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Christ’s place indeed is with the poets. His whole conception of Humanity sprang right out of the imagination and can only be realised by it. What God was to the Pantheist, man was to him. He was the first to conceive the divided races as a unity. Before his time there had been gods and men. He alone saw that on the hills of life there were but God and Man, and, feeling through the mysticism of sympathy that in himself each had been made incarnate, he calls himself the Son of the One or the son of the other, according to his mood. More than anyone else in history he wakes in us that temper of wonder to which Romance always appeals. There is still something to me almost incredible in the idea of a young Galilean peasant imagining that he could bear on his own shoulders the burden of the entire world: all that had been already done and suffered, and all that was yet to be done and suffered: the sins of Nero, of Caesar Borgia, of Alexander VI., and of him who was Emperor of Rome and Priest of the Sun:[96.1] the sufferings of those whose name is Legion and whose dwelling is among the tombs,[96.2] oppressed nationalities, factory children, thieves, people in prison, outcasts, those who are dumb under oppression and whose silence is heard only of God: and not merely imagining this but actually achieving it, so that at the present moment all who come in contact with his personality, even though they may neither bow to his altar nor kneel before his priest, yet somehow find that the ugliness of their sins is taken away and the beauty of their sorrow revealed to them.
基督的确是诗人的同道。他整个的人性观念,都是出自想象也只有通过想象才能领悟。人之于基督,一如上帝之于泛神论者。把分成各种各类的人视为整体,他是第一人。在他到来之前,有诸多的神和各样的人。唯有他,看到在生活的座座山峦上只有一个上帝和一样人,而且借助同情的玄妙,使两者都通过他道成肉身,并依心情而定,称自己为神之子、或人之子。历史上没有谁能像他那样唤醒我们心中那种永远为罗曼司所激动的奇妙气质。我仍然觉得其中有些事几乎难以置信:一个年轻的加利利农夫想象他能双肩担起整个世界的重负——一切犯过的罪、受过的苦,一切要犯还未犯的罪、要受还未受的苦;尼罗的罪过、教皇亚历山大六世的罪过、其私生子泽扎? 博尔吉亚的罪过、那个身兼罗马皇帝和太阳神祭司的人的罪过;那些名字叫“群”,住在坟茔里的人所受的苦;那些受压迫的民族、工厂的童工、盗贼、囚犯、流浪汉;那些无言地受着压迫,他们的沉默只有上帝听到的人——这些何止是想象,而是真的做到了。所以,现在任何人与他的人格交通,即使没向他的圣坛鞠躬、没向他的牧师下跪,也会神奇地感到他们的罪孽褪去了丑陋,他们的悲怆显出了美。
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