But above all, it is true of the most
tremendous issue; of that tragedy which has created the divine comedy of
our creed. Nothing short of the extreme and strong and startling
doctrine of the divinity of Christ will
give that particular effect that can truly stir the popular sense like a
trumpet; the idea, of the king himself serving in the ranks like a
common soldier. By making that figure merely human we make that story
much less human. We take away the point of the story which actually
pierces humanity; the point of the story which is quite literally the
point of a spear. It does not especially humanize the universe to say
that good and wise men can die for their opinions; any more than it
would be any sort of uproariously popular news in an army that good
soldiers may easily get killed. It is no news that King Leonidas is dead
any more than that Queen Anne is dead; and men did not wait for
Christianity to be men, in the full sense of being heroes. But if we are
describing, for the moment, the atmosphere of what is generous and
popular and even picturesque, any knowledge of human nature will tell us
that no sufferings of the sons of men, or even of the servants of God,
strike the same note as the notion of the master suffering instead of
his servants. And this is given by the theological and emphatically not
by the scientific deity. No mysterious monarch, hidden in his starry
pavilion at the base of the cosmic campaign, is in the least like that
celestial chivalry of the Captain who carries his five wounds in the
front of battle.
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