doubtedly furnished by the great Zwingli, who has till now been too little recognized, and who has already declared that all that is good, just and true in the whole of humanity, seems to him inspired of God. Here are his own words: "Do not let us apply the term philosophic to that which is Divine and religious. Truth is not the product of philosophers' meditations, but wherever it manifests itself it comes from God. In this sense all writings that reveal truth, purity, justice and charity are sacred. If we find something good and true in Plato and Pythagoras, we may rest assured that it comes from a Divine source and we shall not seek to know who said it, but what it is that has been said. We accept the truth, even if uttered by Pagans, knowing that all truth comes from God, the sole and supreme Revealer. Everything that is true, holy, incontestable, I consider Divine, for God alone is holy and infallible. He who utters the truth, does it through God, and he who with his intellect raises himself from the contemplation of that which is visible to the invisible Divinity, can alone do so under the inspiration derived from God." I Why does Zwingli differ in this respect from all the other reformers of the sixteenth century? It is not only because he, more than they, studied the writings of the old Greek philosophers, as some have thought, but also because he alone has grasped the Gospel of the historical Jesus. We know that Luther, entirely under the influence of Pauline and Johannine theology, was somewhat neglectful of the Synoptic Gospels, and, as a consequence, of the Jesus 1 Rabaud, Histoire de la doctrine de l'inspiration des Saintes Ecritures, pp. 45-6. of history. Zwingli, on the contrary, from the very beginning of his career as a reformer, was strongly influenced by this aspect of Him. He began his career in Zurich by expounding from the pulpit the whole of Matthew's Gospel. Thus he was straightway brought face to face with Jesus' humanism, till then too frequently lost sight of, and he must have been struck by the statements in which the Lord compares the centurion of Capernaum, the Canaanitish woman, the people of Tyre, Sodom and Gomorrah, the men of Nineveh, the Queen of the South, and also the Good Samaritan,' with the impenitent and blameworthy Jews. With his usual acumen Zwingli could not fail to note the affinity between Jesus and the sages of antiquity, seeing that on both sides the spiritual worth of men is not judged by their worship or their profession of faith, but by their sentiments and the morality of their conduct. It is therefore natural that this reformer should also have been led to the conviction, which he alone among reformers held, that the upright heathen would not be debarred from salvation.2 Matt. viii, 5-13; xi, 20-4; xii, 41–2; xv, 21-8; Luke x, 25-37. › Zeller, Das theologische System Zwingli's, pp. 160–65. APPENDIX I. THE GOSPELS IN GENERAL. It must be clearly recognized that the two outstanding figures in the Bible-those of Moses and Jesus-have already undergone strange transformations within its pages. To-day we know that the most ancient legislation attributed to Moses does not go even so far back as the beginning of kingship in Israel, and that it contains elements from different sources; that it was extensively supplemented later by the Law of Deuteronomy elaborated in the time of Josiah and the last Jewish kings before the exile; and that other important additions were made during the exile and especially afterwards, in the time of Esdras. Yet all these excrescences of varied origin and widely differing dates were indiscriminately attributed to Moses. Which of them, then, are authentic? It would be difficult to speak with absolute certainty of any single clause. All this material, originating as it does in a period long after Moses, makes us lose sight of the man himself and his work almost entirely. The facts respecting the personality, the activities and the doctrine of Jesus are neither so difficult nor so discouraging, although they are sufficiently serious. We must remember that Our Lord did not take the ' Piepenbring, Histoire, pp. 212-16, 288-97, 374-401, 480-93, 553-82. slightest step towards issuing a new Law, because He was anticipating the immediate end of the world in which He lived. His early disciples, also influenced by the same expectation, had no thought of committing to writing their own teaching and the doctrine of their Master, for they constantly anticipated the speedy return of Christ upon the clouds of heaven,1 which would render any written Scripture wholly superfluous. Their preaching consisted mainly in preparing their listeners for this great world-event. The apostle Paul, as we see from his first Epistle to the Thessalonians and other writings, also shared this anticipation, for he was for a long time satisfied simply to preach the Gospel in his own fashion, without having recourse to written instructions. When he and others subsequently made use of this method, they very seldom, if ever, spoke of Jesus' ministry and His life on earth, confining themselves chiefly to His return in glory and the course which every man must follow, to be able to face the Supreme Judge. "Christ after the flesh" was for a long time the least concern of the early Christians in general, and not only of the apostle Paul. It was not the Jesus of history and His earthly doctrine, but the risen Christ, transfigured and glorified,3 that formed the starting-point and real content of their preaching. This dogmatic aspect of their subject subsequently influenced the preparation of all our Gospels, even the first three, very considerably.4 Loisy has very ably stated the points we have just advanced, and followed them up in detail. He says: 1 Piepenbring, Jésus et les Apôtres, pp. 4-6. 2 Cor. v, 16. even "The Gospel of Jesus was not a book, but a notification of salvation, of the speedy advent of the Divine rule that Israel was expecting. Jesus did not preach in order to leave posterity a record of His doctrine, but to win over men's minds to the hope that inspired Him with its glow. The apostles whom He had enlisted did not care, either, about collecting memoranda for history. Both Master and disciples, absorbed in their task, and persuaded that the Kingdom of Heaven was to be immediately realized, had no thought of founding their religion upon a book, or of founding a religion. Since the Gospel continued to be preached without the glorious advent of Christ and the Kingdom being realized, Christianity came into being. People had time, and they also had need to remember what Jesus had said and done, but if it be permissible to express it thus, they remembered it to the extent and in the form demanded by the interests of the evangelizing work which had soon become, by force of circumstances, the building up of the Christian Church. To preach the Gospel according to Jesus, they had to repeat what Jesus had taught, tell of Jesus Himself, His ministry, His death and His resurrection; but they could not confine themselves to mere relation, they were obliged to substantiate the Christ and interpret the Kingdom; evangelical tradition could not exist upon recollections alone, there was a constant and progressive elaboration of the impressions and memories retained. In the course of time, for the advantage and, we may say, the necessity of Christian propaganda, this elaboration was solidified in the writings which were the instruments of apostleship." Loisy, Synoptiques, i, p. 175. |