They bow in adoration before the divine presence, and are disinclined to discuss the human figure. When a company of congenial spirits were trying to fancy what their sensations would be if some of the greatest of earth's former inhabitants were to appear among them, and the name of Christ was mentioned, Charles Lamb stammered out, "You see, if Shakespeare entered this room, we should all rise; if Christ appeared, we should all kneel." That is the unquestioned sentiment of every soul that has beheld the divine beauty of our Lord, and it honors him who cherishes it; but it must be recognized as constituting a serious difficulty in the present study. It is always easier for the devout mind to call Jesus the Son of God than to pronounce him Son of man, though this is Christ's favorite designation of himself. Said Lamennais, "When I come to consider his life, his works, his teaching, the marvelous mingling in him of grandeur and simplicity, of sweetness and force, that incomprehensible perfection which never for a moment fails, . . . when I contemplate this grand marvel, which the world has seen only once, and which has renewed the world, I do not ask myself if Christ was divine; I should rather be tempted to ask myself if he were human." This feeling is doubtless shared by many thoughtful Christians. Yet the phraseology which the Church has almost universally adopted

to express her conviction regarding the person of Christ is "very God and very man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting." Napoleon Bonaparte is reported to have said to General Bertrand, "I know men, and I tell you that Jesus Christ was not a man.' ." Man he could never be in any sense which would exclude the notion of his divinity, but man he must ever be by the fact of his perfect assumption of human nature. Into the profound mystery of the divine-human unity it is futile to peer. But the consummate humanity of Jesus, "without excess or defect," is an indispensable concept and formulary if the Temptation of Jesus and other disciplinary facts of his life, together with the doctrine of the Atonement and the whole New Testament philosophy of life, are to have any significance in the problems of human experience. To accept this position touching the person of Christ is of necessity to impose upon the intellectual life of Jesus such limitations as inhere essentially in humanity. But it must be kept in mind that we are not now concerned with the infinite intelligence of the Absolute, but with the mental phenomena of the man Jesus as observed in the authentic record of his earthly career.

The inspired narrative reveals in Jesus a preternatural intelligence, which seems to necessitate a mind of absolute sanity, as comports with the dignity and distinction of his person. A flawless intellect, no less than a perfect body and a sinless character, would appear to be demanded for the "one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus." Nothing short of this will satisfy our sense of divine fitness. Though we admit that the idea of incarnation inevitably involves the limitation of certain divine prerogatives we cannot believe that the defects and errancies of our corrupted nature were entailed upon the intellectual life of Jesus by the fact of his human birth. "Conceived by the Holy Ghost" is the determining factor in this event. Consequently Jesus must be regarded as possessing a perfect mental equipment. He thus occupies a position of singularity and supremacy in the intellectual history of the race; for it is not contended by those best qualified to judge that we can be sure of such an endowment in any other human being. The greatest minds, it is held, are often affected by abnormalities which under suitable excitement develop

into incipient lunacies, illustrations of which abound with pathetic frequency. But here is one mind which is devoid of the vagaries and illusions, the misgivings and forebodings, the trepidations and superstitions, the passions and vanities, which cloud and enervate many of the noblest minds. Here is a mind which is not dulled by ignorance or stupefied by sin, which never reasons from false premises or makes unwarranted deductions, or defies the principles of logic in any other fashion, but which always thinks with precision and forever moves on to ultimate and impregnable positions; a mind which always sees truth in exact relations; which has no prejudices to efface, no blunders to correct, no fallacies to abandon, no conclusions to reverse; a mind which does not require to be nourished by books or trained by teachers, which knows God and nature and man immediately and intuitively; a mind which is pure and pellucid—like a sky unflecked by a single cloud, in which the sun shines with a brilliancy only modified by the atmosphere; a mind filled with visions of truth transcending the powers of other men to discern and pervaded with the perpetual consciousness of perfect fellowship with God. What a mind is this! Plato defined thinking as "the talking of the soul with itself." What inconceivably sublime self-communion must have filled this mind!

The intellectual life of Jesus as revealed in the Gospels is distinguished by extraordinary acuteness of perception. His apprehension of God and human relations is unparalleled among the sons of men. His insight into the characters, the secret motives, the aspirations of the people he meets is unexampled, and is obviously not the result of shrewd analysis of profound study but springs from his inherent knowledge of the human heart. "He needed not that any should testify of man; for he knew what was in man." He startled Nathanael, the Samaritan woman, Peter, Judas, the scribes and Pharisees and others by the disclosures of his knowledge concerning the inmost recesses of their souls. He probed the minds of his disciples with a word, and laid bare their ignoble thoughts and petty emulations to their evident amazement and confusion. He evinced marvelous powers of argumentation and rejoinder. His enemies not less than his friends were astonished at the authoritative one which he adopted.

"Never man spake like this man" is the confession of those who sought to entrap him. He was in perfect possession of the learning contained in the ancient Scriptures, and he turned his knowledge to great account in refuting the sophistries of his critics. He employed logical processes with merciless precision, and parried the thrusts of his adversaries with such skill that after one encounter it was said, "No man was able to answer him a word; neither durst any man from that day forth ask him any more questions." He rebuked the quibbles of the scribes with sententious utterances which were sharper than needles and with illustrations no mind was obtuse enough to misunderstand. He explained the principles of the kingdom of God by parables which are the most beautifulas they are the most fundamental-of all the creations of imaginative literature. He convinced the cultured classes of his day that he was an intellectual master, and challenged them to account for his supremacy. "How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?" they ask themselves. He exhibited a wisdom which is greater than any learning, and which may exist independently of formal instruction. It characterized his childhood and it progressed with his developing manhood. He wrote nothing, so far as we know, save the line he traced in the dust in the presence of the sinful woman and her accusers, and that perished with the day; yet he has impressed his wisdom on the thought of all succeeding generations. He looked straight into the face of nature and read therefrom lessons of eternal significance. He peered into the souls of men and interpreted their deathless longings to them in terms which are immortal. He saw God everywhere and explained him in words which quicken faith and intelligence wherever they are spoken. "Nothing," says Francis Peabody, "but the profounder traits in Jesus Christ, of religious vision and moral cogency, could have obscured the intellectual greatness which justifies his message to the scholar." His uninterrupted consciousness of participation in the mind of the Eternal differentiates him from the most godly saints on earth. "O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee; but I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me," he cries out in the sublime prayer which he offers on the night of his betrayal unto death. Truly this is a

mind not illumined by imparted glory but flaming with its own essential brightness. God has not shined upon Jesus: he shines in him.

Despite this transcendent wisdom, however, there is no evidence in the record of this peerless life of any claim on the part of Jesus to possess unconditioned omniscience. On the contrary, there is much to support an opposite view. Nor should this fact occasion surprise when we reflect that this divine attribute, like omnipotence and omnipresence, could not be conceived as expressing itself fully in terms of finite being. If we are unable to understand how God could manifest himself without retaining the complete exercise of his divine prerogatives, no more are we capable of explaining in what manner he could exhibit himself in human form without obscuring or limiting them. The mind finds some relief from perplexity by viewing the incarnation ethically and not metaphysically. The motive of the divine humiliation must be employed to interpret its mystery in so far as it can be apprehended by the intelligence of man. It is God the Son who is described as becoming incarnate in Jesus Christ. This he does in obedience to his own law of love. His consciousness of God is that of eternal Sonship. He becomes man in order that this Sonship may be realized in the sphere of human life, and with a purpose to save mankind. To achieve this he must subject himself to the limitations of a genuine human estate. Says Canon Gore: "The incarnation involves both the self-expression and the selflimitation of God. God can express himself in true manhood because manhood is truly and originally made in God's image; and, on the other hand, God can limit himself by the conditions of manhood because the Godhead contains in itself eternally the prototype of human self-sacrifice and self-limitation, for God is love." It is not ours to discuss here the difficulties which inhere in the acknowledgment of this self-limitation of the Son of God. They constitute the chief battle ground of the never-ending Christological controversy. But we must accept the facts contained in the narrative of Christ's life, and assent to the truths thus objectively presented, though our reason cannot explain them. We are compelled to do this not only by the requirements of the