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It started him on a course of philosophy in which he determined to include Marcella. From Edinburgh came boxes of books and a queer assortment of books they were. Locke and Berkeley, James' "Natural Religion," Renan's "Life of Christ," a very bad translation of Lucretius; Frazer's "Golden Bough," a good deal of Huxley and Darwin, and many of the modern writers.
Renan has tried to draw this picture. Take the Gospels as they stand; treat them simply as biographies; look, and see, and think of what they tell, and then ask yourself about Renan's picture, and what it looks like when placed side by side with the truth." This, as we have ventured to express it in our own words, seems to be the writer's position.
M. Renan's task is to make the purely human origin of Christianity, its origin in the circumstances, the beliefs, the ideas, and the moral and political conditions of the first centuries, seem to us natural as natural in the history of the world as other great and surprising events and changes as natural as the growth and the fall of the Roman Empire, or as the Reformation, or the French Revolution.
The Gospels themselves tell us why M. Renan's conditions were never satisfied. Miracles were not displayed in the presence of sceptics to establish scientific truths. When the adulterous generation sought after a sign, the sign was not given; nay, it is even said that in the presence of unbelief, our Lord was not able to work miracles.
I should say, rather, that literature resembles painting in being one of the fine arts, and that when a book, like a picture, is a fine work of art, it has a great chance of being a commercial success. Renan's books have been very successful literary speculations, because Renan is a first-rate artist.
Zorn in no unkindly spirit shows us the thinker; also the author of L'Abbesse de Jouarre. It is something, is it not, to evoke with needle, acid, paper, and ink the dualism of such a brain and temperament as was Renan's? He is not flattering to himself, Zorn. The Henry G. Marquand, two impressions, leaves one rather sad. An Irish girl, Annie, is superb in its suggestion of form and colour.
The twinkle in his eye was irresistible. The men, understanding his reference to the avidity with which certain English aristocratic scandals had been lately seized upon by the French papers, laughed out so did Lady Aubrey. Madame de Netteville contented herself with a smile. 'They profess to be shocked, too, by Renan's last book, said the editor from the other side of the room.
On his faith all this knowledge had not made the faintest impression; but it was this knowledge which broke down M. Renan's, and finally led to his retiring from St. Sulpice. On the one side was the Bible and Catholic theology, carefully, scientifically, and consistently taught at St. Sulpice; on the other were the exegesis and the historical criticism of the German school.
"Lady Kitty, do you ever rest?" he asked her, unexpectedly. "Rest!" she laughed. "Why should I?" "Because you are wearing yourself out." She shrugged her shoulders. "Do you ever lie down alone and read a book?" persisted the Dean. "Yes. I have just finished Renan's Vie de Jésus!" Her glance, even with him, kept its note of audacity, but much softened by a kind of wistfulness.
On the second from the bottom was lighter literature: "The Iliad"; a "Life of Francis of Assisi"; Speke's "Discovery of the Sources of the Nile"; the "Pickwick Papers"; "Mr. Midshipman Easy"; The Verses of Theocritus, in a very old translation; Renan's "Life of Christ"; and the "Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini." The bottom shelf of all was full of books on natural science.
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