Page:Princeton Theological Review, Volume 13 (1915).djvu/355

 the two—to discover the genuine human traits of the Galilean prophet beneath the gaudy colors which have almost hopelessly defaced His portrait, to disentangle the human Jesus from the tawdry ornamentation which has been hung about Him by naïve and unintelligent admirers.

Separate the natural and the supernatural in the Gospel account of Jesus—that has been the task of modern liberalism. How shall the work be done? We must admit at least that the myth-making process began very early; it has affected even the very earliest literary sources that we know. But let us not be discouraged. Whenever the mythical elaboration began, it may now be reversed. Let us simply go through the Gospels and separate the wheat from the tares. Let us separate the natural from the supernatural, the human from the divine, the believable from the unbelievable. When we have thus picked out the workable elements, let us combine them into some sort of picture of the historical Jesus. Such is the method. The result is what is called "the liberal Jesus". It has been a splendid effort. I know scarcely any more brilliant chapter in the history of the human spirit than this "quest of the historical Jesus". The modern world has put its very life and soul into this task. It has been a splendid effort. But it has also been—a failure.

In the first place, there is the initial difficulty of separating the natural from the supernatural in the Gospel narrative. The two are inextricably intertwined. Some of the incidents, you say, are evidently historical; they are so full of local color; they could never have been invented. Yes, but unfortunately the miraculous incidents possess exactly the same qualities. You help yourself, then, by admissions. Jesus, you say, was a faith-healer of remarkable power; many of the cures related in the Gospels are real, though they are not really miraculous. But that does not carry you far. Faith-healing is often a totally inadequate explanation of the cures. And those supposed faith-cures are not a bit more vividly, more concretely, more inimitably