HSS NS i See eer ne enmeaa es : pane Siete a ere ane eneG > det. a, ‘ ’ . S ’ ‘ owe Sree : I ’ as tees : fee Ree Sa beet ‘ ; u : RP RE ae eee yi ~ Hsp eee sie < ni Repl » oh " br . as 5 5 . 7 Y ah : i ° r 4 : ; few tt “em = 4 ; ; i A fos 3 Be : Se tees 2525 4 +, , iy ai * ; : . : : : : eae, te nites si eS . . GS) 4 oy er Gr a " : Ss . : frane Se ene ? ‘1 : ; “ x y ~~ See iet ae oe 2 ’, i * Paiste Mitte) 1afz i ay fii ee ob hed Ne oD a * 5 0 ae ~ Sepel ot tet bos scree: Zoe Stent} hy OST “* SOF eye 38 ; “ ys nthe eat ert bay tie ° CRISTAT ELSES SL ta pr er er STT SN NaS: DUN PR LEG PUPEPERI EL Se SPEEUUE DY UU OUEE DS SOSMIOR ETON SE DPT SUEY PPUS IE: Dubay Debttad veered Ott Dre v Rr ne es ons bap ae. teeth kaki erate kek! = phn dooce hE td ITS al - (nh ~oyh, a “a Age rhe te eo > Ps \ CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. BY SAMUEL” WAINWRIGHT, VICAR OF HOLY TRINITY, MICKLEGATE, YORK ; AUTHOR OF ~ Voices from the Sanctuary.” Kis atroXoyiav Tod evayyediou Ketpat. St. Pavut. That thou mightest know Tue Cerrarnty of those things wherein thou hast beén instructed. Sr. Luke. LONDON: HATCHARD AND CO., 187, PICCADILLY. Booksellers to HRY, The Brincess of Wales, MDCCCL&V. * 4 ae Pa ~ - - a © 4 a a an > ~ TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE RICHARD, LORD WESTBURY, Lord Bigh Chancellor of England, a Ss IN ADMIRATION OF THOSE GREAT ABILITIES WHICH ARE THE ORNAMENT OF HIS HIGH POSITION 5 AND APPRECIATION OF THE VALUE OF His MEASURE FOR AUGMENTING SMALL ENDOWMENTS 5 tiie VINDICATION or re Che Certainty of the Christian Faith Is, By uis LorpsuHip’s Permission, DEDICATED, WITH MOST RESPECTFUL REGARD AND ESTEEM. tise =. + aa Fs Ren = ae sa ad & f i ‘ . & - ~*~ a, a a ¢ e > eee han, ADE) oh yay ii itay : a % b oe ‘ . - : 7 r 7) X = i) 4 b4 acy en ab dhe “iad 7 aaa ee lex : Pte AVS EAC Dak ike i 1 for? | eer he call ane 9 ? : ‘.. . Pe» Py hah ete, Mea} = . 4 , it . oa - ' ' 23 on! _< P - uid Goch te ae 4 x ! Yr WAT Lars, ag iy ieee oe 2) + ite | “4 mye ate es HH’ . ba ae ae re ce | ee ee ie ie es a oie Mire: a : Py er oe ran oye ver a fg t+Ece aro ; ‘ ree oe rote ee PO Stine Sy ISA i tet = SM It is not proved 4. That the Diluvium is as ancient as has hitherto been sup- posed: And It is not even proved 5. That the embedding deposit in which these flints are found ¢s Diluvium. : But on the other hand—against this assertion—and consequently Against the theory of the pre-Adamite antiquity of Man, II. It is proved 1. That the sedimentary deposits in which the Flint-implements are found present phenomena utterly incompatible with the assumptions of the Uniformitarian school, on which this theory is based: And 2. That these phenomena indicate not the lapse of ages which this theory supposes, but merely such brief periods as the received chronology amply allows. III. Further: It is shewn That the so-called principle of ‘‘ Uniformity ” in geology (on which this theory depends) Is opposed to experience ; Is unsupported by analogy ; ‘Is intrinsically absurd ; Is admitted to be insufficient ; Is virtually surrendered, St Bo Araneae Is condemned on the testimony of Dr. Whewell, Sir R. Murchi- son, and Professor Phillips. CHAPTER IX. Tue Supsect CoNcLUDED. I. Purpose and tendency of Sir Charles Lyell’s book. PAGE Conclusion of the Examination gives this Result ;— Against the chronology of Scripture, No Probability has been established, Nor any single proposition Proved. XVil by Sir Chas. Lyell himself; and 239 XVili ANALYTICAL OUTLINE If. Similar Purpose of Bunsen’s Per D Oey: Ilis strength of assertion : His weakness of proof: His irreconcileable inconsistency :— 1. In the selection of his authorities ; 2. In his mutilation of them,—e.g., Manetho ; Eratosthenes ; The Monumental Inscriptions. 3. Iu his indictment against Eusebius. Ilis violation of the “ first principles of historical criticism.” | III. Professor Huxley’s purpose: as shewn in his ‘* Evidence as to Man’s Place in Nature.” His assertion “That Man is, in substance and in structure, i one with the brutes.” His belief ‘ That even the highest faculties of feeling and of intellect begin to germinate in lower forms of life.” ; His disbelief in any intervention of the First Great Cause. Darwinism: Development: “ Primordial Necessity.” The entire theory is a mere tissue of conjecture Opposed to the facts of Natural History. The doctrine of spontaneous generation is condemned by Mr. Darwin himself, Its advocates are unable to adduee one solitary fact in its favour, The doctrine of transmutation of species is condemned by Dr. Carpenter. The scientific evidence goes to show that “ certain groups of animals, such as the Foraminifera,” can never rise to a higher grade. As matter of fact, the Foraminifera have made no advance from the Paleozoic period to the present day. Opposed to the facts of Geology. The ‘transitional forms” are nowhere to be found. Confessions of Messrs. Darwin and Huxley on this head. The earlier fossils are of a kind very opposite to those required by this theory. Testimony of Hugh Miller. Opposed to consciousness and experience. Socially, morally, religiously, and historically, Men and apes are utterly and generically distinct. If this distinction arises from physiological structure, Then Prof. Huxley’s theory is overthrown. If the distinction is not physiological, Then man possesses an immaterial element which physiology cannot grasp. OF CONTENTS. - Sse IV. The Plurality of Races: A degrading doctrine ; 1. Directly opposed to the Darwinian theory . : Result of this opposition ; 2. Founded on conjecture ; In ignorance, And error ; 3. Contradicted by the ascertained facts Of physiclogy And History. 4, Falsely assumes the exploded theory of Uniformitarianism. ¥Y. Review of these scientific allegations: PAGE 271 They are unscientific ; They are unsustained by proof; They areinconsistent, illogical, and inconclusive. It is not such allegations that can shake our Faith in Seripture. Their unblushing impudence of assertion ; contrasted with The modesty of True Science, and further shewn in VI. Mr. Goodwin’s assault on the Mosaic Cesmogony. 1. Its immodesty ; Its irrelevance ; Its unfairness ; Its misrepresentation of geological facts. 2. Dr. Lardner’s testimony: That Genesis is in strict accordance with Geology : 3. Based upon the latest researches of Murchison and D’Orbigny. VII. Review of the whole subject : 279 Teaches (I.) Caution and (II.) Confidence. (I.) Caution: lest we confound Scripture with our own private interpretation. Neglect of this caution; in relation to 1. The Mosaic Cosmogony : Expanse—Firmament, Dr. Pratt’s version. Peculiarity of Bible language on scientific subjects. This peculiarity stamps it as Divine. 2. Death before the Fall. Here again, the contradiction lies not between Science and Scripture; but only between Science and the popular interpretation of Scripture. a. The scientific statement restricts “ Death before the Fall” to the inferior animals alone. XX ANALYTICAL OUTLINE Reasons for this statement : a. We find their fossil remains In vast numbers And in ten thousand species. But no remains of man. 6. Physiology and comparative anatomy show that they were not cotemporaneous. b. The Scriptural statement does not extend “Death by the Fall’ beyond the human raee. «. For it makes that death co-extensive with sin; and the brute creation is incapable of sin. B. It is co-extensive also with the Resurrection. y. It expressly intimates that there was death before the Fall. e. Death is a general law of all organic natures: As essential to our system, as gravitation. d. ‘Three modes of harmonizing Scripture and Science. a. Death was (from the first) the general law: and man the solitary exception to its universal operation. . 6. The death denounced in consequence of sin, was not physical. y- The effect of sin—like that of the Atonement —was not only future, but also retrospective. Advantages of this latter method. 3. The Noachian Deluge a. Asa fact: is unquestioned, is attested by history, and by Geology. 6. But as to its extent: Was it absolutely universal? or | only relatively so ? Did it overwhelm the whole globe? or only the regions then inhabited ? ce. The first alternative «. Is encumbered with difficulties: as to The quantity of water, The dimensions of the ark, The collection and dispersion of the animals. 6. Involves the supposition of miracles unsup- ported by the narrative; and y- Rests on a literality of interpretation not justified by the usage of the sacred writers. 3 Is condemned, therefore, on purely exegetical grounds, (Poole, Stillingfleet, Pye Smith.) OF CONTENTS. ad. The second alternative & Is entirely free from difficulties ; and xxl Is perfectly consistent with the sacred narrative. The conflict of opinions. 4. The Biblical Chronology. (II.) Confidence—in the Currainry of Scripture. 1, ‘There has been no wresting of Scripture, to make it agree > SSae d. 2. There has been a most ridiculous failure of every attempt to a. with Science: e.g.,— Death before the Fall. Universality of the Deluge. The age of the world. The Mosaic account of the Creation. show that Scripture and Science are at variance. Recapitulation : Huxley, Lyell, Bunsen, Horner. 3. The positive and uniform agreement between Scripture and Science, as to The vitality of the blood ; Distinction between rain and dew; The atmosphere, Its power ; Its pressure ; The earth, ee form ; y Its sustentation ; Circulation of water ; Circuits of the winds; The ‘influence of Pleiades ; ” Light independent of the sun; Primeval vegetation ; Common origin of birds and fishes ; Number of the stars; Connection between the sun and moon; Distinction between these luminaries and their light. Contrasted with the false science of The Hindus, The Mahometans, The Egyptians, The Greeks and Romans, The Fathers and the Popes, Montaigne, Buffon, and Voltaire. Is itself a complete demonstration of the Plenary In- spiration of ‘‘all Scripture.’ (E.g., The Mosaic Cosmogony.) PAGE 297 XXII ANALYTICAL OUTLINE PART III. SOPHISMS. PAGE 315 CHAPTER X. That the dogma of an infallible Bible is on a par with that of an infallible Pope, and will soon be as utterly exploded. That Scripture and Science are at variance. - That the Bible must succumb to a “ remorseless criticism.”’ The weight which this Criticism derives from the character and position of the Critics. The force which it derives from ‘“‘ the combined momentum of so many minds.” . But if the Divine authority of the whole Bible could be established, it would still be unworthy the enlightenment of our age to submit to the “ bondage of the letter.” 1, To what then must we submit ? a. To the internal oracle? (Mr. Newman.) Inaudible and unascertainable ? b. To conscience? (Dr. Temple.) Flexible to an inde- terminate degree ? 2. Mr. Jowett’s fallacy :—“ Not the Book, but the truth of the Book” : 3. Refated by Dr. R. Vaughan :—‘ The Letter and the Spirit.” VU. Take care of Christianity, and let the Creeds take care of themselves. But without the Creeds, Christianity is impos- sible. Its cardinal condition is Faith. VIII. We ask for evidence, and you offer us faith. If your evidence IX. is sufficient, why talk of faith? and if it be insufficient, on what ground do you require us to believe? _ 1. The charge is untrue. Our opponents take good care not to ask for evidence. 2. It confounds the evidence with the faith which that evidence at once inspires and justifies. 3. The evidence of miracles alone is amply sufficient. But a miracle is impossible. 1. How do you know that ? The assertion is incapable of proof. Definition of a miracle. Fallacy of the pretence of ‘“ uniform experience.” Substitution of an experience limited and partial, for one that is uniform and universal. On Mr. Hume’s principle, a fact may be contrary to experience, and yet not contrary to truth! Bat the impugners of miracles do not, after all, rely on ex- perience: they themselves rely on testimony ! 327 bee OF CONTENTS, XXII And yet, on pretence of a uniform experience, they shut God out of His own world; and maintain “ the incon- ceivableness” of miracles. (Baden Powell.) 2. .This assertion (thus shewn to be incapable of proof) is dis- proved by undeniable facts. | a. The existence of Christianity, if not owing to the evidence afforded by physical miracles, is in itself a moral miracle. Its success—without the means of success—is a miracle. The labours of its apostles—without a motive—is a greater miracle. And yet there is actually no motive and no means what- ever, until we admit the fact of The Resurrection of our Lord. y %. The fact of the Resurrection is further attested by the existence (and consequent origin) of the Christian Sabbath. ce. The fact of the Creation is similarly attested by the existence (and origin) of the Jewish, the patriarchal, and the primitive Sabbath. 5 d. But each successive act of Creation is a miracle of the most stupendous kind. é. The creation of the first man alone involves three dis- tinct and undeniable miracles :— a. That such a being should exist at all—in spite of uniform experience ; 8. That he should be created, although every other man has been born; and y. That in the development of his faculties, his experience should be directly contrary to that of all his descendants. X. But after all, miracles can never command our faith. How is it then, that they have commanded the faith of multi- tudes ? XI. “ Book-revelation is impossible.” If so, then, on their own principles, the book-revelations of Lord Herbert and Mr. Newman are self-condemned. XII. The Bible must be rejected on the ground of its incredibilities: 4i.g., i.) That God should authorize the extirpation of the Canaanites ; (1.) That He should inflict eternal punishment upon the wicked. (1.) A. 1. It is alleged that this destruction of the Canaanites is too terrible to be true. But 2. The destruction of Jerusalem (for instance) involves horrors much more terrible, And therefore, (if the allegation be valid) much more untrue. XX1V ean. Besides, 4. C. 1. ANALYTICAL OUTLINE But we know it to be true: And therefore, the allegation which implies the con- trary is itself untrue. Calamities of this kind, if not untrue, are at all events too terrible to be of Divine Appointment : Consequently, the Bible which claims for them this appointment is incredible. But Similar calamities are continually occurring—where Divine Appointment is unquestionable :—Z.g., Earth- quake, Famine, Pestilence. Therefore He who (on account of these difficulties) denies that God is the Author of Scripture, must also (for the very same reason) deny Himto be the Author of Nature. The presence of these difficulties in the Bible, no less than in the World, is a clear indication of the common origin of both. On critical grounds, it is affirmed That the doctrine of eternal punishment is not taught in the Bible. Against this affirmation however, we have these three facts :— a. The words employed to teach the doctrine are the most expressive that can be found. 6. Their collocation intensifies their force. And ec. Our Lord’s own interpretation of them puts their meaning beyond a doubt. On moral grounds, it is affirmed That this doctrine is incompatible with the Divine Benevolence. But this affirmation rests upon a false assumption. All that Divine Power could do to avert the infliction of future punishment, Divine Benevolence has done. Why should that be deemed incredible in the world to come, which, in the present world, we see to be actual ? a. As matter of actual fact, men do incur punishment in this life. They incur this punishment of their own free choice By their own act and deed; In defiance of warning and experience. 6. And the punishment they thus incur Is inevitable; Isirremediable; Is immitigable. Lastly : Punishment is an errectr—whose cavsr is Sin. And yet our opponents’ system takes no notice of Sin! Exposure of Theodore Parker’s sophism: And Mr. Wilson’s. 7 OF CONTENTS. XXV 2. Can anything be more absurd than to predict the cessa- tion of the Effect, without the removal of the Cause ? 3. Are we to accept as Teachers of Morals, the men who are blind to the existence of immorality ? XIII.. “To sever the false from the true, we need a ‘verifying faculty :’ Reason must be the arbiter of Revelation.” 1. Whose reason? Is every man to be his own Pope? ‘Dr. Temple’s doctrine of the Supremacy of Conscience, ‘And Theodore Parker’s of the Moral Intuitions, 3.. Shewn to. be contrary to Scripture and to fact. XIV. ‘Since Jesus was human, why should we suppose His teaching infallible ? *? 1. Because He was not more truly human, than he was superhuman, 2.. Dr. Colenso’s sophism : Examined and Refuted. PART IV. CERTAINTY. PAGE 355 CuapTer XI, It Is CERTAIN I. That Man needs a Religion.. 1. Heis ‘a religious animal ” : he will worship. Whatever be the cause, the fact is unquestionable: There is a ‘‘ religious instinct ’” which characterizes man as man, 2. Man, by worshipping, becomes assimilated to the moral char- acter of the object which he worships. This fact is attested by the universal history of idolatry, 3. This process of necessary assimilation has uniformly been a process of debasement = And from this debasement (—Christianity apart—) there are no possible means of extrication for mankind. These three great facts demonstrate the truth of man’s re- ligious need. Ir IS CERTAIN Il. That the Christian Religion is perfectly adapted to the actual condition and necessities of mankind. This adaptation is demonstrated in these two particulars :— 1. Christianity reveals a Pure Object of Worship. . 2. It accompanies this Revelation with a bestowal of Power. It 18 CERTAIN III. That rue Oxssections alleged against the Bible, as the Divine Re- velation containing that Religion, AarE UNTENABLE. 361 It is objected 1. That the Bible abounds with Difficulties. XXV1 ANALYTICAL OUTLINE But a. So does everything in the world: e.g., The transformations of matter, The operations of mind, The moral condition of the human race. b. The presence of these Difficulties in the Bible, not less than in the World, is a strong reason for believing in the common origin of both. ce. None of these Difficulties are peculiar to the Bible. The Bible did not create them; but it does diminish them. d. But even were it otherwise, the objection would still be absurd. For It sets up the pretensions of ignorance against the authority of knowledge. It makes that which we do know depend on that which we do not know. It would make us doubt whether we know anything, because forsooth, we do not know everything. 2. And Contradictions. No doubt it does: But a. The contradictions found in the Bible are such only as are found in all true histories; b. Such as were never found in any false history whatever ; ce. Such, and such only as serve to give the strongest corroboration of its truth. d. None of them are irreconcilable. é. They arise from omission: not from opposition. Each account is true as far as it goes. J. Itis certain that if the Bible histories had been fictitious, these contradictions would not have been there. 8. ‘That it is of double meaning and doubtful interpretation. But a. So are Shakspeare and Dante. 6. This liability is a condition of excellence. c. Urged in a bad sense, the objection is not true. d. Where the meaning is double the interpretation is not doubtful. £.g., Prof. Jowett on Ho. xi. 1. 4. That it is incompatible with the truths of Science. But it is certain Ae b. That in no single instance has this charge ever yet been proved. That between the statements of the Bible and the established facts of Science there exists a substan- tial agreement, so extensive and so minute as to furnish one of the Strongest reasons for believing that the Author of Nature and the Author of Scripture are One. OF CONTENTS. XXV1i e. This agreement is the more evident and striking when viewed in contrast to the scientific teaching of all false religions. d. The language of the Bible on scientific (as also on prophetic) subjects is germinant; and is so framed as to adapt itself to the successive advances of scientific discovery. 7 Ir 18 CERTAIN 1V. That rue reasons assigned for a belief in the Divine Authority of the Bible arr UNANSWERABLE. 368 1. The history of the Bible is a history without a parallel. a. No Book has incurred hostility so deadly, so determined, —none has had enemies so numerous or so power- ful—as the Bible. b, Yet—by some mysterious power—the Bible has tri- umphed over all. e. It exists to-day—in more than two hundred languages— and is read throughout the world. d. It exists uncorrupted and unaltered ; in a state of purity not attained by any other writing of antiquity. Existence, notwithstanding the mightiest efforts for its extirpation ; e. In this+ Dispersion, itself a fact beyond all human parallel; and Unrivalled purity of preservation : we see the Finger of God. f. In this interposition of a Divine Power we recognize the warrant of a Divine Authority. g. Let those who deny the one or the other, make good the denial by the production of natural causes ADEQUATE to the production of the actual effect ; or else—Let them admit that h. The history of the Bible—attested as it*is by the exist- ence of the Bible—is a phenomenon Supernatural and Divine. 2. The Bible is without a rival in the characteristic features of its Contents. a. As to the Writers, we have the greatest diversity in station, natural ability, mental habitudes, and literary acquisition. b. As tothe Writings, we have the most perfect unity amid the widest variety. c. These Writings are characterized By Truth. Proofs and illustrations: From Moses— The Evangelists—The Apostles. d. By Love. Love is made the sum of human duty ; and the only sufficient motive. XXVIi1 ANALYTICAL OUTLINE e. By Holiness. God is represented as essentially holy ; and as requiring emphatically a “holy worship.” f. And by a supreme regard for the glory of God. g. In all these particulars the Bible is a Book sui generis. 3. The Prophecies of the Bible prove it to be divine. a. They are in the strictest sense, true predictions. b. They foretell the most improbable, and frequently (as it seemed) the most impossible events. c. ‘They have been most exactly and literally fulfilled. d. In respect to their extent, their variety, their unity, they are unique. €é. They are so in respect to the grandeur of their object, and the dignity of the Person to whom they chiefly relate. J. Finally, they possess a moral and instructive element inseparable from the predictive; and by this in- separability the “ oracles of God ” are distinguished from all other oracles whatever. 4. The divinity of the Bible is demonstrated by its Moral Effects alone. General enumeration of these effects. Can the Effect transcend its Cause ? CHAPTER XII. Iris CERTAIN: THATir THE Biste BE NOT DIVINE, THEN IT IS AN Errect witHout a Cause. 380 I. First Proof: From the Institutes of Moses. 1, The work accomplished by Moses has been accomplished but once in the history of the world. | 2. The singularity of his enactments, and of the principles on which those enactments were based, is rivalled only by their singular success. The source of their superiority is to be found in their peculiarity. This is true of the Ceremonial and Civil Law. But 3. Itis in The Moral Law that this perfection and peculiarity most manifestly appear. a. In the principles it inculeates, in the practices which it enjoins, in its distinctness, its completeness, its brevity, its intelligibility, its demand for Spiritual worship, and for the regulation of the heart, 6. This Law is a distinctive characteristic of the Bible: it is peculiar to the Bible alone. c. It is absolutely incapable of improvement. It is based on principles, and it deals with relations that are unchangeable. OF CONTENTS. XXI1X d. Issued in a remote, a barbarous, and a superstitious age, it still presents an embodiment of wisdom un- rivalled ; and to this hour .¢. It constitutes the acknowledged basis of all wise and efficient legislation. J Whence came it ?—if not from “ The Finger of God?” If. Second Proof: From the Epistles of Paul. 1. The Moral phenomenon presented by a. The Writings, b. The Writer. 2. The Literary phenomenon: Prof. Newman’s testimony to “THE UNAPPROACHABLE GREATNESS OF THE New TEsTAMENT.” Ill. Third Proof: From the fossilized facts of Christianity. Given: The writings of Philo on the one hand, and “ The Shepherd” of Hermas on the other, to account for the in- terjection of St. John’s Gospel and St. Paul’s Epistles between them. IV. Fourth Proof: From the admissions of our opponents. fi.g., Theodore Parker. Cuaprer XIII. It is cerTAIN: TuHarT THE Lire oF CHRIST ALONE IS SUFFICIENT TO DEMONSTRATE THE TRUTH OF CHRISTIANITY. Christ’s Teaching was unlike all other teaching. His Miracles were unlike all other miracles. But His Life was the greatest miracle of all. I. 1. The Man Christ Jesus was absolutely perfect. 2. No other man ever was. 3. No other man ever pretended to be. 4, Historical attestations of the fact. II. But on any other than Christian principles this fact (always unde- niable) is perfectly unaccountable, On Christian principles the explanation is clear, consistent, and conclusive. III. Jesus Christ is Gop MANIFEST IN THE FLESH: the visible moral em- bodiment of an invisible moral Deity. Analogy between physical, intellectual, and moral manifesta- tions of God. IV. Jesus Christ is Tae Great Exemprar: “ Leaving us an example.” 1. Philosophical necessity for this. 2. The necessity has been met. VY. The Result: Gop HATH sPpoKEN TO Us BY His Son. XXX _ ANALYTICAL OUTLINE CuapTer XIV. Iris CERTAIN: THAT THE Testimony oF CHRIST TO THE TRUTH OF CuHRIS- TIANITY RECEIVES IRRESISTIBLE FORCE FROM THE PERFECTION OF His CHARACTER. PAGE 402 I. 1. The fact that Christ did work miracles is admitted a. By the early adversaries of Christianity (Celsus, Porphyry, Julian.) b. By both the earlier and later Jews. 2. It is further established by the numbers and constancy of the early Christians. a. Important testimony of Tacitus. b. Force of the evidence of Christ’s cotemporaries. II. Christ’s own testimony to the fact. : Opposed to this testimony there are but two suppositions possible : 1. Was it mistaken ? 2. Was it false? Both suppositions untenable. III. 1. Christ could not be mistaken: Proofs of His intellectual character. 2. He was incapable of deceit : Proofs of His moral character. IV. The force of Christ’s Testimony is augmented 1. By the utter failure of every sceptical hypothesis to account for the facts. (Fichte, Carlyle, Renan.) 2. By the admissions of sceptics themselves, (Rousseau, Theo- dore Parker.) CHAPTER XV. Iv is cerTAIN: THAT THE OLD ARGUMENTS IN PROOF OF THE TRUTH OF CHRISTIANITY ARE NOT ANTIQUATED, THEY STILL REMAIN UNANSWERED. 419 I. 1. Itis certain that the writers of the Bible were not bad men. - But being good men, they were true. 3. But they claimed to be Divinely Inspired: Therefore—They were divinely inspired. 4. No escape from this dilemma :— The Bible is either of Divine Inspiration or of human invention. But good men could not falsely lay claim to an Authority they did not possess ; And bad men could not, by any conceivable possibility, have produced a Book of superhuman excellence ; The Bible therefore is not of man, but of God. Il. OF CONTENTS. XXX1 The conduct of the writers demonstrates the divinity of the mission. Li.g.,1. Moszs. If he was not a divinely inspired messenger, he was a menda- cious and cruel impostor. But his disinterestedness proved his sincerity. An impostor never forgets himself: But Moses forgot himself to the last. 2. Pau, A sanguinary zealot; and yet The writer of the thirteenth chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians. His sound judgment. His freedom from enthusiasm. His idea of a universal religion. His labours; his sufferings; his aims. Was falsehood ever attested by evidence like his? Never! III. Paey’s GREAT ARGUMENT IS STILL UNANSWERED : Ly; Though often disparaged and reviled. 1. His demonstration is admitted, by our opponents themselves, to be ‘‘ perfect.” 2. He adduces “uncontested and incontestable” facts; which are “ without a parallel.” 3. These facts “cannot be accounted for” except by admitting the Truth of Christianity. 4. He establishes the authenticity of the Christian Scriptures; 5. And characteristically distinguishes the Christian Miracles from all other miracles whatsoever. The force of the argument is to this hour unimpaired. Bisuop BuTLER’s ARGUMENT ALSO IS STILL UNANSWERED AND—UN- ANSWERABLE, Our opponents’ dislike of it. By this argument, it is shewn 1, That the doctrine of a future life must be admitted even on the evidence of Reason alone. 2. That as a plain matter of fact we are now under God’s Government. : 3. That the facts of every-day life ‘ are such as to answer fully ” all objections to the doctrine of future Rewards and Punishments. 4, That God’s Government is Moral. That our present state is one of Moral Discipline, or Trial ; That the very idea of Necessity or Fatalism is plainly opposed to universal fact. 5. That Revelation is a. An Authoritative republication of Natural Religion. b. A revealing of things undiscoverable by Reason. &. XXxil ANALYTICAL OUTLINE 6. That all presumptions against miracles are untenable. That the opsecrions urged against ‘The Scheme” of Christianity as well as those | Arg FRIVOLOUS. against its Evidence, 7. That Christianity rests on “ PLAIN HISTORICAL FACTS WHICH CANNOT BE SET ASIDE; ” On ‘“ EvIpENCE MORE THAN HUMAN”: Hence ‘THE ABsURDITY OF ALL ATTEMPTS TO PROVE CurisTI- ANITY FALSE,” V. Lestiz’s pemonsrration of the Truth of Christianity 1s sTm UNANSWERED, AND UNANSWERABLE. This argument is particularly plain and simple. It consists 1. In laying down such marks as to the truth of matters of fact in general, that where they all meet, such matters of fact cannot be false; and then 2. In shewing that they all do meet in the matters of fact of Moses, and of Christ ; and do not meet in those reported of Mohammed, or of the heathen deities, nor can possibly meet in any imposture whatsoever. These infallible marks of truth are four: and 3. To these are added four more; three of which are peculiar to the Christian Religion alone. 4, The Result is, that ‘‘ WE CANNOT IMAGINE THE POSSIBILITY OF A MORE PERFECT OR ABUNDANT DEMONSTRATION.” Cuapter XVI. Ir 18 CERTAIN: THAT THE MOST RECENT, SUBTLE, AND POWERFUL ASSAULTS ON THE BIBLE HAVE UTTERLY FAILED TO SHAKE THE FounpAtions OF OUR Fairn. 435 I. Essays and Reviews. 1. Their most distinguished Apologist admits that Their Assertions ‘“ are assumed as certain, without a word of proof: and some of them even “ wholly unsupported by argument.” 2. A fresh trimmph for Christianity in the unanswerable argu- ments of the Replies. II. Dr. Colenso’s productions. Character of the Answers. Dr. Me. Caul, Mr. Birks, The Bishop of Ely. Variety and completeness of these answers. The positive evidence irrefragable. Demolition of Dr. Colenso’s argument on the Elohistic and Jehovistic Psalms. OF CONTENTS. XXXill III. Renan’s “ Vie de Jesus” is a reductio ad absurdum. The utter failure of the argument is A further proof that Christianity cannot but be true. IV. 1. ‘The Origin of Species,” ‘‘The Antiquity of Man,” ‘“ Man’s Place in Nature,” With all their unquestionable ability Have failed to point out one solitary indisputable fact at variance with the Bible. 2. Science has its own proper certainty. But The Speculations which (in the name of Science) are arrayed against the Bible, are a mere tissue of uncer- tainties. f.g., 3. The supposed discovery at Jarrow. Computations of the period required for the cooling of the earth’s crust. : 4. Prof. Phillips on the defectiveness of the data required for these computations. The ‘ abuse of arithmetic.” The Times on Sir C. Lyell’s inaugural address. ‘* Scientific dogmatism.” “Tt is vain to deny that many so-called ‘results’ of geology are hypothetical :—hypothetical in that sense in which Newton protested against hypotheses.” Cuarrer XVII. Ir rs cerTAIN: THAT AGAINST THE EvipENcE FOR CHRISTIANITY —CUMULA- TIVE AND CONGRUOUS AS IT IS—OUR OPPONENTS ARE UNABLE TO MAINTAIN ANY SINGLE ARGUMENT WHATEVER. 445 The two elements of a vigorous faith. Review of the principal points of the argument, Iv 18 CPRTAIN I. That the “inner principle” is insufficient for human need, II. That an “ outer Law” is necessary. III. That this outer Law must be attested by miracles. IV. That the Bible is such a Law; and has been so attested. V. That it is now substantially and essentially the same as when first given. VI. That—apart from the Bible—nothing is more true than the great facts of Christianity. VII. That of those facts the Bible supplies the only possible explanation. VIII. That the actual connexion between the Facts and the Sacred Books in which they are recorded is such as to stamp the latter with the Authority of a Divine Inspiration. XXXIV ANALYTICAL OUTLINE IX. That the cumulative evidence which demonstrates the Truth of Christianity is still further strengthened by the Force of Congruity: And X. That of this evidence, thus varied and comprehensive, thus con- gruous and cumulative, our opponents are unable to rebut or to refute one single particle. 1. Modern Infidelity “does not reason,” ‘it dreams and it dogmatizes.”’ 2. It proves nothing. It only ‘ objects.” 3. But to the standard works in defence of Christianity “no INFIDEL HAS EVEN PROFESSED TO WRITE AN ANSWER.” 4, There is no point brought forward by infidel writers that has not been met by their opponents. 5. The Idealist attempts to evade the force of actual facts by raising abstract questions. 6. There is no infidel theory whatever which can either get rid of, or account for, a. Christ’s Resurrection. b. Christ’s Life and Character. c. The character, conduct, and writings of the Apostles. 7. The various Rationalist theories of the Gospels are mutually destructive. 8. Return to the theory of Fraud. 9. Return to the Mythical theory. 10. The utter failure of these theories, a signal triumph for the Truth. Cuarter XVIII. It 1s cerTAIN: THAT THE CERTAINTY WHICH CHARACTERIZES THE DEMON- STRATION OF THE TRUTH OF CHRISTIANITY, IS CERTAINTY OF THE HIGHEST KIND. ° PAGE 460 I. What is the highest kind of Certainty ? 1. Unphilosophical depreciation of different kinds of evidence. Absurdity of Des Cartes’ attempt to substitute demonstration for consciousness. Similar absurdity of objecting to moral truths because they are incapable of mathematical demonstration. Mathematical demonstration not more certain than Consciousness; or than The evidence of the senses. ** Probable evidence” not uncertain. Probability the very guide of life. 2. Evidence of a Divine Revelation must be not inconsistent with certain conditions. Moral subjects can admit of no evidence incompatible with human responsibility. OF CONTENTS. XXXV To object that Christianity has no certainty, because it has not mathematical certainty, is equivalent to saying that it cannot be true because it lacks the evidence which would _ deprive men of the liberty of rejecting it. II. What is it that we want to know ? 1. The end of our existence. Our relation to The Infinite. The conditions of future happiness. 2. Impotence of Reason, Science, Naturalism. Naturalism is against nature. Count de Gasparin: Julius Miiller. 3. Perfect adaptation of the Bible to human need. Recurrence of the great question—Is 1m TRUE? ill. What is the Certainty which the Bible gives? Its facts are certain. Its doctrines are certain. There is a certain corroboration of its history. There is a certain demonstration of its theory. The Religion of the Bible is distinguished by its Certainty, from all other religions whatsoever. The religions of Paganism never pretended to be true. But Christianity is distinguished By the force of the evidence in its favour; and By the fact of its appeal to evidence. it appeals To the evidence of Miracles. To the evidence of Prophecy. To the Moral Fitness of its Doctrines, and the moral Ex- cellence of its Precepts. | To the Moral Character of its Penmen and Preachers. To the attestations of external history, and internal coin- cidence. To the UNDENIABLE FACTS WHICH PROVE THAT IT CANNOT BUT BE TRUE, How came the Bible to be written? and that too by Jews? How came it to be believed ? Force of the evidence furnished by the fact of this belief. Mutual relation, and perfect Unity of the Old and New Testaments. “‘Unapproachable greatness of the New Testament.” Life and character of Christ. Success of Christianity. The comprnation of these facts—the conaruity of this varied evidence—furnishes AxssoLute Mora Certainty that the Bible is from God. But most conclusive of all, is oe go mo XXXV1 6. ANALYTICAL OUTLINE OF CONTENTS. The Experimental Certainty. This never fails. ‘‘ He that believeth hath the witness in himself.” IV. But if the evidence is thus overwhelming, how can it fail to pro- duce universal conviction ? Because its fails to secure a fair examination. Unbelief springs from Moral Causes. And whatever be the causes of unbelief, want of evidence is not one of them: For the wildest Credulities of Scepticism rest on no evidence whatever. Fi.g., Lord Herbert of Cherbury: Modern “ Spiritualism.” Punitive Destiiry of Unbelief. CoNcLUSION. PAGE 484 No Unbeliever can prove the Christian Religion to be false. None can deny that it may possibly be true. But this bare “ possibility ” involves consequences which no prudent man would risk. Even those who refuse to admit the demonstration of its Certainty, Are unable to put aside the proofs of its high “ probability.” _ But this probability alone, is such that to neglect it, is to be Inexcusable, and self-condemned. II. The Believer, perplexed with Difficulties and harassed with Doubts, 1. will remember that Critical Differences do not touch the foundations of our Faith —cannot alter the great facts on which the Christian Doctrines rest. Moral Difficulties belong not to us. The Bible does not create them : it accounts for them. Christianity reveals the KNowLEDGE of “a sust GoD AND A SAviIouR.” ‘Doubts will bé deprived of all their force, by a thorough knowledge of ‘‘ The Evidences.” The possibility cf Doubt is a necessary part of our Moral Discipline. The recurrence of doubt will be prevented by the growth of piety. III. Tur Reticion oF Curist is TRUE: THEN IT IS TREMENDOUSLY TRUE. APPENDIX. Note A. The Reputed Traces of Primeval Man. Note B. Dr. Prichard’s “ Researches into the Physical History of Mankind.” Note C. Prof. Gaussen, On Scripture and Science. Note D. Isaac Taylor, On ‘‘ The Atonement.” 489 225 270 311 AGT PART I. DIFFICULTIES. noe inl Cae Pes yh 4 rh ae ¥ * bony sar eRe ; a> — 1 Se oe CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. CHAPTER I. ‘From hence it appears that our reason may oblige us to believe some things which it is not possible for us to comprehend.”—Br. Srittiner.eer, THE inherent difficulties of the Bible are of two kinds, and may conveniently be designated integral or incidental, By the former we shall understand all those difficulties which are inseparable from the matter of Divine Revelation ; while the latter will denote those arising from the manner in which the revelation has been made. The one class springs inherently from the Divine nature of the message ; the other is incidental to the human mode of transmission. We begin with the first of these; and here also two points present themselves: the lesson and the learner. The difficulties of the lesson are axiomatic, For it contains the teachings of the Infinite, addressed to the finite. And it is not more impossible for the part to be greater than the whole, than it is for the part to comprehend the whole. “(od is a Spirit.” Yes: but who shall tell us what a spint is? How little do we know of spiritual existence! of its nature, of its mode! So indistinct and undefined are our ideas, that almost the only thing on this subject which we can safely say we know, is this; that we know nothing. Our ideas are all negative. They extend, not to what spirit is ; only to what it is not. It is not matter. It is imponderable, impalpable, and indivisible. Tt has neither form nor color. But if to these merely negative ideas, we add ideas positive ; if for the abstract we substitute the concrete ; if instead of curious speculations on spiritual “cesium wie, Sckere » capesaee se eee ee a a eT ee Oe * Enchiridion Theologicum, vol. i. p. 390. 36 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. existence in general as a possible phenomenon, we rise to the serious contemplation of One Supreme Spirit, as an actual fact, how are our difficulties increased! To be everywhere, yet everywhere invisible; to be at the same time diffused and concentrated, and both infinitely ; to be not a mere abstraction, but a real Person; to comprehend infinity; to exist in the uncommenced duration which is past, and in the unending duration which is yet to come, and in both to be The Ever- lasting One: this is to be God; but how it baffles our poor conceptions ! Yet this is but the beginning. God is infinitely good: Whence then came evil? He is infinitely strong, and “ His work is perfect:” Why then did he suffer the success of the destroyer? It is the natural question of the untutored savage, “Why not God kill debble?” Nay more: go back from the fall of Adam to the fall-of Lucifer, and say, What was the primal origin of Evil? Did not the Allwise foreknow it? Could not the Almighty prevent it? Or are we ruled by Fate? True, it seems as if we were free; but how can human freedom consist with Divine foreknowledge? Such are some of the difficulties which meet us at the very threshold of the subject. I do not say they are insoluble; far from it: I believe the contrary. But they are serious, and they are inseparable from the lesson which Revelation teaches. There are others which are inseparable from the limited capacity of the learner. To a little child, his father’s watch is an object of unbounded admiration and wonder. He sees the ~ hands go round, but cannot imagine why ; he hears the cease- less ticking, but cannot tell whence it comes. And _ yet, however complicated its movements, there is no mystery in the watch. The whole mystery, such as it is—and to the child it appears unfathomable—springs from his own ignorance, And that ignorance is, for the time, necessary. It is the condition of childhood. While he is a child, he will continue to think as a child ; and with his childish thoughts the most perfect ex- planations are thrown away. The difficulty is not in the lesson, but in the learner; yet while that learner’s capacity remains within the limits of childhood, the difficulty is insurmountable. LIMITATIONS OF HUMAN CAPACITY. 37 The case is precisely our own. In our relation to the high mysteries of Revelation, we are all children. In themselves they contain nothing inconsistent with the highest reason ; nothing incompatible with the highest goodness. But for us, such knowledge is too high ; it is wonderful ; we cannot attain unto it. We are beset not merely with the ignorance, but also with the incapacity of childhood. We are surrounded with the most conclusive demonstrations that the lesson is true; we are as thoroughly assured by “ many infallible proofs ” as was he of old, that ours is, “a Teacher come from God ;” and yet like him we ask, “ How can these things be ?” But this is not all. Our intellectual capacity is not only limited, it is little. To be limited is a necessary condition of every created being; and the distance between the highest arch- angel before the throne of God and that God himself, must still be measured by the distance between the finite and the infinite. Every rank of those high intelligencies which stand between ourselves and the highest state of created being, is the subject, not less than ourselves, of a capacity that can never transcend an absolute limit ; yet how incomparably does that limit trans- cend our own! How puny are our ultimate achievements beside their primal intuitions! From the child among his toys to the statesman swaying the destinies of unborn millions— from the Polynesian savage who beljeved the missionary’s watch to be God Almighty, to the philosopher of Grantham unfolding the system of the universe—the distance is great indeed; yet it dwindles to a point when compared with the distance between our highest intellects and the lowest of angelic beings. What must it appear if we could scale those countless heights beyond which the cherubim stand before the throne of the Most High! Yet even there we should find devout and reverential learners of the great lesson of Revelation. Its mysteries are sublimities which the highest “angels desire to look into.” And if, com- pared with the magnitude of those mysteries, even angelic minds are conscious of puny inadequacy, what self-distrust and self-abasement should be ours! Alas! we are of yesterday, and know nothing. Baffled as we are by the mysterious secrets of the life that now is, how should we be able to penetrate the hidden mysteries of the life that is to come? If we have 38 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY, failed to understand when told of earthly things, how shall we hope to comprehend the nature of heavenly things? The greatest discoveries of earth are but as pebbles on the strand, while the great ocean of Truth, with its fathomless unknown depths lies still in majesty, sublime and unexplored. Of an archangel indeed we may conceive as not confined to the shore; » but still each fresh attempt to sound those unfathomable mys- teries extorts the astonished exclamation, “O the depth! O the depth!” And still for evermore as with ever-lengthened line and heavier plummet he again essays to find some boundary of the deep, he is still constrained to cry, “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how un- searchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! Thy way, O God, is in the sea, and Thy paths in the deep waters ; and Thy footsteps are not known.” The conclusion is irrefragable: it should be distinctly un- derstood and constantly remembered. The inherent difficulties of the Bible, so far from diminishing its credibility, confirm it in the highest degree. For they are such as bespeak an Author superhuman, an Intelligence Divine. The mysteries are in the nature of the things revealed ; not in the revelation itself, Put the Bible entirely out of the question, and then ask yourself what is your own conception of Infinity? You will find that whether applied to Time or Space there are but two suppositions imaginable ; that each of these is beset with diffi- culties not merely unavoidable, but inseparable from the sup- positions themselves ; and in short, that (although no other is possible) each of these two suppositions is equally impossible to be comprehended by the feeble intellect of man. The un- derstanding reels in its attempt to grasp them. Endeavour to realize a distinct idea of infinite space. Let your imagination wing her airy flight until she reaches the remotest bound of that universe in which our own sun is merely a faint and in- significant star; let her traverse not merely the islets but the continents of stellar worlds, until she stands on the outer brink of all creation; what then? what is beyond? anything, or nothing? You are not more unable to tell than you are to imagine, For if you accept the first alternative you merely prolong your search for the ultimate boundary: if you would FINITE CONCEPTION OF THE INFINITE. 39 embrace the second it eludes your grasp. To conceive of a point beyond which there is no space, no extension, is simply im- possible. But to realize the opposite conception is, for us, equally impossible. And the same is true of our idea of infinite dura- tion. Time, considered as a fragment of eternity, has its boundaries; but if eternity too has its boundaries, what is beyond the boundaries? what was before it? by what shall it be followed? The duration which always was; the duration which always will be: it is a conception we cannot comprehend, yet we can form no other. And thus the human mind is hedged in between these two, the finite and the infinite; so that it seems almost equally hard to conceive of either of them, whether as being, or as not being. And if this difficulty is thus inseparable from the nature of infinity in the abstract, how much more inseparable from the nature of Him from whom that infinity has sprung, and by whom it is sustained! He is the “God nigh at hand ;” He is the God “afar off.” “Do not I fill heaven and earth, saith the Lord?” Even so: “From everlasting to everlasting, Thou art God !” “ How firmly ’stablished is Thy throne! Which shall no change nor period see; For Thou, O Lord, and Thou alone Art God, to all eternity.” Great indeed is the mystery of. godliness. Yet to have transcended at some points the limits of human thought, is not the reproach of Scripture, but its recommendation. For listen to the voice of philosophy in its many speculations, of reason in its arduous toils, of experience recording its failures, of imagination as it folds its tired and baffled wing; and you shall hear from each and all the reiteration of that utterance of the highest Wisdom—“ Canst thou by searching find out God? eanst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know? His understanding is Infinite: there is no searching of His understanding !” From the difficulties inherent to the matter, we now proceed to those incidental to the manner, of Divine Revelation. These . though more numerous are less profound than those we have 40 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. just dismissed, and have three principal sources :—the poverty of language, the nature of translation, and the consequences of transcription. Let us glance at these in their order. I. Difficulties arising from the poverty of language; that is to say, from the inadequacy of human words to express superhuman ideas. To utter new ideas is difficult, but when the new idea transcends the highest flight of human thought, how much more so? “How would you speak of ‘holiness,’ for instance, to a man who has no conception of holiness, or whose only notion respecting it is that of having recently bathed in a sacred stream? How would you express the Christian doctrine of ‘regeneration’ to a man who expects to be born again, either in the form of an insect or of a loathsome reptile, as a punishment for his sins, or in the form of a prince or noble, in reward for his good actions? It is only as the ideas and experience of any two nations coincide, that the words of their languages will correspond.” When a South African missionary * wished to tell a party of chiefs that he had made a three months’ voyage from England, and had since travelled six weeks in his wagon from Cape Town to visit them, he had no difficulty in relating to them the latter fact, for they saw his wagon, and the oxen that had drawn it: but how was he to speak of the sea and ships to men to whom ships and the sea were unknown? He was obliged to impress into his service such ideas as they had. He said that before he travelled six weeks in the wagon, he had had to cross a large pond; so large, that it took him three moons to come over, which he did in a house built in a large bowl, which had wings; that there were many men with him in the house, who spread out the wings to catch the wind, all day and all night, while others guided the great bowl. No wonder that he overheard them whispering, “He thinks we are such fools as to believe him.” Yet this singular account of a voyage across the Atlantic eame as near to the truth as the language of that people admitted. And precisely the same thing may be said of that Anthro- pomorphism which abounds in the Scriptures, and in which some persons have found a difficulty. It is a necessity which * Campbell. ANTHROPOMORPHISM. 41 arises from the nature of the case. The same authority that declares “God is a Spirit ;” declares also and with equal plainness,’ “God is not a man.” That He is said to repent, to be angry, to be “a man of war,” or even to be the most august of monarchs seated on His throne, all this is the language of accommodation to the crassitude of our ideas and the narrow range of our vocabulary. That it is chargeable with a certain literal inaccuracy we do not pretend to deny ; but then this inaccuracy is only of that kind from which no writings on kindred topics can possibly be free. The philosophizing objector who finds fault with the humanized and limited ideas which pervade the anthropo- morphism of the Scriptures, must be reminded that even the most abstract representations which the mind can form amount in reality to no more than to a mere assemblage of material perceptions of the most palpable nature. His attention must be recalled to the well-known truth that all the restrictions of materialism do in fact adhere to the most spiritual conceptions attainable by mankind ; that the philosopher’s most incoporeal ideas, as he deems them, are, after all, inextricably invested with the earthliness and anthropomorphism to which he aspires to be superior. He must remember that all language consists, when reduced to its elements, of the signs of sensible ideas only, and hence that a revelation conveyed in the most abstract language possible must still partake of the characteristics which cause his discontent with the style of Scripture. Let such an objector draw out his religious creed in the language best suited to his own conceptions, and to the eye of the accomplished etymologist it shall present nothing more than s0 many signs of sensible objects of the most homely and tangible description. How unfounded then is the fastidious- ness which would banish the material from the language which ———————— ° Nu. xxiii. 19: 1 Sa. xv. 29. *“ Perhaps a more abstract idea can scarcely be selected than that conveyed by the common affix ness to our English words, as the exponent of a condition or qual- ity, in such words as goodness, whiteness, &c.; and yet a cele- brated etymologist finds its origin in nothing more abstract than the French word nez, whence comes the English word nose. Even the word idea itself involves an obvious reference to the use of the eye.” 42 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. it would deem the most suitable vehicle for a revelation! If it be a fault that the Scriptures speak by sensible images, it is a fault with which the writings of the most transcendental metaphysician are also chargeable. II. But this difficulty—the difficulty which the poverty of language renders inevitable—is closely followed by another ; and the two though intimately connected are yet perfectly distinct. The first pertains to the original language of revela- tion, the second to every translation. Passing over those versions and passages of versions which are notoriously faulty,” and taking our examples from that “noble version ”® which by the admission of its foes’ is probably the best in the world, in how many instances shall we yet find it impossible to produce a translation which shall reproduce the ideas imsepar- ably associated with the original! When the missionaries in the South Sea Islands first introduced the horse, the natives immediately called it “the pig that carries the man.” The reason was evident: they had pigs in abundance, but no sheep or cattle of any kind, and thus they were driven to associate the idea of a horse with that of a pig or a rat, the largest quadrupeds known to them. And however we may smile at so cumbrous a periphrasis, we must remember that it was perfectly natural.“ Our own derivation of “telegram” was not more so, Yet what an impassable chasm did such a designation interpose between their own ideas and those of the Celts who gave us the “Ros” from which by metathesis and the addition of the aspirate we have obtained “horse!” In the translation of the Scriptures there has been, fortunately for us, an operation of special causes tending greatly to diminish both the number and extent of these chasms; yet though thus modified they could not possibly be avoided. Take a single instance ; and that it may be the more significant let it be *Such as the Romish, the Soci- | succeeding edition of their own nian, and the “ Amended!” (Douay) Bible is a closer approxi- °So the Popish Dr.Doyle calls it. | mation to our own. 7The Papists. Their unwilling *Compare (much nearer home) tribute to the unrivalled excellence | the German usage—“ hand-shoe,” of our Authorized Version appears | for “glove ;” and “ water-stuff-gas,” unmistakeably in the fact that each | for “hydrogen.” AUTHORIZED VERSION. 43 taken from a passage in which the beauty and force of the translation fairly rivals the original. Instead of the two words “earnest expectation” in Ro, viii. 19, St. Paul uses a single word which signifies “to keep an eager look out,” “to watch attentively with the head bent forward ;” a word which suggests the idea of a man who, with outstretched neck, looks and waits with impatient longing for the arrival of some beloved and expected friend. To one who perceives the just force of our word alert* it might seem more expressive to say that mankind, or the creature (in St. Paul’s sense) stands on the alert in earnest expectation. Still, the Authorized Version of the passage is one which could hardly gain by any alteration. It would not be strange if we found ourselves more prolix even while endeavouring to be more precise. And yet excellent for its terseness and force as is “earnest expectation ” it falls far short of the “lively hope and vehement longing ” expressed by the original word. This non-retention of the ideas of the original is the frequent cause of much obscurity in the translation ; and this obscurity again sometimes produces considerable perplexity and difficulty. Our Authorized Version is, I repeat it, unrivalled, and yet so impossible is it in the best translation to avoid those difficulties which are inseparable from all translations, that there is no exaggeration in the words of a competent writer® who affirms that “The man who can read, and does read, and is familiar with the original Greek of the New Testament, is a totally different man, as to the divine life of knowledge, from him who can only read, or does only read, his English New Testament.” In another place the same writer adds, “I believe it utterly impossible to give an English reader anything like an accurate idea of the argument of the Epistle to the Romans. Among the hundreds of thousands who read that glorious Epistle in their English Bibles, and gain spiritual life and edifieation from it, there is not one who can read it as intelligently as the poorest and meanest of those to whom it was first written.” rn A) OR A) mo anal fey! * As derived through the Italian | place; a place favorable for seeing alverta, from the Latin ad erectam, | and watching.” and signifying “to be ona raised ® Dean Alford. 4 4A, CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. III. Once more. To the difficulties of translation must be added all those resulting from the inaccuracies of transcription. The frequency and gravity of these inaccuracies of the copyists may be estimated by observing the modern errors of the press. It is not all of these that are as harmless as that typographical blunder by which only a few days ago the (once) United States of America were designated the Untied States. How solemn and appropriate is that petition in the Burial Service—“O Lord God most holy, O Lord most mighty, O holy and most merciful Saviour, deliver us not into the bitter pains of eternal death !” How differently it reads when you have (accidentally of course) omitted that little word “not!” Yet this is but a specimen of the omissions in a book magnificently printed and _ lately published. That the Bible should be absolutely free from such inaccuracies of transcriptions, was not to be expected : their actual extent and importance will be noticed hereafter ; at present it is sufficient to point out that they exist. In the book of Judges (i. 19.) we read “the LorD was with Judah ; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain, but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.” Voltaire scoffs at this, as though it represented Jehovah, and not Judah as being baffled by the chariots of iron. Now-a-days, it will be perhaps impossible, among Voltaire’s most enthusiastic admirers, to find one who is not ashamed of it as a contemptible cavil. But the frivolity of such objections made by the most acute of infidels, shows how hatred of the truth blinds the mind to the perception of it. The relevancy of this reference to Voltaire will appear as soon as the true character of “ Rationalism” is understood. A common error on this subject, and one to be noticed presently, is the supposition that the startling statements “ pitchforked” into the face of an English public by Dr. Williams and his co-adjutors are the results of more profound researches and a more “remorseless criticism” than were formerly known. Nothing of the sort. Ommne ignoto pro magnifico. If with the actual facts before us we ask, ‘‘ What is Rationalism ?” The answer is, It is the old English Deistic infidelity as taught by Bolingbroke, popularized by Voltaire, and moulded into a RATIONALISM. ADS scientific form by the learned labours of German writers during the last hundred years. This is the answer given by Staiidlin, Tholuck, Hagenback, Guericke, Hahn, and others ; this is the answer elicted by a comparison of the doctrines propounded and the objections urged in both periods ; and a most important answer it is. It reveals the true nature of what is now pro- posed for our acceptance, and the final results to which we must come, if we accept the first principles. The objections against the Noachian deluge, the account of the rainbow, the Mosaic age of the world, are repeated over and over again in the works of Voltaire; not as now urged upon geological grounds, for although geology as a science then scarcely existed, yet such as it was, it was opposed by the seer of Fernay as being favorable to the Bible. The same too may be said of the supposed contradictions in the Gospels, so often urged in Rationalist commentaries, and last of all by Strauss. To take a single instance. In the “Bible enfin Expliquée ” we read “ Racach signifies the solid, the firm, the firmament. All the ancients believed that the heavens were solid, and, since the light passed through them, they imagined them of crystal.” The answer to this is that it is irrelevant. It is nothing to the purpose. Whether the ancients did really entertain such a belief or not is not the question." The question is what is the proper meaning of a word used, by a writer of the Holy Scripture. On the dogmatic assertion just quoted we join issue : we deny its correctness, and demand proof. In Mr. Goodwin’s Essay on the Mosaic Cosmogony the same point is touched, and in a similar manner. There is the same hardihood of assertion as to the meaning of the word, and the same attempt to give the assertion countenance by similar talk about current beliefs. But unfortunately for the success of these misrepresentations there is something more. There is an admission that the radical meaning of the word is—not solidity, but—expansion, An awkward admission this: but then it was undeniably the fact; so what was to be done? Why, * But we do not admit the cor- | which (from reivw) is of similar rectness of the assertion that they | import to the Hebrew word (y*p5) did. Plato, in the Timeus, de- | used by Moses. notes the ethereal heaven by ragis, 46 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. make the admission, and then pooh-pooh it as if it amounted to nothing. Affect to believe that the word was used by Moses in a non-natural sense, and that etymology which is accepted as a guide in all other cases must be rejected in this. And why must this exceptional course be taken? Because if it be not, it will appear only too plain that Scripture and Science are not at variance; that Moses was something very different from “ the first daring speculator” imagined by Mr. Goodwin ; and that however popular illusions and scientific inaccuracies may be reflected in translations and commentaries, it is still true that the original Scriptures are the words which (not “man’s wisdom” but) the Holy Ghost teacheth. Such a triumph of plenary Inspiration must be disputed atall hazards, and accord- ingly Mr. Goodwin has stooped to stigmatize the fact he cannot deny, as a “quibble ” about derivation. But when he has said his worst what has he done? Has he altered any of the facts ? He has shewn his wish indeed that rpy did not signify an expanse ; but he has quietly overlooked the fact that the best lexicographers—Parkhurst, Gesenius, Frey—are all against him. This simple fact remains : and Mr. Goodwin’s wishing, and Mr. Goodwin’s declaiming are alike unable to alter it. Whatever difficulty he finds he may charge upon his own misrepresen- tation; the word used by Moses presents no difficulty whatever. Another difficulty of this class may be seen in that much misrepresented event “The spoiling of the Egyptians.” It can hardly be denied that the amount of those valuables which the Israelites carried-up out of Egypt did not after all exceed the amount to which they were in equity entitled as the wages of a long and rigorous service. It is therefore not on this ground that the objection is based. The objector condemns not the amount of the acquisition, but the method of it. He points to the Israelites as having been divinely commanded to borrow what they had no intention to repay, and profanely pretends to believe that after this example there is no species of roguery which may not be justified as a mere “ spoiling of the Egyptians.” The answer is as simple as it is satisfactory. The objection rests entirely upon a misrepresentation of the words “ borrowed ” and “lent” used by our translators. We turn to the original Scriptures, and the misrepresentation is evident. “SPOILING THE EGYPTIANS.” 47 Nay more; it is evident to the mere English reader who will compare the translation of the same word in the original, by the same word in English as given in another place of the Authorized Version itself. When the pious Hannah dedicated her child of many prayers to the special service of the Most High, it was on her part a free gift, given without any thought or hope of being received back again, given for life, And yet this gift is called a loan. Eli calls it “the loan which is lent to the Lord ;”” and Hannah says “As long as he liveth he shall be lent to the Lord.” Now remembering that the very same words are used in Exodus, all is clear. The “borrowed ” jewels, are simply jewels “asked for ;” and they were “lent” with as little hope or thought of re-payment as Hannah had when she too “lent” her most precious jewel “ for life.” The truth is that “the Egyptians were urgent upon the people,” they were anxious to get rid of them at any price; and when to this it is added that “the Lord gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians,” it will not be wondered at that they “freely gave unto them such things as they required.” From difficulties founded on misrepresentations such as these, we pass by a natural transition to those which spring from ignorance or mistake. Such, for example, is the difficulty presented by a comparison of 1 Ki. vii. 13, with 2 Ch, ii. 13. In both of these passages Hiram’s father is said to have been eC COO oOoOwOrh ooo eee #1 Sa. ii. 20. Marg. “The peti- tion which she asked.” % It may serve to strengthen the statement in the text if we observe that while the word in question byw, is used in number- less instances in the sense there given, and also in several others capable of strict definition, there are perhaps not more than two instances in the whole Bible in which it bears the meaning of our word “borrowed.” The two in- stances to which I refer are 2 Ki. vi. 5, and Ex. xxii. 14. (Heb. 13.) [It may perhaps be contended that even here, the mention of “hiring” (v. 15) may affect the character of the borrowing, and if so, the “ borrowing” of the Isra- elites will appear all the more plainly still to be “asking for their hire.” But let this pass. We build not on conjectures but on ccrtainty.| Let us fully and candidly admit these two instan- ces. What then? “What are they among so many?” This word byw signifies prima- rily “ to ask.” 48 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. “a man of Tyre;” but with respect to his mother, the first says she was a widow “of the tribe of Naphtali,” while the second calls her a woman “of the daughters of Dan.” Here apparently, we have a difficulty of the first magnitude, nothing less indeed than an absolute and final contradiction ; and the many explanations of many years if they proved nothing else at least proved this—that the true explanation yet remained to be found. Now that it has been found we discover that the difficulty lay not in the Scripture history but in our ignorance of that history ; and that as soon as our ignor- ance disappears the difficulty disappears also. Pele Wr oer eed pene Wiis) Eero ne eet Lo ee SS ee I. To ask to give. Ex. iii. 22, xi. 2. Jo. xv. 18, xix. 50. Ju. i. 14. II. To ask advice, counsel, To consult. 1 Sa. xiv. 37. III. To ask information, To en- quire. Ge. xliii.7. Ju. iv. 20. IV. To desire. De. xiv. 26. V. To wish. Job xxxi. 30. Jon. iv. 8. VI. To demand. Job xxxyiii. 3, x10 7jexitie 4. Is it then very wonderful if in two or three solitary instances it should signify “To ask to lend, i.e. To borrow.” But the excep- tional character of this usage ap- pears much more strongly marked still when we come to elaborate any of the previous heads. Thus under I. “ To ask to give,” are in- cluded To beg: -*Ps. cix. 10. Pr. xx. 4 To ask a favor. De. xviii. 16. To petition. 1 Ki. ii. 16, 20. To ask in prayer. Ps. cxxii. 6. Zech. x. 1. 1 Sa. 1. 28. Lastly, and most important of all,—when borrowing proper is spoken of, it is the invariable rule to use a totally different word, ms. (The only exceptions to this rule being the two instances above named.) Thus e.g. in Ex. xxii 25. (Heb.24.) Ifthou lend money. De. xxviii. 12. Thou shalt lend. . and thou shalt not borrow. 44. He shall lend to thee. Neh. v. 4. We have borrowed money. Ps. xxxvii. 21. The wicked bor- roweth and payeth not again. Pr. xxii. 7. The borrower is ser- vant to the lender. Is. xxiv. 2. As with the lender, so with the borrower. Now when, in the Mosaie ac- count of “spoiling the Egyptians,” the objector can discover this ex- plicit word > to borrow, instead of the word which really stands there, byw to ask, he may fairly claim a hearing. Till then how- ever (Gracis Kalendis) he must be content to remain out of court, simply because he has no case. In all the ancient versions, and in every modern translation (our own excepted) the verb here used has its proper and literal meaning of ask ov demand. Cf. Ps. ii. 8, (Au- thorized Ver.) where byw = ask. CONTRADICTIONS NOT CONTRADICTORY. 49 For observe the facts. Four hundred years before Hiram was sent to Solomon, the Danites, straitened in their narrow boundaries in the south-west, sent out five valiant men as Spies, with instructions to go through the whole country in search of a suitable spot for a new settlement The desired spot was found in the remotest corner of the common territory : a secluded valley among the hills in the north of N aphtali, where, undisturbed by the resident tribe, a colony of Sidonians, long since detached from the mother country, followed their peaceful avocations, “quiet and secure.” The prize was too tempting for the unscrupulous freebooters who, true to their prophetic character “—six hundred men fully armed—fell upon the unsuspecting, unresisting prey, burnt their city and changed its name from Laish to Dan, “ in memory at once of their ancestry and their migration. This accounts for everything. {It accounts for the marriage of a Tyrian with a Jewess, For the colony at Dan was Sidonian before it was Jewish ; and Sidon is identified with Tyre in the history itself.° The Tyriangs and Sidonians were people of one nation. Such a marriage therefore, instead of the strangeness which at first attaches to it, has all the naturalness which belongs to a marriage at Quebec between an English colonist and a F rench Canadian. Similarly, that there should be a town of Dan in Naphtali, is as natural as that there should be a.town of Halifax in Nova Scotia. And thus, not only does the seeming contradiction disappear, but a minute and circumstantial corroboration of the verbal accuracy of the narrative is seen in its place. It is per- fectly true that Hiram’s mother was “of the tribe of N aphtali,” for Laish, the place of her abode, was situated in the territory of that tribe. It is equally true that she was “a woman of the daughters of Dan,” being descended from that little colony of six hundred sent forth in early times. Sometimes the difficulty arises from our ignorance of peculiar modes of thought or peculiar and idiomatic expression, Of this kind is the difficulty which has been felt in the account of aie a i oes ee MGOn shine 7... Ju. xviii, 1:29: , a skilled workman, assigns as a * See 1 Ki. v. 6, where Solomon | reason the eminent skill of the sending to the king of Tyre for | Sidonians. D 50 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. the crucifixion, on reading in Matt. xxvii. 44, that “ The thieves also, which were crucified with him, cast the same in his teeth ;” while in the parallel passage (Lu. xxiul. 39.) we read only that “one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on him.” Some, in order to avoid the discrepancy, have supposed that the two statements refer to two different points of time ; and that both the thieves reviled at first (for thus they understand St. Matthew) although one of them, struck by Christ’s demeanour, afterwards desisted and repented (so that only the other is mentioned by St. Luke). This solution is not very satisfactory ; partly because it is only a supposition, and partly because it assigns no reason for St. Matthew’s silence as to the subsequent conversion of the penitent thief. But the true solution is found in a knowledge of the Hebrew idiom, by which the plural is used for the singular when it is not intended to express the individual distinctly. ” Thus it 1s written of Jephthah, that he was “buried in the cities of Gilead” (Ju. xii. 7.). “In one of the cities,” in our version, and this is the meaning, undoubtedly ; but such is not the 7 Bythner’s Heb. Gram. p. 7. And thus Museulus (in Matth- eum) writes on this verse :— “ Veriim non est putandum, quod vtriq; latrones hoe fuerint.” Then quoting the parallel passage from St. Luke, he adds—* Liquet igitur i Matthzeo nostro pluralem nu- merum pro singulari positum ;” and cites as a parallel case, Matt. xxvi. 8, where that indignation about the waste of the ointment is attributed to the disciples gen- erally which St. John (xii. 4) par- ticularizes as having been shown by Judas alone. Augustine, who accounts for the difference in expression between Matthew and Luke on the same principle of the common use of the plural for the singular, adds, that in order to constitute a con- tradiction, the narratives of Mat- thew and Mark should have had the word “both:” but in the ab- sence of this word, there is @ mere variety of expression but no contradiction. He shows that this is the ordinary usage of writers uninspired : —“ quid autem usita.- tius, verbi gratia, quam ut dicat aliquis, Et rustici mihi insultant: etiam si unus insultet?” And he shews it to be the usage of In- spired Writers by citing Heb. x1. 33, 87, “stopped the mouths of lions,” where the reference is to Daniel alone; ‘“‘ were sawn asun- der,” where the reference is to Isaiah alone; Ps. ii. 2. compared with Ac. iv. 26, where “the kings of the earth” and “the princes” are respectively represented by Herod and Pontius Pilate, singly. —“De consensu Evangelistarum,” Lib. III. cap. xvi. HEBRAISMS. st Hebrew phrase. In like manner it is written of Jonah, that “he was gone down into the sides of the ship” (Jon. i. 5); it not being the purpose to tell specifically which side, Accordingly, in the passage before us, St. Matthew speaks of the thieves in the plural, because he would leave it uncertain which of the two it was, Another and a similar instance is the apparent discrepancy between He. ix. 3, 4, and 1 Ki. vil. 9.3 the former affirming that “after the second veil” (was) “the Tabernacle which is called the Holiest of all; which had the golden censer, and the ark of the covenant overlaid round about with gold, wherein was the golden pot that had manna, and Aaron’s rod that budded, and the tables of the covenant :” the latter passage affirming that “ there was nothing in the ark save the two tables of stone.” But says Bythner, the “wherein” does not relate to “the ark,” but to the more remote antecedent, “the Tabernacle.” “So that the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews does not mean to say that these several matters were in the ark, contrary to the declaration of the Book of Kings, but only that they were in the Tabernacle ; it being according to the genius of the Hebrew Grammar for the pronoun sometimes to have respect to the more distant, and not to the nearer noun.” * Now that this is no fictitious explanation invented for the occasion is abundantly evident on reference to many other passages. Thus we read in Genesis x. 12; “Resen between Nineveh and Calah: the same is a great city ”—“the same” having reference to Nineveh, and not to Calah. Again in Psalm xcix. 6,7: “Moses and Aaron among his priests, and Samuel among such as call upon his name,” and “ He spake unto them out of the cloudy pillar ”—the “them” pertaining to Moses and Aaron, and not to Samuel. And to take but one instance more, Psalm civ. 25, 26: “Sois the great and wide sea also ; wherein are things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts. There go the ships, and there is that Leviathan whom Thou hast made to take his pastime therein,” ie. not in “the ships,” the latter, but in the “ sea,” the former antecedent. ™ Prof. Blunt: to whose “Parish | —if he may be permitted to say it Priest,” and “ Undesigned Coinci- | —even reverently, acknowledges dences,” the writer cordially and | his obligations. CHAPTER II. “God has placed mystery at the origin of all science and of all light, as he has placed it at the origin of all being and of all life. . . . Whatever is primi- tive is not tangible; whatever is generative is not visible; and wHATEVER ILLUMINATES REMAINS OBSCURE.”’—Le Pére Felix. ? From the foregoing examples it is evident that the most satisfactory solutions of Scripture difficulties are to be found in Scripture itself. The Bible is its own interpreter. The first, and second, and third requirements indispensable for correct “Biblical Criticism ” are—a thorough knowledge of the Bible itself. Trace, for instance, the course of those two armies whose conflict “in the wood of Ephraim” decided the fate of a dynasty. The venerable king summoning his cabinet with the words “Arise, and let us flee ; for we shall not else escape from Absalom.” The hurried departing—with the few friends yet firm to a falling cause ; the household troops, the Cherethites, the Pelethites, and that rare embodiment of faithful affection, Ittai the foreigner, with his six hundred Gittites. The uni- versal weeping, as those stern warriors crossed the Kedron and wound up the sides of Mount Olivet, with covered heads and bare feet. The fierce indignation against Shimei; and the Pe ee ae en ee eT UDR ST a ee 1« Te Progrés par le Christian- isme.” Paris 1864. 2 Not to be estimated from the single remonstrance recorded on the occasion, that of Abishai; but rather from the united remon- strance of the whole army, record- ed in ch. xviii. v. 3. See also ch. xxi. v. 17, and ch. xxiii. v. 16. Such glimpses as these constrain us to apply to the loyalty of these Hebrew warriors the glowing eu- logium of Macaulay on the sepoys at Arcot under Clive. “ The de- votion of the little band to its chief surpassed anything that is yelated of the Tenth Legion of Cesar, or of the Old Guard of Napoleon. ... History contains no more touching instance of mili- tary fidelity, or of the influence of a commanding mind,” THE WOOD OF EPHRAIM. 53 narrow escape at Bahurim, which necessitated the night passage of the Jordan and the forced march on Mahanaim. Then trace the pursuers carefully following on the track until at last you find both “ Israel and Absalom pitched in the land of Gilead.” But how is this? Both armies have crossed the Jordan and are encamped to the east of it, where the only tribes are Reuben, Gad, and the half tribe of Manasseh. Ephraim was situate in one compact territory lying altogether to the west. What then are we to think of the statement that “the battle was in the wood of Ephraim ?”,* Has the historian forgotten his geography? and is this one of those slips in details, which indicate either the fabulousness of the narrative, or the untrustworthiness of the narrator? How else are we to account for this striking inconsistency which first places both armies east of the J ordan, and then makes the battle take place in the territory of a tribe to the west of it? Not quite so fast. “The wood of Ephraim ” does not mean one of the many woods situate within the borders of the tribe of Ephraim. Had that been the historian’s meaning he would have said not “the wood” but “a wood.” It is not in Man- chester that we look for “Manchester Buildings ;” and it is no thought of Leicester that is suggested by “ Leicester Square.” Thus the very form of expression i8 an indication that we are to look for “the wood of Ephraim” elsewhere than in the tribe of Ephraim. Turn now to the history of the anarchy under the Judges, and you find it at once in the memorial of one of those fatal downfalls which befel Ephraim’s pride. For who—in Ephraim’s own estimation—might be compared with Ephraim? Had he not, by their great ancestor himself, been “set before Manasseh?” Had not “the lot” (the disposing of which was of the Lord) of Ephraim fallen on a fair ground —the centre of the tribes? Was not Shiloh there, the religious capital, from Joshua to Saul, more than three hundred years ? Could it not boast Shechem too, the political capital and the common gathering point of the Tribes? Was there any other tribe that could boast the possession of Jacob’s well, and the ; * 2 Sa. xviii. 6. 54 ‘CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. fulfilment—both literal and figurative—of the long cherished prediction “Joseph is a fruitful bough ; even a fruitful bough by a well ?” Whither did the Judges repair as to the proper seat of government, but to Ephraim? * What then so proper as that the ten tribes should be denoted under the compre- hensive name of Ephraim ;*° or that the gate of Jerusalem looking towards Israel should be called “the gate of Ephraim ;” ° or that Ephraim and Judah together should represent the whole people from Dan to Beersheba; or—in one word—that David reviewing the resources of his consolidated empire should ex- claim “ Ephraim is the strength of my head!” ’ How natural then was the tone of authority, and even menace, which this tribe habitually assumed! Yet the history of “the wood of Ephraim” shows that it was assumed once too often. They had tried it with Gideon when they chid him “sharply ;” and it succeeded. For “he said unto them ‘ What have I now done in comparison of you? Is not the gleaning of the grapes of Ephraim better than the vintage of Abi-ezer ?’ _.. Then their anger was abated toward him when he had said that.”® But when, a century later, they tried it with Jephthah, they mistook their man. Gideon was a man of peace, not more reluctant to be dragged into public life than anxious to make an early escape from it again. The glitter of monarchy, pressed upon him as it was, had no attractions to be compared with those of his fields and vineyards, his wine-press and threshing-floor. But Jephthah the Gileadite was a man of another mould. Instead of the peaceful answer which turneth away wrath, his was the appeal to arms that defied it. “We will burn thine house upon thee with fire,” said the haughty Ephraimites. He retorts their burning words with burning though “a man of Issachar,” “ dwelt in Shamir in Mount Eph- *K.g. Deborah “dwelt under the palm-tree of Deborah ... in Mount Ephraim.” Gideon, though of Ophrah in Manasseh, had a family at She- chem. Abimelech made Shechem his head quarters. “And after Abimelech” Tola, raim,’—Shechem having been re- cently laid waste,—“ and judged Israel twenty-three years. “2 Ch? xxveus a § 2 Ki. xiv. 13. _Ps- leek SJ ld. Vili by Os AHAZ AND ASSYRIA. 5D deeds. He summons his clansmen, proud of their chief; puts ‘ himself at their head, and in one decisive battle avenges the insult he had received. But this is not enough. His foe shall not escape him. They have gone unchastised too long. Flight shall not avail them. He possesses himself of the fords of the Jordan, and by means of that dialectic Shibboleth which has been a by-word ever since, the fugitives of Ephraim are massacred to a man. “ And there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand.” ° Now what memorial so likely. for the grave of a tribe as its own name assigned to the spot where it fell? the Aceldama of their race? Thus the history under the Judges gives us in the land of Gilead not merely @ wood of Ephraim, but that particularly memorable and fatal wood which is referred to in the history under the Kings. The solution is complete ; and it is furnished by the sacred narrative itself. ” The conflicting predictions concerning Zedekiah present a difficulty of another sort ; in as much as, although no difficulty to us who see the obscurity and contrariety of the prophetic utterances dissipated by the event, yet to the Jews living at the time and on the spot, the difficulty must have appeared of the gravest kind. Six years before the event Ezekiel had declared that Zedekiah should not see Babylon, and yet he should die there.“ Four years later Jeremiah said” “Thine eyes shall behold the eyes of the King of Babylon, and he shall speak with thee mouth to mouth, and thou shalt go to Babylon.” Zedekiah, (so Josephus informs us) thinking these prophecies contradictory, believed neither. But both were exactly fulfilled. Zedekiah did see the King of Babylon, not at Babylon, but at Riblah, whence, his eyes being put out, he was carried to Babylon and died there. In 2 Ki. xvi. 9, the king of Assyria is said to have “hearken- ed unto Ahaz;” but in 2 Ch. xxviii. 20, we read that he “distressed him, but strengthened him not.” Both statements, * Ju. xii. 6. men of Ephraim gathered them- * Compare also the account giy- | selves together, and went north- en in Jo. xvii. (vv. 8—18) ; especi- | ward.” ally v. 10, “Southward it was ize. xii. 18. Ephraim’s,” with Ju. xii, 1, “The! ” Je. xxxiv. 3. 56 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. as Horne remarks, are true. He did help him against the king of Syria, took Damascus, and delivered Ahaz from the power’ of the Syrians. But the service was of little value, for he did not assist him against the Edomites or Philistines, and he distressed him by taking the royal treasures and the treasures of the temple, and rendered him but little service for so great a sacrifice. Very much like the way in which Tiglath-pileser “hearkened unto Ahaz” was the way in which Hengist and Horsa hearkened to the ancient Britons. They repelled the incursions of the Picts and Scots, but they made themselves masters of the country. In the account of St. Paul’s miraculous conversion (Ac. ix. 7) St. Luke tells us that St. Paul’s fellow travellers (not unlike Daniel’s companions on a similar occasion) heard a voice, but saw no man. St. Paul himself says (Ac. xxn. 9) that they saw the light, but “heard not the voice.” Dazzled, blinded, as they were by having seen “the light,” we cannot wonder that they But how about the hearing? Could they both hear, and not hear, at the same time? Yes, if the word “to hear” is not used both times in the same sense. And it is not. It very frequently means understood ; * and is sometimes, of necessity, so translated. See 1 Co. xiv. 2, as an example ; also Ge. xi. 7, and xlii. 23, where the LXX use it for yaw. Thus then, they heard a voice, but not the words spoken ; they _heard a sound, but did not understand the meaning of it.” Just as we are told (Ge. xlviu. 8, 10) that Israel beheld Joseph’s sons ; while a few verses afterwards, it is said that his eyes were dim, so that he could not see; “i.e. he could see, but not distinctly—could not distinguish the features unless they came near.” And to take but one instance more. saw “no man.” In one place it is said *%E.g. Mar. iv. 33. Jno. vi. 60. * A distinction plainly eonveyed in the original, which has the genitive (ris Qwyys) in ch. ix. 7, but the accusative (r%» 32 Qwviy) in xxii 9. And it is this use of axovey With the ace. (to denote understanding as well as learning) that is found in the LXX of Ge. x1.7. The English reader will find this distinction confirmed by Jno. xii. 29, where the “ voice from heaven” was mistaken for thun- der, even by those who are said to have “ heard it.” They heard the sound, but not the words. BISHOP COLENSO’S DIFFICULTIES. 57 that Jesus “baptized.” But in another we read that “Jesus himself baptized not, but his disciples.” When we note that the second statement is explanatory of the first, and is express- ly so given by the author of both, we not only perceive their agreement but are possessed of an important principle. The “ disciples ” whom Jesus “made,” were baptized by His autho- rity, though not with His own hands. Applying this principle (qui facit per alterwm facit per se) we reconcile St. Luke’s statement (Ac. 1.18) that “this man (ie. Judas) purchased a field,” with St. Matthew’s (xxvii. 7.) who tells us that. the chief priests bought the field with the money which Judas threw down in their midst. Of this class are Bishop Colenso’s difficulties. They are not new. They are not formidable. Yet they have made some noise in the world.” They have produced a sensation precisely similar to that which would have been witnessed if the gravest of our bishops had appeared in a penny theatre to sing a comic song, or a judge of the Court of Queen’s Bench had announced a performance on the tight rope in Westminster Hall. If the attraction lay in the subject, or in the superior scholarship which marks its treatment, men would read the neglected pages of Davidson; it is the singularity of the spectacle presented by the writer, that attracts them to Colenso. To see a man who has repeatedly declared, and that with the utmost solemnity, that he does “unfeignedly” believe and receive all the canonical Scriptures,—to see this man spare no pains in his endeavours to deride and degrade them, this is the intellectual paradox. To see one who stigmatizes the Church as a gigantic corporation sworn to sustain and propagate a stupendous le, and then, when you expect to see him in- dignantly disavow, for his own part, all further connection with it, to see this very man complacently continuing his member- ship in this corrupt corporation, eagerly clutching at every quibble which may help him to retain the emoluments he * The reader will remember the ; ters, and my father beat a drum.” boast of Goldsmith’s hero—‘ My | Bp.Colenso’s celebrity is as much parents made some noise in the | more ignoble as its cause has been world: for my mother cried oys- | less useful. 58 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. enjoys as the compensation of his co-partnership in its crimes, and while he acts the part of informer by denouncing the fraud, acting also the part of receiver by sharing the profits,—This is the moral paradox. Yet this is a trifle to what follows. For the subject of this moral insensibility is keenly alive to the practical advantages of his inconsistency. He knows full well how to trade on the simplicity of those who mistake profession for practice. Are they shocked at the spectacle of a dignitary so exalted retaining the emoluments of an office whose functions he is no longer qualified to discharge? Let them look into his “ Preface,” and see his wordy admiration of Truth. To repudiate the most solemn obligations merely because they cannot be enforced by legal penalties, is certainly not the course of procedure we should have expected from a bishop ; but how can you condemn a man who writes about self-sacrifice for the sake of truth as this same bishop has done in his Preface to “The Pentateuch Examined”? But even this perplexity is not the greatest. It is surpassed by the contrast between the fairness of his professions and the unfair- ness of his practice in the principal matter at issue. He tells us how long and earnestly he has wished and striven to believe in the truth of the Pentateuch. And straightway he proceeds to strain every nerve and practice every artifice in order to make it appear that the Pentateuch is false. His pleadings against the historic verity are everywhere characterized by the same determined “malice prepense.” His animus is irrepres- sible. He has a grudge against Moses. And in his eagerness to gratify that grudge, it is hard to say whether the grossest ignorance or the most determined captiousness, the distortion or omission of facts, the swppressio veri or the suggestio falsi, be most conspicuous. To the proof. Take his very first difficulty; a difficulty “not discovered by modern criticism, but observed and ex- plained centuries ago by Christian fathers and Jewish Rabbis.” It relates to Judah’s age and the birth-place of his grand- children Hezron and Hamul; and it rests on two swpposi- tions :—first that the historian meant to convey the idea that Hezron and Hamul were born in Canaan ; secondly, that at the descent into Egypt, Judah’s age was forty-two. As to the -HEZRON AND HAMUL. 59 first, the bishop quotes Gen. xlvi. 12," and then says “It appears to me to be certain that the writer means to say that Hezron and Hamul were born in the land of Canaan, and were among the seventy persons (including Jacob himself, and Joseph, and his two sons), who came into Egypt with Jacob.” But the text does not say so. Even in that solitary text” which seems (at first sight) favorable to this supposition, the stress of the argument lies on a single word, and that word is not in the Hebrew. The word “with” seems to imply that the sixty-six were then all living, and accompanied Jacob. But this very word (the foundation of the argument) is a mistranslation. The Hebrew has neither nx (eth) nor oy (im), but > (1), which signifies “To, Of, Belonging to,” as is explained in the following verse, “All the souls of the house of Jacob,” ™ The accurate translation therefore is, “All the souls of, or belonging to, Jacob, who came down into Egypt—were sixty- six.” The text says nothing at all of their accompanying him, nor of the time at which they went down, but simply that they who went down were sixty-six. When the word “with ” vs used,” the names of those who had households are given, (which Hezron and Hamul had not) and they are those of the eleven sons of Jacob. There is therefore no passage whatever which asserts that the sixty-six, including Hezron and Hamul, were alive, and went into Egypt at: the time of Jacob’s going down. But farther. Not only is this argument unwarranted by the text; it is unsupported by the usus loguendi, which speaks of parents and children as one person:” a mode of speech not merely admitted, but strongly affirmed by Colenso secs Se ee Ne i oh Wl nc hn Se hn A es ee %« And the sons of Judah, Er, and Onan, and Shelah, and Pha- rez, and Zarah; but Er and Onan died in the land of Canaan; and the sons of Pharez, Hezron and Hamul.” Thus the bishop mis- quotes the passage. (See below.) ’ Gen Ixvi. 26. “ All the souls that came with Jacob into Egypt.” 8 Ge. xlvi. 26. apy: Of (or be- longing to) Jacob. Ge. xlvi. 27. apy- mad: of 9 7317 ess the house of Jacob. Ext 1 *® Thus, e.g. (in v. 4) “1 will go down with thee into Egypt, and I will surely bring thee up again ;” a promise fulfilled in the bringing up of Jacob’s children at the Ex: odus 60 | CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. himself in other instances,” and not now invented for the solution of difficulties, but recognised (as the bishop himself shows) both by the Samaritans and the LXX., i.e. more than two thousand years ago. So that there is no real difficulty even if Judah were only forty-two years old at the time of the descent. But instead of this, he was at any rate forty-eight or forty- nine ;» and at that age—with the early marriages common in the East—grandchildren would be a natural result. Among the Polish Jews, until lately, boys were commonly married in their fifteenth year. And even in England, “ Edwy, Edgar, Edward I., Edward III., Prince Arthur, son of Henry VIL, all married about fifteen or sixteen. And a friend reminds me that Edward the Black Prince was born three months before his father had completed his seventeenth year.” And yet, in spite of all this—the wording of the text, the usage of the writer, and the other undeniable facts of the history —our critic assumes that his view of the question is absolutely “certain.” Will it be believed that, in order to recommend his view to the adoption of the reader, he actually misquotes the passage he adduces as the warrant for that view? It is incredible: but not the less true. As the words stand in the Bible they have all the appearance of being a parenthetical clause, intended to supplement the information respecting the family of Judah. The expression “The sons of Pharez WERE,” is a different formula from that employed in all the other enumerations. Our critic, however, for reasons best known to himself, omits all that could make it appear a parenthetical clause, leaves out the verb, and thus assimilates the expression to that one formula which is applied throughout the chapter to the sons of Jacob and their descendants, who are expressly said to have gone with him into Egypt. And then he says, “It appears to me to be certain that the writer here means to say, that Hezron and Hamul were born in the land of Canaan ;” that is, after having himself destroyed all appearance of its being possible to mean something different ! * Especially in his interpreta- | see e.g. Dr. Me. Caul’s “ Examina- tion of Ex. xii. 40. tion of Bishop Colenso’s Diffi- *» Many writers have shewn this: | culties.” THE SACRED SHEKEL. ° 61 “TJ hesitate to call this a deliberate falsification of the document, but I know not how otherwise to account for it. The writer could not have taken it from the Hebrew, for the verb he has omitted stares him in the face: he could not have copied it from the authorized version ; for not only must there have been the change of the construction and omission of the verb, but a total change of punctuation.”* But to regard it as a piece of mere blundering,—and this is the aspect at once most charitable and most welcome,—is it not remarkable that aman of Dr. Colenso’s known accuracy in his own province— that of the mathematics—should thus blunder in his very first quotation from a book, the monstrous blunders of which he is about to prove? Certainly, any man may prove them—if he first makes them ! A similar instance of this obliquity of vision is furnished by the alleged difficulty as to the “shekel of the sanctuary.” * For the difficulty alleged is this:—that the shekel of the sanctuary, or “sacred shekel,”’ (mentioned here for the first time) is mentioned six or seven months at least, before the people could have known what it was or what was its value. But here again, the difficulty is not in the Bible. It has first to be made ; and then interpolated. It is made by the omission (not this time of a word merely, but) of an entire clause. And the moment this omission is rectified the whole difficulty disappears. The objector actually quotes the verse which supplies the explanation ; but he so quotes it as to omit the explanation. There it stands, however ; and he who runs may * Roger's “ Vindication :” p. 43. | and his two sons came down with to} “ The hypercriticism of the writer is still further shewn by his add- ing, that Hezron and Hamul were clearly designed to be reckoned ‘among the seventy persons (in- cluding Jacob himself and Joseph and his two sons) who eame into Egypt with Jacob.’ Yet he knows perfectly well that the historian never disguises the fact, that he did not mean to say that Joseph Jacob, or that the two last were born in Canaan at all! Why, with this open declaration on the his- torian’s part that he is not to be interpreted with this absurd liter- ality, does our critic pretend that it is certain that Hezron and Hamul are designed to be repre- sented as born in Canaan?” JLbid. * Bp. Colenso’s “ Pentateuch Examined”; ch. vii. p. 41. 62 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. read :—“ a shekel is twenty gerahs.”* “It would perhaps be unjust to accuse Dr. Colenso of wilfully suppressing what takes away the force of his objection. The omission may be ascribed to the precipitancy with which his criticism has proceeded, and that strong bias of the mind to mark difficulties without per- ceiving that the means of removing them is found in the context.” * Remarkable however, as are his omissions, his additions are still more so. In his seventh chapter he makes merry with a direction of the Levitical law, which he first of all misquotes. Lev. iv. 11, 12, according to him reads thus :—‘“ And the skin of the bullock, and all his flesh, with his head and with his legs, and with his inwards, and his dung, even the whole bullock, shall he [the priest]” carry forth without the camp to a clean place.” Having thus first made an addition of his own invention, and inserted it in the text, he proceeds to .caricature it, by telling us that “in fact, we have to imagine the Priest having himself to carry on his back on foot, from St. Paul's to the outskirts of the Metropolis, ‘the skin, and flesh, and head, and legs, and inwards, and dung,’ even the whole bullock.” “Here we have to charge Bishop Colenso with something worse than want of common sense, with unauthorized addition to the words of Scripture, in order to excite the profane mirth of his readers, by exhibiting a ridiculous picture of the Priest ‘on foot,’ carrying the whole bullock ‘ON HIS BACK.’ Bishop Colenso well knows that the words ‘on foot,’ and ‘on his back,’ are not in the text. He has added them gratuitously to exaggerate the difficulty. Wilful addition to the words of the author is as inconsistent with that love of truth which the * Ex. xxx. 13. As quoted by Bp. “This they shall give, everyone Colenso :— that passeth among them that are “ This they shall give, everyone | numbered, half a shekel after the that passeth among them that are | shekel of the sanctuary: (a shekel numbered, half a shekel after the | is twenty gerahs:) an half shekel shekel of the sanctuary; an half | shall be the offering to the Lord.” shekel shall be the offering of ** Dr. Me, Caul. Jehovah.” *77 Bp. Colenso’s insertion: the But in the English Bible the | words are not in the English Ver- verse stands thus :— sion, nor in the Hebrew Text.” THE PRIESTS’ DUTIES. 63 Bishop so often professes, as ridicule is with respect for the opinions of others, and unwillingness to give unneccessary pain. Indeed, profane humour is incompatible with that seriousness of mind which is indispensable in the investigation of truth, It is bad enough in Voltaire, but quite unworthy of the sacred office of a bishop. The objection itself isas absurd, as the mode of stating it is offensive to good taste. Even as the English version stands, a reasonable man would infer that the Priest, one of the highest dignitaries in the congregation of Israel, might have this work performed by some one else, without personal service. - But by insisting that the word ‘ carry,’ means transportation on his back, and on foot, Dr. Colenso betrays his ignorance both of the English language and the Hebrew text.” In the Bible itself, our translators have often used the word “carry,” where it is impossible to suppose that it means bearing on the back.” Nor is this use of the word peculiar to the Bible. Itis the language of poets and historians and the language of common life. Queen Margaret says of her husband ‘“‘T would the college of the cardinals Would choose him pope, and carry him to Rome.” And Robertson relates how, after the battle of Mohacz, “Solyman, after his victory, seized and kept possession of several towns of the greatest strength in the southern provinces of Hungary, and overrunning the rest of the country, carried near two hundred thousand persons into captivity.” Now suppose (says Dr. Mc. Caul) that some arithmetical criti¢ were * Dr. Mc. Caul’s “ Examination.” ” We know that David was not permitted to lay a finger on the ark, and yet (by the ministry of the Levites appointed for that purpose) he “ carried it aside into the house of Obed-Edom” (2 Sa. vi. 10) So, it is said of Tilgath- pilneser (1 Ch. y. 26) “he carried them away, even the Reubenites, and the Gadites, and the half tribe of Manasseh, and brought them to Halah, and Habor, and Hara,’ &e.: and of Nebuchadnezzar (2 Ki. xxiv. 14,) that he “ carried away all Jerusalem, and all the princes, and all the mighty men of valour, ten thousand captives, and all the craftsmen and smiths.” To be consistent with himself Dr. Co- lenso is bound to contend that these transportations were effect- ed on foot, on the backs of the Kings of Assyria and Babylon, and that therefore, these narra- tives are unhistoric. *° Shakspeare: King Henry VL., Part: ITs Act I.. Se: 3: 64 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. to object to this account, that the circumstance here related is impossible, that it would take so many, say ten days for Solyman’ to carry one person on his back, on foot to the nearest Turkish province, and five days to return ; that it would therefore take’ him three million days, or more than eight thousand two hundred and nineteen years, to carry the two hundred thousand persons into captivity; and hence conclude that the narrative is unhistoric and unworthy of credit. What would Dr. Colenso himself reply to such a critic? He might at first, perhaps, be tempted to laugh, but would ultimately mourn over the unhappy wreck of intellect betrayed in such misunderstanding of plain English, and such an ill-timed and preposterous display of arithmetical power. But besides this perversion of plain English there is the still more extraordinary perversion (if it be not ignorance) of the Hebrew. Just as in English, we modify the meaning of a verb by the alteration of a single letter, and from “ to fall” derive “to fell,” (ie. to cause to fall,) just so in Hebrew a similar modification gives a similar causative sense. So that in this instance the literal translation is not “he shall carry forth,” but “he shall cause to go forth.” The how is left to the Priest’s own discretion: and the agency employed for this purpose was probably that of wagons (which we know were in use for other purposes) or beasts of burden. A similar instance in Le. xiv. 44, 45, is conclusive on this point. We there read “Then. the priest shall come and look, and behold if the plague be spread in the house, it is a fretting leprosy in the house : it is unclean. And he shall break down the house, the stones of it and the timber thereof, and all the mortar of the house ; and he shall carry them forth [v’hotsi, the same word as above, i.e. he shall cause to go forth] out of the city into an unclean place.” Can Dr. Colenso imagine that the Priest was to do all this personally, and thus act, not only as conductor of public worship, but at the same time as bricklayer and scavenger, and not be allowed even the convenience of a cart, but carry all the stones and timber, &c., on his back on foot? With just as much reason he might believe that God commanded Moses to carry all the children of Israel on his back out of Egypt, because it is said (Ex. ii. 10), “ Come now therefore and I will THE PRIESTS “PERQUISITES.” 65 send thee unto Pharaoh, and cause them to go forth [the same word v/hotse] my people out of Egypt.” Hitherto we have argued as if the words “he shall carry forth ” were spoken of the Priest. But if Dr. Colenso be a Hebrew scholar he must know on mere grammatical grounds, that this is by no means certain ; that the third person preterite of the verb is often used impersonally; and that it is so rendered by modern versions as well as by the LXX. Thus the French version has “Qn demolira dence la maison, ses pierres, son bois, avec tout son mortier, et on les transportera hors de la ville.” . According to this translation, fully justified by Hebrew usage, the Priest is to come and look, others are to break down the house, and carry away the materials, And this is the sense given by Luther, Zunz, Fiirst, &. It is also the sense known to the LXX., two thousand years ago, as according to the best reading, they have in Le. iv. 12, eEolcovcw, “they shall carry out ;”" and in Le. xiv. 45, (kal xaberodar THD oixiay . .. Kal rdvta Tov yobv é€olcovew,) both verbs are again in the third person plural. “Thus whether we look to the meaning of the word ‘carry,’ as used by our English transla- tors, or to its common use in English poets and historians, or to the meaning of the Hebrew word hotsi, or to interpretations ancient and modern, we find abundant reason for rejecting Dr. Colenso’s interpretation and his objection founded on it, as equally opposed to common sense, to Hebrew usage and grammar, and, we may add, to authority; for amidst all the translators, critics, scoffers and objectors to the Pentateuch, so far as I know, not one has ever before put forth this absurdity :” an absurdity of which Mr. Birks justly says, that ‘it seems to bear away the palm from all the rest,” ” Yet even this grotesque parody does not stand alone, If On this point, as on each of the others, there are some excellent remarks in “ Bishop Colenso’s * What is particularly notice- able here is the sudden change of the LXX. from the singular to the plural (or impersonal form) eEoicovew oAoy roy pooxov, “ they shall carry out the bullock”, or, impersonally, it shall be carried out; by whom is not specified. E Criticism Criticised,” by the Rev. J. B. Me. Caul, p.11. (Wertheim and Co.) ” The Exodus of Israel: page 248. 66 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. unsurpassed, it is fairly rivalled by many others. Take, for instance, the caricature of the priest’s duties and their “per- quisites,” the “enormous provision for Aaron and his two sons and their families. The whole of the sin offerings, trespass offerings, and meat offerings, except a handful, to be eaten only by the three males in the most holy place! The very pigeons, to be brought as sin offerings after the birth of children, would have been according to the story, 264 a-day, and each priest would have had to eat more than eighty-eight for his own portion daily, ‘in the most holy place !’” So says our critic. The births, “according to” his parody of “the story,” were just 264 a-day in the wilderness, because that is the average of London™ “for a week taken at random, Sept. 3, 1862."% But according to the data of the Pentateuch itself, they would be about 120 daily, or less than half the “random ” number. As to the “enormous provision,” it consisted of three things. “First, of the sin offerings and trespass offerings of the common people, at the time when God assures us by the prophet Amos, that ‘slain beasts and sacrifices’ were not offered. (Amos v. 25.) Secondly, of all the meat offerings of flour ‘except a handful,’ at a time when they lived on manna, because there were no supplies of corn. Thirdly, of the turtle doves or pigeons” brought as sin offerings by Jewish mothers, thirty-three days after the circumcision of their infant > % But the average of London has nothing to do with the matter. For its population is greater by a million than that of Israel at that time. The latter number, accor- ding to the most probable esti- mates was between 1,700,000 and 1,800,000 , whereas the former, by the last census was 2,803,000. % The “ Pentateuch Examined,” p. 62. % Besides they were not all of an obligatory character. Many were purely voluntary. And on this the Rabbinical commentators lay great stress in explaining Je. vii. 22, referring to Le. i. 2 which shows that the sacrifice was not required to be brought, but only prescribes what was to be done if it were brought. * As an illustration of the way in which critics hostile to the Bible are agreed among them- selves, it is noteworthy that the command here refered to (Le. xii. 2), is just one of those whieh Dr. S. Davison pronounces to be gen- uine and Mosaic. See “ Intro- duction,” vol. i. p. iii. THE FEAST OF TABERACLES. 67 children, at a time when none of those children were circum- cised ! (Josh. v. 5, 7.)” ‘The suggestion that Aaron and his sons were obliged by the law of God, to eat eighty-eight pigeons apiece daily in the Holy of holies, is a strange com- pound of bad arithmetic, falsified history, and mournful irreverence.” ” Our critic indeed assures us that “it cannot be said that the laws” here caricatured “ were intended only for a later time, when the people were settled in the land of Canaan.” But why can it not? The attempt to bolster up the assertion by a reference to the “tent” of the leper is as inconclusive as it is irrelevant. The case of the leper was a special case, provided for by special enactment. It is strange, indeed, if that “cannot be said” which the text. itself says five times over in explicit terms. * But even this does not suffice. In the same chapter he tells us that “in the seventh month, for several days together, besides the daily sacrifice, there were to be extraordinary additional sacrifices ;” and then enumerating these, he adds, “Lastly, if it should be thought that the above sacrificial system was not meant to be in full operation in the wilderness, we may call attention to the frequent references made, in the enunciation of these laws, to the camp, Lev. iv. 12, 21; vi. 11; xl. 4, 6; xiv. 3, 8, &.” So that here we have a Christian Bishop who “would persuade his reader, as he believes himself, that all this work of the seventh month was in full operation in the camp, and there may be people so ignorant of the Bible as to receive this statement without hesitation. But any one tolerably acquainted with the Scriptures knows that the feast of the seventh month is the feast of tabernacles, to be celebrated in the Holy Land, as a reminiscence of their fathers baving dwelt in tabernacles in the wilderness, and not in the desert. Whilst they were actually living in tabernacles, they did not want any memento of the kind. But Dr. Colenso, in searching for pabulum for his difficulties, saw only the amount of work, and forgot or was ignorant of the time and place “The Exodus of Israel, page Me Nusa 23! Dev iv. 5} ive 43 256, Vaodis Sib 8, 9; 68 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY, where it was to be accomplished, If he had remembered the parallel passage in Lev. xxiii. 39, ‘ Also in the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when ye have gathered in the frwit of the land, ye shall keep a feast unto the Lord seven days,’ he could not have committed this blunder.” * | With one other instance of this forgetfulness, or ignorance, oF worse, we must quit this part of the subject. And as the bishop thinks any errors of his First Part are amply com- pensated by the validity of Part Third,” this specimen shall be taken from that part. He is attempting te prove the Book of Deuteronomy to be a forgery of Jeremiah ; and so he picks out a number of passages which he tells us “Moses never could have written.” One very trivial fact on which he lays so much stress, is thus stated :—*' “Whereas in the other books the priests are always styled the ‘sons of Aaron,’ in Deuteronomy they are always called the ‘sons of Levi’ It is impossible to believe that any writer, whether Moses or any other, should have so suddenly changed his form of expression in such a case as this, in the very short interval of a few days or weeks at most.” But what will the reader think of Bishop Colenso when he finds that instead of “the very short interval of a few days or weeks at most,” the Mosaic Record, thus misrepresented, actually tells us that the interval which really separated these two styles was one of nearly thirty-nine years in duration! and further, that the events which transpired in that interval were such as not only to account for the change, but such as to require it! The latest instance in which the phrase “the sons of Aaron, the priests,” occurs, is in Numbers x. 8; and the date imme- diately follows, (v. 11)—“the twentieth of the second month, in the seeond year.” But Deuteronomy begins “in the fortieth year, in the eleventh month” (ch. i. v. 3). In the intervening period (thirty-eight years and nine months nearly) Aaron, Nadab, Abihu and all that generation, (Moses, Joshua, and Caleb excepted) had passed away. Could anything be more natural than that in the beginning of the march the phrase ° Dr. Mc. Caul: “ Examination “See his “ Pentateuch Exam- of Bp. Colenso’s Difficulties,” pp. | ined,” vol. iii., Pref, Pp. Viii. 127,.128: “ Ibid. p. 895. AUTHORSHIP OF DEUTERONOMY. 69 denoting the officiating priesthood should denote the per- sons first inducted into the priestly office, and at that time actually employed in it; or that when these were no more—“Aaron and his (own) sons” being constantly “out of sight ” and becoming gradually “out of mind,”—their less dis- tinguished successors should receive the more comprehensive and equally correct designation, “the priests, the sons of Levi” ? But even if it were possible—in spite of such instances as these—to acquit our critic of dishonesty, it would still be impossihle to acquit him of incompetence. Not to speak of other deficiencies, his ignorance of Hebrew, and of Rabbinical literature is such as to have provoked the derision of learned Jews themselves. Thus his criticism about the “booths” (Le. xxill, 40 —43,)" is scouted as “a mistake which may be over- looked if made by the brilliant author of ‘Coningsby,’ but which is unpardonable in one who is an eminent divine, and is anxious to be considered a learned critic. A Jewish child would set the Bishop right on this point . . .”* ; But he has another point. He says the history gives the people “booths.” But “it cannot be supposed” that they really did “cut down boughs and bushes to make booths of.” And further, “there is not the slightest indication in the story that they ever dwelt in booths, nor is 4t conceivable when they could have done so.” Well, one would imagine that if the booths are so utterly inconceivable, the mention of tents would be welcome. Nota bit of it: the tents are as impossible as the booths. How could they acquire them? how could they carry them? “what a prodigious number of trained oxen would have been needed!” What avails it to point out that these “prodigious ” difficulties are the critic’s own creation! that the very mention of both booths and tents obviates any difficulties that might have been started on the supposition of the exclusive use of either; that there certainly were wagons as well as oxen in the camp of Israel ;“ and that in the name of the station # «The Pentateuch Examined.” chicf Rabbi in London); Letter Part i. ch. 8. to the “ Athenzum,” Dee. 6, 1862. * Dr. Hermann Adler (son of the “ Nu. vii. 3, et seq. 70 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. between Rameses and Etham, Succoth (i.e. booths), “ we have not indeed “the slightest” but the very strongest indication that the dwelling in booths was an undeniable fact. No matter : if the Alps stood in the way of Bishop Colenso’s criticism, “so much the worse for them ;” “there shall be no Alps!” And therefore he will have it that this mention of booths “conflicts strangely with the mention of tents, Ex. xvi. 16.” This assertion is supported by another of those ineffable utter- ances so common with this writer. “It cannot be said that the word booths means tents, for the Hebrew word for a booth is quite different from that for a tent used in Ex. xvi. 16.” Alas, for the bishop’s opinion as to what “cannot be said !” “A horse and a quadruped,” says Mr. Birks, “are not the same word: they are quite different words, and still a horse is a quadruped. Booth is not the same word with tents, and still booths may be tents of a particular kind: for even the houses in Palestine are called tents very many times.” Dr. McCaul elaborates this argument, and by a large range of quotations utterly refutes this ignorant opinion both “by the etymology and the usage of the word.” He then asks, “Does Dr. Colenso mean that the lair of the lion, or the pavilion of Benhadad, or the tabernacle of David, or the Tabernacle of God, was made ‘of boughs and bushes,’ or does he presume to call the author of the Book of Kings, or David, or Amos to task, and say they use the word Succah ‘improperly ?’” It is to be presumed that Dr. Colenso overlooked, and did not suppress, this meaning of Suecah.... The etymology and the usage show that Succah expresses the genus, of which booth and tent are only species ; and the great festival is called “the feast of Succoth,” tabernacles, and could not be called the feast of Ohalim, tents, for then the booths of the poor would be excluded, and it would seem as if Israel in the wilderness had dwelt in tents, and tents only; and Dr. Colenso might with some plausibility have asked whence they got them all. The feast of Succoth, taber- * Ex. xii. 87. For the reason | Ju. vii. 8; xix.9; 1Sa.iv.10; &e. of the name cf. Ge. xxxiii.17 as | “It seems like it: for contrasting to Succoth in Gilead. n2o Succah (booth) with bnx Ohel “De. xvi. 7; Jo. xxii. 4, 6, 8; (tent) he says that when as in DEFICIENCIES IN HEBREW. vf! nacles, embraces both the tents of the rich and the booths of the poor. Some dwelt in one, some in the other, all doubtless in whatever they could procure; and thus Dr. Colenso has thrown away much arithmetic, which might have been pre- vented if he had enquired into the meaning of words before he invoked the aid of figures.” “ An example of similar ignorance is found in the sense which he attaches to nin Hazzeh, “this,” in Ex. xii. 12. On which Dr. McCaul—himself one of the very first Hebrew scholars in Europe—justly observes, “Now, as a general rule, this is all very well, and necessary to be observed by beginners in Hebrew ;” and then, after shewing its utter inapplicability to the matter in hand, he demonstrates the bishop’s Hebrew criticism to be absolutely “of no value, as it proceeds simply from inadequate acquaintance with Hebrew idiom.” More glaring still, though of less importance, is his imaginary distinction between “the door” of the Tabernacle, and “the whole end of the Tabernacle in which the door was.”® He thinks that the end was of the nature of a wall or partition, in which the door was hung. But had he carefully read the account of the construction of the Tabernacle, or understood the meaning of the word “ Pethach,” here translated door, he would have known that no distinction of the kind can be made, but that the end of the Tabernacle is itself what our translators have called the door. The word Pethach signifies opening, and is therefore used of the opening of a tent, or entrance, as well as of a doorway. So with regard to the tent or Taber- nacle of the congregation, the end through which the priests went into the Holy Place was entirely open, and the opening is called Pethach. When it was to be closed, it was not by means of a door hung in the end, but by a hanging drawn across, (Ex. xxxvi. 37,) and called Masakh. For door in our signification, the Hebrew has another word, Deleth, from Dalah, to hang.’ Our translators were not ignorant of the difference, “© 2 Sa. xi. 11, and one or two other | Part I. ch. iv. places,” itis used of tents, “it is * In the Holy Land, the Taber- used improperly.” nacle had doors (Dalthoth) added * Examination,” p. 49. to it. Seel Sa.i. 9; and iii. 15. “The Pentateuch Examined: (2 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. as appears from their translation of Ge. xvul. J, where they say of Abraham, “He sat im the tent door;” not “at the door.” “In the tent door” can only mean in the opening. But the English translators thought that on the whole the word door was the most intelligible for the general reader. The error of Dr. Colenso, both with regard to the struc- ture of the Tabernacle, and the meaning of the Hebrew words, indicates a want of accuracy fatal to his pretensions as a critic.” And is it to the demands of a “trashy sciolism” such as this—disingenuous, dishonest, superficial,” and partial—that we are expected to surrender the truth of the Bible ? “How big ought a volume to be,” asks an able writer on this subject, ‘in order to be rated as a satisfactory answer, say to an octavo volume full of absurdities, quibbles, and all sorts of impertinences, historical, critical, geographical, theological, arithmetical, and what not? Must an octavo be allowed to stand upon its dignity and never surrender except to a quarto volume? Or may it engage, on equal terms, with another octavo, provided always that the enemy is of equal tonnage. and carries the same number of guns, Le. page for page, and chapter for chapter? In this warfare, is it allowed to the blockading vessel to refuse to go down, however rifled and battered, if the shot and shell are not of a given weight and size? We have asked ourselves these questions, because we constantly hear a demand for a full answer to the Bishop of Natal, before any further proceedings are taken against him. . . Now, it strikes us, that except on the principle that only an octavo can give battle to an octavo, the infidel bishop is rather over answered than otherwise. We noticed several Dik Oe ee in enso’s Difficulties, p. 24. “only Elohim” is used many * See some striking examples | times over. And yet it is a fact of this superficiality in the Second | as Dr. Me. Caul points out, and as Part of Dr. Me. Caul’s ‘“ Exami- | any one may satisfy himself by nation.” £g., The Bishop tells | taking down a Hebrew Bible, that us in paragraph 210 of his second | in this very chapter the name part that “only Jehovah” is used | Elohim occurs again and again; in Ge. xxiv, and that nineteen | and, it might have been added, in times; and infers that this chapter | some verses twice over! * An Examination of Bp. Col- ty biadewich offiamahaptteaeaeeas with other chapters in which cannot have come from the same |! REPLIES : UNANSWERABLE. 73 our last number ; we should fill a whole page with mere title- pages, if we were to recount the pamphlets which have appeared since ; and there is probably not one of them which does not give a sufficient—some of them give an overwhelming, crushing —answer to the whole volume. .. . What is the difficulty in his volume to which these pamphlets, to go no further, have not supplied a sufficient answer ? ” ™ Sometimes indeed, he answers himself ; and shews us Colenso answered by Colenso. Thus in his attempt to make it out that the “Book of Moses” was a forgery palmed off upon Josiah, by “the priest Hilkiah, and, possibly, Huldah, and one or two others,”™ he says first*—“The High Priest ‘finds’ this Book of the Law in the Temple. If it really had been written by Moses, where, we must ask, had it been lying all this while, during more than eight centuries?” And then, four pages after, he answers his own question :—“ Perhaps in the time of Josiah’s idolatrous father, the roll of the Pentateuch had disappeared. It may have been lying, little heeded, among the archives of the Temple, and so came into the hands of the successive High Priests, until it reached those of Hilkiah himself.” Sometimes he answers by demolishing the German criticism on which he himself is building :“—always taking good care however, to avoid grappling with the replies of his opponents. Dr. Biber’s challenge is admitted, by Dr. Colenso’s silence, to be unanswered because unanswerable. The Bishop appeals to the laity, and not in vain ; for it is from the laity, and in lay fashion, that he has received several of the most effective answers.” The blasphemy about Midian, and that which degrades the Very God of Very God, to the level of an ordi- narily pious Jew, will be noticed in their proper place. Mean- *§ The Christian Observer: 1863, | on. which Knobel’s opinion rests, p. 234. is gone from under him” (p. 594). *The Pentateuch Examined: | “ Bleek has been obliged to aban- Part III pp. 422—424. don this view” (p.596),and has now * Ibid. p.416. taken up another, which Dr. Colen- * Tbid. p. 589. ‘ Knobel’s ac- | so holds to be equally incorrect. count of the matter is not at all 7” As a single example we may satisfactory.” “The very ground | mention “The Mosaic Origin of 74 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. time, enough has been said to show that his ‘“ Difficulties ” rest on “doubtful premises, unwarranted assumptions, defec- tive information, and even on what, in ordinary men, would be considered want of common sense.” “Such difficulties, resting on such slender foundations, would not affect the historic character of any ancient writing, much less of that wonderful Book whose genuineness is attested by an un- broken series of Hebrew writers, and avouched by the infal- lible testimony of the Son of God.”* Of difficulties whose solution is furnished by information flow- ing from other sources, that pertaining to Philippi in Macedonia affords a good example. St. Luke in relating the first in- troduction of Christianity into Europe (Ac. xvi. 12,) speaks of Philippi as the chief city of that part of Macedonia, and a colony ; and in verse 21 implies that it was a Roman colony. The silence of contemporary profane history” as to this fact rendered it a difficulty even to the learned, and threw the suspicion of inaccuracy upon Luke’s narrative, especially as the ancient metropolis of Macedonia Prima was known to have been Amphipolis. Some, to remove the difficulty, have preferred, with Michaelis, to translate zp@tn not as in the Authorised Version,“ the chief,” but “a chief” city. And this translation, from the absence of the article is of course perfectly warrant- able. Boothroyd who takes this course says expressly, “this rendering is adopted as it is doubtful whether Philippi or Amphipolis was accounted the chief city of that part, &.” But the discovery of some ancient coins has dissipated the entire difficulty and confirmed the verbal accuracy of the Inspired Record. From the inscriptions on these coins, still extant,” it is certain that Philippi was made a Roman colony by Julius Cesar; and after the great battle fought there its privileges were renewed and augmented by Augustus. Now, as Spanheim the Pentateuch considered,” (Skef- * Dr. Me. Caul’s Examination: fington,) “by a Layman of the | pp. 154, 156. Church of England:” a worthy ° Although Pliny calls it a sequel to its predecessor, “ The | colony (H. N. IV, 18). Historie Character of the Penta- *® Vide Spanheim de usu Num. teuch considered.” Diss. IX. BELSHAZZAR. 16 justly observes, it was part of the Roman policy to make their colonies the chief cities of the districts in which they were placed ; if therefore Philippi was not previously the larger and more populous city, it may readily be imagined how by the planting of the colony there it would become so. Nor is this mere supposition. For in confirmation of it, Strabo, who mentions Philippi several times, takes not the slightest notice of Amphipolis ; and so remarkably sunk and decayed was it some ages after, that in an old Notitia Ecclesiastica it is thrust down to the twenty-second place even of Macedonia Prima, Somewhat similar, but until a recent period, much more perplexing, was the discrepancy between the account which Daniel gives of the fall of the Babylonian monarchy, and that which is furnished by Berosus, a Chaldee historian who wrote in the early part of the third century before Christ, and fragments of whose writing are preserved in Josephus ; as well as by Abydenus a later writer, some portions of whose works have been transmitted to us by Eusebuis. Daniel states that Belshazzar the last of the Babylonian kings was put to death on the night of that impious banquet, of which in his book we have such a vivid description. Berosus and Abydenus, on the other hand, tell us that the last king of Babylon, whom they call by a different name, was not slain at all, but after being beseiged by Cyrus in the fortress of Borsippa, had Caramania assigned him by the conqueror as his residence, and, according to Abydenus, was appointed its govenor. The chronic difficulty therefore as to the Belshazzar of the Bible, was where to place him, and to settle who he was. The last native king in the Canon, was Nabinnidochus, Nabonnedus, or Labynetus. But there was no such name in the Bible, and this was the more remarkable as the names which are found there usually bear a close resemblance to the names on the Chaldean monuments. The Rationalists, with their usual rashness, began to say that the whole story of Belshazzar was an invention of the prophet. Sir Isaac Newton had recourse to two falls of Babylon; and different authors identified Belshazzar with different native kings. Thus e.g. by Josephus” Ant. Li xie. BL. 76 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. he is said to be the same as Naboandelus, the Nabonadius of Ptomely, and the Labynetus of Herodotus (L. 1.) But it is not by any mere cutting of the knot that the difficulty has at last been entirely removed. Col. Rawlinson in 1854, from documents obtained at Mugheir the ancient Ur of the Chaldees, has discovered that Nabonadius, the last king of the Canon, associated with himself, his son, Bil-shar-uzwr, and allowed him the royal title. Thus Daniel’s account is cleared of all difficulty, and corroborated in every particular. Nabonadius was indeed absent at Borsippa when Babylon was taken ; and Belshazzar, instead of being the myth with which the scorners had begun to make merry, is seen to be the veritable reality which Daniel has described. This association of the son with the father in the regal power was a common occurrence in ancient monarchies; and the recollection of this fact will suffice to dissipate many seeming difficulties in the books of Kings and Chronicles. Thus Jotham who reigned sixteen years alone, appears to have reigned also for four years previously, with his father Uzziah who was a leper.” The same principle reconciles Je. xxv. 1, with Da. i. 1. For Jeremiah’s statement that the fourth year of Jehoiakim was the first of Nebuchadnezzar, is strictly correct according to the Jewish mode of computing his reign from the time of his being associated with his father. (Nabopolassar) in the empire, before he set out on his Syrian expedition to chastise the ambition of Pharaoh Necho. But the Babylonians do not reckon his reign to have begun until two years afterwards, when upon his father’s death he succeeded to the sole government. Again, Jewish historians speak of the reign of a king which is continued through one whole year and parts of two others, ® Notwithstanding that Grotius —clarum et venerabile nomen— says (on 2 Ki. xv. 30) “ Viyesimo anno Joathan : i.e. ex quo regnare coeperat Joathan; non enim reg- navit Joathan nisi annos sedecim.” But the distinct and repeated statements found both in the his- tory of the Kings and in the Chronicles (2 Ki. xv. 5; 2 Ch. XXvi. 21), and especially the dis- tinction observed in both places between Jotham’s being “over the king’s house, judging the people of the land,” [during his father’s lifetime,] and the formal period “when he began to reign ” [after his father’s decease], seem fully to warrant a different conclusion. MODES OF RECKONING. 77 as a three years reign.” It may be two years and ten months, or it may be one year and two months. They sometimes set down the principal number only ; the odd, or smaller number being omitted, as in Judges xx. 35: see verse 46. It not unfrequently happens too that different modes of reckoning are adopted by different writers in reference to the same transaction. Thus in Ge. xlvi. 26, 27, itis said that all the souls that went with Jacob into Egypt (not including his sons’ wives) were sixty-six,” or (adding Jacob, Joseph and his two sons) seventy. This is repeated in Deuteronomy x. But Stephen, in Ac. vii. 14, says that Joseph sent and called Jacob and all his kindred, seventy-five persons. This last includes the mine wives of Jacob’s sons (for Simeon’s wife was probably dead at this time, Judah’s was certainly so, aud Joseph’s was already in Egypt). These nine added to the sixty-six, make the seventy-five mentioned in the Acts. These passages were long supposed to involve a contradiction. ” “ Comparing Ezra i. and Neh. vu. we find that 42,360 persons returned from Babylon, of whom the numbers of the tribes of Benjamin and Judah, and of the priests, are given. The numbers in Nehemiah amount to 31,089 ; in Ezra to 29,818. Add to Nehemiah’s number 494 names, mentioned: only in Ezra ; and to Ezra’s, 1,765 names, mentioned only in Nehemiah ; the results agree—31,583. The difference 10,777 represents the number of persons belonging to other tribes.* Yet this apparent discrepancy was long regarded as an objection to the narrative. * A mode of reckoning which is said to be current among the Chinese to this day. “i.e. sixty-four sons and grand- sons; one daughter, Dinah: and one grandaughter, Serah. * Of other solutions which have been proposed, the most plausible is that of Dr. Hammond and many others, who think that Stephen quoted from the Septuagint of Gen. xlvi., where the number is three score and fifteen, for the LXX expressly include a son and grandson of Manasseh, two sons and a grandson of Ephraim: but as these were certainly not born when Joseph sent for his father and kindred, the solution given above appears preferable. Of merely conjectural emendations, a favorable specimen may be seen in Grotius in loe. © Dr. Angus’s “ Bible Hand- Book;” a most valuable work, for the publication of which the Rel. Tr. Soe abundantly deserves the gratitude of the church at large. 78 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. The lesson taught in such instances as these—and it is urged with all the force of an inevitable inference—is that instead of questioning the Divine Inspiration of Scripture it becomes us rather to suspect our own ignorance in the interpretation of it. Nor is this lesson Jess important with respect to the moral than to the critical difficulties which beset the path of Christian Certainty. Most of these, as we have already seen, so far from being originated in the Christian Scriptures are inherent in the very nature of things, and are anterior to all revelation. Dark shadows indeed they are which shut the heathen world in a hopeless gloom, and it is only he who escapes from their last vestiges still hovermg around us that fully perceives their true nature. ‘To such a one the truth is clear and unclouded. The obscurations are not shadows of the truth, but shadows of the ignorant and erring conceptions through which it is viewed ; shadows projected upon the truth, from the opaque understanding of the observer ; and consequently, shadows which can only disappear with the ignorance and error on which their existence depends. Take, for example, that fundamental mystery, the existence of moral evil. | How shall we explain this mournful fact if there be a God of infinite power and goodness? Surely either the power or the will to remove it must be wanting. If the power, then how can God be Almighty? If the will, then how can He be infinitely good? To this dilemma the infidel appeals with a kind of malicious joy, to warrant his own unbelief; and even the devout Christian is often afraid to trust himself in these deep waters, and while conscious of a doubt still unsatisfied, is tempted to stifle it, if possible, by a violent effort of the will. But in spite of these efforts, the doubt and perplexity still recur. “When the faith of the Christian borrows the aid of reason to remove the darkness, it tends to lose itself in two opposite labyrinths, from which no outlet is found. In one direction we encounter the Manichean doctrine, that there are two original independent powers of Good and Evil, the Ormusd and Ahriman of Zend theology, which contend with balanced might for the dominion of the universe. In the other we meet a Christian fatalism, which only avoids the admission of an Evil MORAL EVIL, 79 ‘power, by introducing dualism into the bosom of the Godhead, The Supreme Sovereign is placed above the laws of righteous- ness, which he has implanted in the heart of his own creatures. Moral good and evil, happiness and misery, salvation and ruin, are viewed as alike the results of His arbitrary and sovereign will. Between the Scylla of Manichean heresy, and the deeper gulf of this blashemous perversion of truth, which makes God himself the Author of all evil, how shall we guide the vessel of our reason in safety, so as not.to make shipwreck of our faith ? How shall we avoid either limiting the Almighty power, or denying the spotless and perfect holiness, of the God whom our hearts adore?” ” These are grave questions ; and yet it is not too much to say that they admit of perfectly satisfactory answers." For let us examine the true meaning of the expression “ Almighty Power.” “Ts it the power to do whatever is conceivable by the thoughts of men, or simply whatever is possible in its own nature? Or do both definitions agree, so that every hypothesis capable of being propounded by the human faculties, is proved to be possible by that circumstance alone? If the mind of man were perfect in knowledge, no conception it forms could ever involve con- tradictory elements. But thisis not really the case. An ignorant and erring fancy may associate many things in words which are quite incompatible. The greater our ¢gnorance, the wider must be the sphere of these illusions.” The child who has just learned the meaning of the word angle or triangle, may think it possible and easy to construct a three-sided figure, whose angles shall be greater or less than two right angles; or to vary the dimensions of a right-angled triangle, so that the square on its hypothenuse shall exceed those on its sides by a definite quantity. The geometer knows that these problems are in their own nature impossible. They do not come within the province of Omnipotence to execute, but of Omniscience to discern their inherent contradiction. These examples—and they may be ” Birks. largely indebted—by the Rev. T. For a full consideration of | R. Birks, on “The Difficulties of this and kindred subjects the | Belief, in connexion with the reader is referred to a masterly | Creation and the Fall.” (Cam- Kissay—to which these pages are | bridge: Macmillan and Co.) 80 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. drawn by thousands from the range of pure science alone— prove that many things are really contradictory and impossible, in which the eye of ignorance can see no contradiction whatever. And similarly the theological and moral difficulties before us arise from the confused imaginings in which we have confounded the possible with the impossible. “All things are possible with God”—those things only excepted which imply a con- tradiction. Almighty as he is, He is yet “God, that cannot lie ;” “He cannot deny himself ;” He “cannot be tempted with evil.” The Judge of all the earth cannot do wrong. He cannot reverse his own essential perfections. His name is I AM, and He cannot cease to be, by an act of will) He cannot create another God, equal to himself; He cannot give His own glory to another, nor make any creature that shall not be essentially and eternally subject to his own dominion, dependent on the Great First Cause, and obedient, either in act or obligation, to the Supreme Lawgiver. His name is Love, and He cannot become hatred. His name is God the Only Wise, and He cannot be deceived. He is the true Light, and all darkness and shadow must be perpetually without his all-perfect Being; and to suppose Him capable, by an act of His own will, of introducing them into that Holy of holies, is not less a contradiction than a lying blasphemy. “God could, doubtless, convert and save all men and all devils, but He has wise reasons for not doing it.” These words of a popular commentator furnish a fair specimen of the popular illusions we are now considering. We shall do well to suspect the truth of those assertions that need to be buttressed with a “doubtless.” We may admit the force of the “ doubtless” when we have seen the proof.’ But in this case the proof lies the other way. The Almighty himself can act upon his creatures only in conformity with the nature of the being He has him- self bestowed. Atoms or worlds may be transported by his ‘Almighty fiat from place to place with the speed of lightning ; but they cannot be impressed by arguments, allured by promises, or terrified by warnings. On the other hand, conscious spirits must be open to every variety of moral suasion ; but they cannot be the subject of merely mechanical impulses, like unconscious matter ; and must be acted upon, so far as we can comprehend, MORAL AGENTS. 81 even by their Creator himself, in strict agreement with the essential laws of spiritual being, Scripture and Reason unite to prove that moral agents can be ruled only by moral influence, and that mechanism, compulsion, and mere physical constraint, are means incompatible with the essential laws of their nature : means which Almighty Power cannot, and Infinite Wisdom refuses to employ ; so that the supposition that such remedies can avail when all others have failed, is nothing else than a mischievous delusion. But it may be said, If the evil is so hard to be remedied, why was it not prevented? And in reply it is sufficient to ask, How could it be prevented? It is the teaching of Scripture not less than the dictate of reason, which leads us to believe that the prevention of all evil, in a world of created free agents, may be strictly impossible in its own nature. Matter, in receiv- ing active power, receives a law which it must implicitly obey. Obedience to the ordinance of the Creator is the necessity of its being. But it is not so with moral agents. The power of choice, the faculty of reason, the gift of will, imply a higher and more responsible mode of existence. Created in the image of God himself, and reflecting the spontaneity of the Divine Will, they are not His tools, but His subjects and stewards. They have a trust committed to them, and a law they are bound, but not necessitated to obey. It is this liberty of choice, this immunity from passive and compulsory subjection to a law which enforces itself and must be fulfilled, which constitutes their peculiar dignity, as the highest and noblest of all the works of God. Nor is this fact at all modified by any merely metaphysical speculations on the nature of free-will. It is the very constitu- tion of a moral and reasonable being, or free agent, to have been created in the image of God. The will of such a creature is neither undetermined, which would resign the dominion of the world to chance, nor necessitated and constrained by outward circumstances, which would equally establish the supremacy of a blind and inevitable fate. It is strictly self- determined. Circumstances and motives persuade, but do not compel. There is a real liberty, but it is not the liberty of pure indifference, or the power of deciding without any motive . F 82 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. and reason whatever. The self which determines is the deep and hidden ground of the creature’s whole being; and as it 1s good or evil, decides the weight of the motives themselves, and the practical result of the circumstances out of which they arise. When we say the will has chosen good or evil, because such was its own character, we have gone as deep as it is pos- sible for us to go ; and whatever would persuade us to refer its choice, either to the necessity of circumstances without, or a capricious, uncaused, and unaccountable impulse within, 1s a falsehood which deadens the conscience, and tends to under- mine all the foundations of moral government. We are thus shut up to the conclusion that moral evil has neither been positively decreed, nor negatively permitted, but simply foreseen, by the God of infinite holiness, who cannot behold it without an intense aborrence ; that its entrance is an inseparable result of the creation of free moral agents ; and is the object of foresight to the Omniscient Wisdom, though not of prevention even by Almighty Power ; but that having been foreseen, infinite power, wisdom, and love have conspired to provide a wonderful remedy ; so that where sin hath abounded, grace will much more abound, and death shall at last be swallowed up in a glorious victory. Two main principles are thus established. First, that the entrance of moral evil is due entirely to the mutable will of the creature, and in no respect to the decree of the Almighty, or even to that active permission which consists in the voluntary withholding of some needful and possible suceour. And secondly, that the foresight of its first entrance, and all the awful results that have followed, are no sufficient reason, why God should have forborne the highest and noblest exercise of His creative power: since evil would then have achieved a more fatal triumph, in the bare contemplation of it as possible, than now in its actual entrance and reign. The Uncreated Life would have been sealed up perpetually within its hidden fountain. God would have been defrauded of His glory, and the universe of its being. Tor every creature of God, called out of nothing by His almighty power, is like a planet in the sun-light, with one hemisphere of natural good, and another of natural evil. Feel. Pol. b. v., c. lxix. *° Essays and Reviews, pp. 837, 375, M 178 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. mony is significant. Yet a higher authority still has declared that true Christians possess “an unction of the Holy One,” which incomparably surpasses all merely human teaching.” And the Divine Teacher, addressing nominal Christians, says, “T counsel thee to. . . anoint thine eyes with eye salve, that thou mayst see.” No physical, no moral law, is more certain, more undeviating, more inflexible in its operation than this :— “None of the wicked shall understand.” * “The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him.” “The meek will He guide in judgment; and the meek will He teach His way.” “The scorner seeketh wisdom and findeth it not,” for he is wise in his own conceit ; and when a man is wise in his own conceit, “‘there is more hope of a fool than of him.” But let a man acknow- ledge his lack of wisdom; let him ask of God who giveth liberally unto all; let him pursue his studies in the docile spirit of the psalmist, crying “Open Thou mine eyes; that I may behold wondrous things out of Thy law!” ‘“Shew ,me Thy ways, O Lord, and teach me Thy paths ; lead me in Thy truth and teach me:” and he shall find that the Scriptures are perfectly able to make him wise unto salvation ; the engrafted word, received with meekness, is able to save his soul. He shall KNOW in whom he has believed ; as well as the CERTAINTY of the things wherein he has been instructed. By the reverential study of the Scriptures alone, “without any other commentary or exposition, than what the different parts of the sacred volume mutually furnish for each other,” his faith shall stand, not in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. “Let the most illiterate Christian study them in this manner, and let him never cease to pray for the illumination of that Spirit by whom these books were dictated, and the whole compass of abstruse philosophy and recondite history shall furnish no argument with which the perverse will of man shall be able to shake this learned Christian’s faith.” * ue Yee Fee ES 1 Jno. ii. 20, 27. Da. xii. 10. © Bp. Horsley: Nine Sermons. CHAPTER VI. INSPIRATION. “ Every sentence of the Bible is from God: and every man is interested in the meaning of it.”—Locxz. IN examining the Books of Holy Scripture with regard to their contents, we have now reviewed the proofs of their integrity, and enunciated the chief of those settled principles of interpretation by which their meaning is to be ascertained, An important question still remains. In what sense are we warranted in affirming that those Books are Inspired ? The answer to this question is of the highest importance. Diverse and false interpretations are the fruitful source of diverse and false doctrines; but take away the old fashioned doctrine of Inspiration, and the only doctrine that remains is this: that there remains no doctrine at all. This is the dreary deserted goal to which, in spite of ourselves, we are hurried by those who do not scruple to lay hands on the ark of God itself, and then attempt to justify their daring violence by a boast of “free handling.” This “free handling” is sometimes seen in the achievements of Dr. Williams’s “ verifying faculty,” (by which nothing is verified,) and sometimes in the exploits of Dr. Colenso’s falsifying faculty (by which it appears that nothing can be verified). But more dangerous by far than these undis- guised attacks are those processes of sapping and mining by which, in stealthy simulation, the true direction and treacherous progress of the foes of our faith are covertly concealed. The explicit declaration that “in times past.” God did most certainly speak “unto the fathers,” supported as that declaration is by the other, that “holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” and «not by their own will,” does seem 180 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. to an unsophisticated reader to teach pretty plainly the doctrine of Plenary Inspiration. But no: our moderns will teach him (and that with an eloquence so fascinating as to be all but persuasive) that that doctrine is all a mistake ; the relic of a now-exploded superstition. He may believe—and if he would escape the denunciations of his teachers he must believe—with Mr. Goodwin, ' that the Mosaic cosmogony was merely the guess- work of an “early speculator” harassed by no scruples, “ and asserting as facts what he knew only as probabilities ;” with Dr. Williams,’ that the lives of the first patriarchs are to be “relegated to the domain of legend or symbolical cycle,” and that the book of Jonah “contains a late legend, founded on misconception ;” or, with Mr. Wilson, that “the story of a serpent tempter, of an ass speaking with man’s voice, of an arresting of the earth’s motion, of waters standing in a solid heap,” may all be accepted as “ poetry, or legend :”* for (O sapient observation !) it was not to the poets, geographers, and historians, that God spake, but only “to the prophets.” The fact that these prophets were themselves the poets, geographers, and historians whom it is attempted thus to silence, is of course a circumstance too trivial and insignificant (not to say too inconvenient), to be allowed to interfere with the settled purpose of this “free handling.” Never mind: let that pass. Suppose it possible to effect a separation of the prophetic utterances of these “holy men of old” from the historic or topographic statements with which they are inseparably associated: what then ? May we then accept those prophetic utterances as divine? By no means. It is true that the prophets—or at least some of them-— were inspired ; but so were Bezaleel and Aholiab, Shakspeare and Molitre. In fact, it is hard to say who is not inspired: for “ Inspiration, like God’s omnipresence, is not limited to the few writers claimed by the Jews, Christians, or Mahometans, but is co-extensive with the race. . . . It is wide as the world, and common as God.” * (So then, God did speak to the “poets, geographers, and historians,” after all!) You therefore, good Soup Oe 1 Essays and Reviews, p. 252. *Ibid., pp. 57, 77. *Tbid., p. 177. Theodore Parker: Discourses, pp. 161, 171. EXTENT OF INSPIRATION. 181 reader, may judge of the inspiration of the prophets from your own. For “the sacred writers acknowledge themselves men of like passions with ourselves, and we are promised illumination from the Spirit which dwelt in them.”* The gentleman who tells you this has furnished you with an example. He finds St. Paul quoting the second Psalm in his epistle to the Hebrews, ° and he tells you, in effect, that he, the vicar of Broad Chalke, knows better what is the Hebrew idiom than does the scholar of Gamaliel, the Jew of Tarsus. He finds Philip the Evangelist, under the special influence of the Holy Ghost applying Isaiah’s prophecy’ to Christ ; but that is nothing to one who is every whit as much inspired as Philip was, (more so indeed, or how could he correct him ?) and therefore he boldly pronounces that if that prophecy should be applied to “any single person,” “Jeremiah should be the one!”® See now what it is to be an adept at “free handling.” Nor is it the learned alone who, being thus “inspired,” are permitted to be thus profane. It is “a matter of duty” “if possible, to discriminate the authoritative from the unauthoritative in Scripture ;”° and “those who are able to do so, ought to lead the less educated to distinguish between the different kinds of words which it contains ; between the dark patches of human passion and error which form a partial crust upon it, and the bright centre of spiritual truth within,” ” “Dark patches of human passion and error” are to be “distinguished :”—by whom ? By “those who are able to do so!” See Cowper's “ Conversation.” SUPERFICIAL SCIENCE, 197 other. Itris no light presumption against such a supposition, that no man who has carefully examined rocks and organic remains is its advocate. The cause of the Bible can only suffer, when its defence makes the geologist feel “very much as a good Greek scholar would, who should read a severe critique upon the style of Isocrates or Demosthenes, and before he had finished the review, should discover internal evidence that the writer had never learned the Greek alphabet.” On the other hand, it cannot be denied that this opposition to science, though short-sighted and unwise, has not been un- provoked. The tone adopted by those who have maintained the antagonism of science towards the Bible has been con- temptuously defiant. Many a pean has been sung for a victory never achieved. At one time, those learned writers who en- lighten us on the formation of language, discover proofs (! forsooth) that it is not possible for all the dialects of the world to have had one common origin. At another, the cele- brated tables of Indian history are produced, and believers in Christianity are expected to abandon their belief at the bidding of historic records long anterior to the Mosaic era. But it is a short-lived triumph. Even Laplace, no special friend to Chris- tianity, shows that some of the supposed facts on which those tables were based were astronomically impossible ; while Sir William Jones led up the band of Christian scholars who de- monstrated affinities between all the languages of earth, ex- plicable only on the hypothesis of one primary root, When, therefore, one meets with people impudently affirming ——on the strength of Bishop Colenso’s assertions, or Baron Bunsen’s calculations, or Dr Williams’ “ remorseless criticisms,” or the manufactured antiquities of Abbeville—that « Moses and his Pentateuch are smashed ;” it is impossible not to remember that that catastrophe is merely of the nominal and imaginary kind that has happened so often already ; and to infer that the extraordinary vitality which has survived such treatment so long may very well survive to the end. But what about the Zodiaes of Denderah? Some persons indeed seem so very innocent of all knowledge on that subject, that it may be but an act of common charity to remind them of the principal facts, | 198 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. On the ceiling of a temple at Denderah, in Upper Egypt, were found, some forty years ago, certain mysterious paintings, apparently astronomical, and still known as the Zodiacs of Denderah. They were pronounced to be three thousand, four thousand, and even seven thousand years old. Somewhat similar representations were found in two temples at Esneh. It was in vain that their astronomical character was denied by travellers like Dr Richardson, who after the most careful examination assigned weighty (not to say conclusive) reasons for his decision. In vain did an eminent mathematician like M. Biot fix the date of the oldest of them at only 716 B.C. Until at length, patient research brought to light the fact that the smaller temple at Esneh, (pronounced by some to be two or three thousand years prior to the Christian era,) was built, and the paintings executed by two Egyptians, in the tenth year of the Roman Emperor Antoninus (e., A.D. 147); while a Greek inscription over the portico of the temple at Denderah, declared +t to have been dedicated to the safety of the Emperor Tiberius. « Ainsi done,” adds Champollion, (Egypte, p. 110,) “V’antiquité du pronaos d’Esneh est incontestablement fixée : sa construc- tion ne remonte pas au-dela de l’empereur Claude: ses sculp- tures descendent jusqu’ & Caracalla, et du nombre de celles-ci est le fameux zodiaque dont on a tant parlé.” In like manner, certain inscriptions found on a mummy at Thebes, much like those of the zodiac at Denderah, were found to be astrological tables respecting the destiny of the person whose body was embalmed, and not astronomical tables at all. They gave his name and parentage ; with the date of his birth (Jan. 12, A.D. 95) and death (June 2, 106). And yet for this mummy and the inscription thereon found, there had been claimed an antiquity of five or six thousand years. ‘Thus ended the dazzling visions of high antiquity for Egypt, and the consequent refutation of the Mosaic chronology, based on the discoveries at Denderah, Esneh, and Thebes. But these attempts to impugn the veracity of the Inspired Record, though perhaps more grossly ridiculous, were not more signally abortive, than those more recent ones by which they have been followed. As if to cover their defeat, the promoters DISCOVERY OF THE NEBULA. 199 of these schemes became more pretentious as they became less successful. .They had utterly failed to disprove the date of Creation : might it not be possible to disprove the fact? At all events they would try, Following the investigations of Palissy, and the opinions of Buffon, boldly announced and widely discussed, the Huttonian theory seemed strongly to confirm both. Hutton contended that the ruins of an older world were visible in the composition of this ; that there were no traces of a beginning, and no pro- spect of an end; that there had been at least three distinct periods of animal existence before the introduction of man ; and that all the changes of the globe had been effected by the agency of causes which were then acting gradually upon it. The views maintained by the transcendental anatomists of France, with Geoffrey St. Hilaire at their head, and Lamarck for their ablest exponent, were all in favour of a progressive advance in creation—a gradual development from the monad up toman. The geologists of that day too, strongly affirmed the same doctrine ; and even from astronomy itself was at last extorted a hesitating and reluctant assent. The patch of light discovered in the girdle of Andromeda, by Simon Marius, in 1612, is the first recorded discovery of the nebule, distinctively so called, outside the milky-way. Cysatus in 1618, and Huyghens in 1656, discovered independently the great nebula in the sword-belt of Orion. In 1660, Hevelius noticed that between the head and bow of Sagittarius. The one near to Centauri was discovered by Halley in 1677 ; and this when lately observed by Sir John Herschel at the Cape, was pronounced by him as beyond all comparison the richest and largest object of the kind in the heavens; having a dia- meter equal to two-thirds that of the moon. In 1681 Kirch discovered a nebulous spot near the right, or northern, foot of Antinous ; and in 1714 Halley discovered the brilliant and re- markable nebula between the stars and 7 in the constellation Hercules. In 1716, when Halley undertook an enumeration of all the known nebule, these six were all that had been dis- covered. But Lacaille, some thirty years after, determined the position of twenty-eight others; and in 1771, Messier communicated to the Academy of Sciences a catalogue con- 200 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. taining sixty-eight new ones; making in all one hundred and three. * The nebule now began to assume the position they after- wards occupied: they were the enigma of the universe. “ What were those spots of light in the undiscovered depths of infini- tude?” To this question two answers were given. Lacaille suggested that “the nebule were of two kinds, some really, others only apparently such ;” the latter being resolvable into stars by increased magnifying powers, while the real nebule consisted of diffuse luminous matter, distributed in different portions of the celestial vault.* And this answer was generally received. Herschel however, advanced, and maintained for years, a different opinion. So many of the nebule seen by ordinary instruments had, by his larger telescopes, been resolved into clusters of stars, that he asserted his belief that all nebule consist of such clusters; and that there exists no essential difference between those of the most dissimilar ap- pearance: that dissimilarity being the result of the greater or less distance, or greater or less condensation of the component stars. But even this eminent astronomer was compelled at last to modify his opinion. Increased telescopic power brought into view other nebulous spots, in positions where their existence had not been at all suspected. It showed them apparently, in every state of condensation, from a thin pale cloud to brilliant but unresolvable light. It suggested that throughout the wide regions of immensity there might be dispersed a sort of elemen- tary sidereal matter which gradually subsided mto denser bodies. It revealed apparent indications of every stage of their condensing progress ; and it exhibited the more or less advanced state of a nebula towards its aggregation into distinct stars (and the aggregation of these stars themselves towards a denser nucleus) as indications of the periods of time, the vast sidereal eras, through which they had respectively passed. 3 But in contributions to this | catalogues of nebule or clusters portion of astronomical science, | of stars, making altogether 2,500. Sir Wm. Herschel far outstripped *See Memoirs of the Academy all competitors. In the years | of Sciences for 1755, 1786—1802 he published three THE NEBULAR THEORY. 201 Can we marvel that the human mind became intoxicated by this grand though illegitimate conception? That the creative genius of La Place should see therein the mode of the forma- tion of a universe—yea, of owr own universe? That the Christian student of science should for a season feel perplexed, and the infidel raise a shout of rejoicing? For the first time did atheism, and those semi-atheistic systems, Pantheism and Buddhism, find a show of evidence in their favour. The sceptic laughed ; the pseudo-philosopher transferred us from the rule of a living, operating and intelligent Deity, to that of mere principles and laws. And even some observant Christians began to think it possible that our ideas of creation would have to be modified. In one word: The Nebular Theory prevailed. This theory, then, is the result of the Huttonian theory ap- plied to astronomy. Assuming that the varieties of nebulous appearance represented planets and stars in the different periods of their growth, (some half-formed, and others but one degree removed from the condition of the rudimental material,) the conclusion was unhesitatingly adopted that these bodies were in process of formation under the direction of the same natural force. To this conclusion was added another; that since all the stages of growth exist, then the agencies by which they are now produced must be the same as they were in the beginning. And further: that as these phenomena appear to be developing themselves gradually, without the aid of any supernatural cause, they must depend upon and result from laws within the system itself. By this course of reasoning the only element wanting in the development theory was supplied by astronomers. It was now supposed that all the heavenly bodies were elaborated out of this nebulous material by the forces of at- traction and radiation. That in the beginning, this attenuated fire-cloud filled all space ; and that by some cause unknown, and at some period equally uncertain, a nucleus was formed, to which this nebulous matter was drawn by the force of attraction, and around which it commenced its revolutions. After a cer- tain length of time, the first planet was thrown off from the great primary ; and then again another. These in turn threw off their satellites ; and thus the process was continued until this globe was swung into its orbit. Vast as were these changes, 202 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. they were all effected without the aid of any other agency than those of attraction and radiation. There was no superior Cause of Causes; no Power behind the clouds, moving the machinery, and ordering the results. This globe thus (not created, but) condensed (!) was at first covered with water; and was therefore unfit for anything but marine vegetable life, and the lowest order of mollusca. ‘These were forced into existence by some electric or chemical agency, as yet imperfectly understood, but when once in existence, they became the Adams of the earth, and the parents of a numerous and infinitely varied progeny. Thus were the Nebulous Theory and the Development Theory interwoven together ; and a com- plete system of the world constructed out of the two. Enun- ciating this system, the “Inductive Philosopher” boasted that his position was impregnable ; and very confidently assured us that “there never had been such a thing as creation, in the generally received sense of the term.” Q. E. D. It is not yet twenty years since the jubilant exultation of these pseudo-scientific contemners of Scripture was at its height. The so-called “ Vestiges of the Natural History of the Creation ” were published to propagate “a somewhat different idea of or- ganic creation from what has hitherto been generally enter- tained.” *° Its popularity was such that three editions were called for in two months. This is the substance of its conclu- sions :—‘“ The whole train of animated beings, from the simplest and oldest, up to the highest and most recent, are, then, to be regarded as a series of advances of the principle of develop- ment... .”° And again :—“The whole is complete on one principle. The masses of space are formed by law ; law makes them in due time theatres of existence for plants and animals ; sensation, disposition, intellect, are all in like manner developed and sustained in action by law. It is most interesting to ob- serve into how small a field the whole of the mysteries of nature thus ultimately resolve themselves. The inorganic has been thought to have one final comprehensive law, gravitation. The organic, the other great department of mundane things, rests in like manner on one law, and that is—DEVELOPMENT.” ’P,156. (Third Edition.) Por. Uo THE NEBULE NOT NEBULOUS. 203 Alas for human wisdom! These sage conclusions were hardly uttered before Lord Rosse’s telescope made it undeniably certain that their first premises were mere conjectures; and (worse still) conjectures contradicted by fact. The nebule were not nebulous! “Spot after spot of soft white milky light was resolved into distinct starry clusters, indicative of the truth originally propounded by Sir Wm. Herschel, which soon after shone with refulgence on the minds of nearly all the students of the firmament, that all the nebule were in reality distinct galaxies or clusters of stars, whose immense distance hid from the observer all but the milky stream of their commingled rays." The resolution of Orion’s “soft white cloud” into a gorgeous bed of stars, by the Parsonstown instrument, was especially received as “so strong a confirmation of this view, as to cause it to be received by most living astronomers for indis- putable truth, and again remodel the opinions of the scientific world.” For this spot in Orion had been looked upon as the very type of unresolvable nebulosity ; even Sir John Herschel having said of it :—“In all the [resolvable] nebulz the observer remarks (whatever be the magnifying power) points of starlight, or he thinks that such would be perceived, if the vision was rendered more distinct. The nebula in Orion produces quite a different sensation. It does not suggest any idea of stars,” By the power of the same great telescope, many other nebule pre- viously pronounced unresolvable, have been already resolved. The shapes of others, classed as globular, annular, and perfo- rated nebulz, have been entirely changed. Some of those upon whose form and appearance the once widely-prevalent notion of selt-creation was especially founded, have proved to be really of a very different form and appearance from that on which those notions were based. In the words of Dr Lardner, “There is no reason to doubt that the constitution of these objects is the same as that of other nebule ; and that they are in fact clusters of stars, which, by mutual proximity and vast distance, are reduced to the [apparent] form of planetary discs.” While on the gra- tuitous and perfectly unwarrantable hypothesis of diffuse ne- “See an able article on this subject in the Christian Observer, Jun, 1860. * 204 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. bulous matter, the same author observes in another place, that “ Such an hypothesis is not needed to explain appearances which are so much more obviously and simply explicable by the ad- mission of a gradation of distances.” And, to cite but one other authority, the “Radcliffe Observer” tells us “we may say of this theory, which has been discussed beyond its merits, that it would probably never have been framed if the constitution of the nebulze which we see in the heavens had been understood as well as it is now.’* Thus by increased knowledge was the Nebular Theory exploded ; and with it, the very foundations of the Theory of “Creation by Law.” Precisely the same thing occurred in Geology. The gradual advance, the progressive development which this theory required, turned out, on further investigation, never to have existed. On a cursory and general view indeed the theory seemed to be maintained. In the oldest rocks we find chiefly the more simple invertebrate animals; and the vertebrated tribes appear first in the form of fish, then of reptiles, then of birds, after that of animals, and last of all of man. What better confirmation could be wished than this gradually expanding series? But the tables are turned the moment we descend to particulars. Dicotyledonous plants are found to exist in the coal measures ; and this well known fact is of itself fatal to the theory of devel- opment. “The lower Silurian,” says Sir Roderick Murchison, in 1847, “is no longer to be viewed as an invertebrate period ; for the onchus has been found in the Llandeilo Flags, and in the lower Silurian rocks of Bala.” It is also a most important fact that this fish of the oldest rock was not, as the development scheme would require, of a low organization, but quite high on the scale of fishes. The same is true of all the earliest species of this class. “All our most ancient fossil fishes,’ says Professor Sedgwick, “belong to a high organic type ; and the very oldest species that are well determined fall naturally into an order of fishes which Owen and Miller place, not at the bottom, but at the top of the whole class.”” The asterolepis of Stromness too, one of the fishes found in the old red sandstone, and sometimes more than twenty feet long, “instead of being, epee EE LA ee 8« Replies to Essays and Re- ® Discourse on the Studies of p s) views,” p. 507M the University : Pref. p. lxiv. i i i COINCIDENCE OF GEOLOGY WITH SCRIPTURE. 205 as the development hypothesis would require, a fish low in its organization, seems to have ranged on the level of the highest ichthyic-reptilian families ever called into eéxistence.”” N ay more ; it even appears that in many families of animals, not only were the first species that appeared of high organization, but there was a gradual degradation among those that were created afterwards ; “that the several dynasties were introduced, not in their lower, but in their higher forms; and that in short, in the imposing programme of the creation, it was arranged, as a general rule, that in each of the great divisions of the pro- cession the magnates should walk first.” ” Among the inverte- brate animals are numerous examples of the deterioration of a race. M. Alcide D‘Orbigny, one of the most accomplished of living palceontologists, speaks thus “of the cephalopods found in the oldest rocks :—“ See then, the result ; the cephalopods, the most perfect of the molluscs, which lived in the early period of the world, show a progress of degradation in their generic forms. We insist on this fact relative to the cephalopods, which - we shall hereafter compare with the less perfect classes of mol- luscs, since it must lead to the conclusion that the molluscs, as to their classes, have certainly retrograded from the compound to the simple, or from the more to the less perfect.” Such facts as these are absolutely fatal to the hypothesis of development : and geology abounds with them. Waving, for the present, the physiological fallacies of this oft-repeated theory, it is important to remember the lessons which its history furnishes, in their application to the other theories of similar character by which it has been succeeded. _ That one, for instance, which just now is specially prominent, The High Antiquity of the Human Race, is asserted with as much assurance and as little evidence as characterized the Theory of Development twenty years ago. There is the same substitution of assumption for proof, the same mere guessing, the same vague generalizing, the same boundless conjecture, and the same contemptuous disregard of facts which it would be inconvenient to notice, and impossible to gainsay. ° Hugh Miller: « Footprints of * In his Cours Elementaire de the Creator.” “ Tbid. Paleontologie et-de Geologie. 206 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. We proceed to the proof. Of the many marked and striking coincidences between geology and Scripture“ none were more universally admitted five years ago—and with the exception of the small knot of persons who have adopted this theory, none are more firmly established even now,—than these two :— Revelation and geology both agree in stating man to be the last of created animals ; they both agree too in ascribing the creation of man to a very recent date, not above some 6,000 or 7,000 years ago. The records of the rocks disclose the existence (in periods past and gone) of fishes, reptiles, birds, and at last, mammalia : but no portion or particle of any human being. Thus, fifty years ago, Baron Cuvier said,—“The human remains did not exist in the countries in which the fossil bones of animals have been discovered, at the epoch when these bones were covered up.”* « Phases of Faith,” p. 25. PROFESSOR NEWMAN’S TESTIMONY. 391 We commend this admission to the notice of our adversaries. What they have to account for is the great fact of “THE UN- APPROACHABLE GREATNESS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.” Let them treat the literary and moral phenomenon presented by this Book as they would treat any other phenomenon. Let their theories be made to fit the facts; instead of mutilating the facts until they can be compressed within the narrow limits of the theories. Let there be no unworthy attempt to hide the real question by piling up a heap of wordy evasions. Nothing in the world is more certain than “the unapproachable great- ness of the New Testament:” Whence came it? How was it caused ? “That would be a strange account of a geological stratum, which should omit all reference to the organic remains embed- ded in it. Science would make short work of a cosmogony— Mosaic or other—that proposed to treat all fossils as so many lusus nature, which were of no account in the investigation of the history of the globe; or, worse still, that should sup- pose them integral parts of the respective strata, and not deposits therein. Now such an interpolated deposit in the section of human history is Christianity ; there it is, fixed im- movably in the midst of the centuries,—in them, but not of them ; and those centuries of secular history give no clue to its origin, which must be sought from itself alone. “Tt is easy to sketch the rise and fall of empires and races, like the elevation and subsidence of geologic beds, and assign plausible reasons for them ; but this affords no rationale of the world’s history till we account for the unique phenomenon of the New Testament. The problem is this :—Given, the writ- ings of Philo on the one hand, and the Shepherd of Hermas on the other, to account for the interjection of St. John’s gospel and St. Paul’s epistles between them? Here, we contend, is a manifest interpolation, as demonstrable as that of a fossil in sandstone. It is clearly defined as a distinct and independent organism. Its vitality is self-complete and individual. Philo did not engender it; Hermas did not continue it. The fossil must tell its own story, or remain a hopeless riddle: the cir- cumjacent sandstone can tell us nothing of its production. What then are we to think of a philosophy that shuts its eyes 392 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. to this fossil form ; that gives us an elaborate speculation about the sandstone apart from all allusion to the organic remains, and calls it a theory of the universe? What, too, of that philosophy which affects to throw aside the fossil as a lusus unworthy of serious investigation, and the question of whose origin may be put off with solutions of fantastic absurdity ? When Emerson tells us that transcendentalism, falling upon a superstitious age, makes prophets and apostles; or when M. Renan refers the greatest moral and intellectual revolution that ever passed over mankind to the monomania of a Jewish peasant ; or when we are asked to believe that the sublimest ethical system the world has known, was the result of a quasi- fraud, perpetrated by men who themselves died for conscience sake, and by whose instrumentality myriads since have done the same? It is surely not too much to say, that these dream-> ers stand convicted of the rankest folly by the first principles of the science they are so eager to pervert.” ® “View it in what light we may,” says Theodore Parker, “the Bible is a very surprising phenomenon. This collection of books has taken such a hold on the world as no other ever did. The literature of Greece, which goes up like incense from that land of temples and heroic deeds, has not half ” (say not a thousandth part) “the influence of this book from a nation alike despised in ancient and modern times. The sun never sets on its gleaming page. It goes equally into the cottage of the plain man and the palace of the king. It is woven into the literature of the scholar and colours the talk of the street. It enters men’s closets ; it mingles with all the cheerfulness of life. The Bible attends men in their sickness ; the aching head finds a softer pillow when the Bible lies underneath, The mariner escaping from shipwreck clutches this first of his trea- sures and keeps it sacred to God. It goes with the pedler in his crowded pack, cheers him in the fatigue of eventide, and brightens the freshness of his morning face. It lifts man above himself ; the best of our prayers are in its language, in which our fathers and the patriarchs prayed. The timid man, about to escape from this dream of life, looks through the glass of Ee tod, neg | Felgen * Christian Advocate : vol. iy, p. 153. il i ii THEODORE PARKER’S TESTIMONY. 393 scripture, and his eye grows bright ; he fears not to take Death by the hand, and bid farewell to wife and babes and home. Now for all this there must be an adequate cause. That nothing comes of nothing is true all the world over. It is no light thing to hold a thousand hearts, though but for an hour ; what is it then to hold the Christian world, and that for cen- turies? Are men fed with chaff and husks? A thousand famous writers come up in this century, to be forgotten in the next; but the silver cord of the Bible is not loosed, nor its golden bowl broken, as time chronicles its tens of centuries passed by. Has the human race gone mad? Some of the greatest institutions seem built upon the Bible ; such things will not stand on heaps of chaff, but on mountains of rock. WHAT IS THE SECRET CAUSE OF THIS WIDE AND DEEP IN- FLUENCE? IT MUST BE. FOUND IN THE BIBLE ITSELF, AND MUST BE ADEQUATE TO THE EFFECT.” “What need we any further witness?” The facts admitted by our adversaries are such as, on their principles, have never . yet been accounted for. The very admissions which they are compelled to make are sufficient of themselves to establish our case. It is therefore proved and certain, that “If the Bible be not Divine, it is an Effect without a Cause : ”—- “ A SacrepD Page Where triumphs immortality; a page WHICH NOT THE WHOLE CREATION COULD PRODUCE, WHICH NOT THE CONFLAGRATION SHALL DESTROY.” CHAPTER XIII. It IS CERTAIN: THAT THE LIFE OF CHRIST ALONE IS SUF- FICIENT TO DEMONSTRATE THE TRUTH OF CHRISTIANITY. “Tf the life and death of Socrates were those of a sage, the life and death of Jesus were those of a God.’’—RoussEav. PERFECTLY distinct from the subject to be considered in this chapter, yet closely connected with it, are two others, either of which will be found to furnish sufficient warrant for our faith in Christianity. Yet our faith does not rest on the ground of either alone, but on the combination of both: and it acquires immoveable stability from the mutual corroboration which each affords to the other. Christ’s Teaching was unlike all other teaching. Christ’s Miracles were unlike all other miracles. “Never man spake like this Man;” and the works that He did, bare witness of Him, that He was a “Teacher come from God.” And between these two there existed a peculiar and reciprocal fitness and propriety. The Teaching was so sublime as to be worthy of miraculous attestation, and the Miracles were never wrought except for the furtherance of moral ends. But while it is strictly true that in both these respects the Founder of Christianity is without a parallel, it is not to bé denied that those who “will not have this Man to rule over” them have laboured incessantly to find a parallel. True, the moral greatness of Jesus Christ shews Him to be incomparable ; yet there have been men who have attempted to compare Him with Socrates. True, the miracles of Jesus Christ are pheno- mena perfectly unique ; yet Hume pretended to think that they might be compared with the occurrences at the tomb of the Abbé Paris. PHILOSOPHIC MORALITY. 395 There is one respect however in which our Lord is not only actu- ally incomparable, but (His enemies themselves being judges) confessedly so. There may be some who have aped His miracles ; there may be others who have stolen some scraps of His teach- ing ; but AMONG ALL THE GENERATIONS OF MANKIND THERE IS NOT ONE WHO HAS EVER PRETENDED TO HIS SPOTLESS LIFE. This then is the special topic to be considered in this chapter. Jesus Christ was absolutely perfect. No other man ever was. No other man ever pretended to be so. The remark is as old as Origen :'—“Though innumerable lies and calumnies had been forged against the venerable Jesus, none had dared to charge Him with an intemperance.” “Which of you convinceth Me of Sin?” was a question which He alone, of all earth’s millions, ever dared to put, and which in His case alone was sure to be followed by silence. Pilate—cross-examining Him as a prisoner at the bar—could find no fault in Him: and what was it that awoke the remorse and despair of Judas? It was his having “betrayed the INNOCENT blood.” “‘Sceptic after sceptic has glared into the character of Christ, searching for a flaw ; and sceptic after sceptic has recoiled with the confession that whatever Christianity might be, this Jesus of Nazareth was honest and pure. No character known to history has been subjected to scrutiny so piercing as that of Jesus Christ ; and there is no character known to history, except His, of which moral perfection could for a moment be maintained. The proudest names in the annals of philosophic morality are tarnished. Zeno preached a stoical virtue ; Diogenes was cynically fierce against shams; but Zeno and Diogenes were personally immoral. Socrates is the loftiest and purest name of antiquity ; but suspicions” have in all ages been entertained in reference to the personal morals of Socrates, of a kind which never, even in imagination, darkened the figure of Christ.” awe teen eens 2 ee ee 1 Or, Hp. Cels. Lib. iii. num. 36. | Diogenes the cynic, fell into the ed Bened. foulest impurities; of which also ?The much stronger language | Socrates himself was more than of Paley, seems to be nearer to | suspected.” (Evidences: Part If. the truth :—“ Zeno the stoic, and | ch. ii.) 396 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. Even Plato, with all his high-mindedness, recommended, as we have seen, a community of women. Mohammed is believed by some to have been a sincere reformer; but the highest that can be said of him is, that in certain points he aimed at the Christian model, while in others he fell infinitely beneath it. “His licentious transgressions of his own licentious rules ; his abuse of the character which he assumed, and of the power which he had acquired, for the purposes of personal and privi- leged indulgence ; his avowed claim of a special permission from heaven, of unlimited sensuality, is known to every reader, as it is confessed by every writer of the Moslem story.” But no vice that has a name can be thought of in connexion with Jesus Christ. Ingenious malignity looks in vain for the faintest trace of self-seeking in His motives ; sensuality shrinks abashed from His celestial purity ; falsehood can leave no stain upon Him who is incarnate truth ; injustice is forgotten beside His errorless equity ; the very possibility of avarice is swallowed up in His benignity and love; the very idea of ambition is lost in His Divine wisdom and Divine self-abnegation. “This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased ;” such was the testimony of God concerning Him. “He hath done all things well ;” such was the fond and wondering attestation of men that they could require no more of Him. To enumerate the {features of His moral grandeur would be to catalogue perfection, | His virtues are those of Him in whom all virtues meet. What single moral excellence can be named of which He was not a type ? Now of this unparalleled phenomenon we call on our oppo- nents to give some account. Great is the miracle of Christ’s works ; still greater is the miracle of His teaching ; but the miracle of His Life is greatest of all, His enemies cannot deny it: CAN THEY ACCOUNT FOR IT? Jesus of Nazareth has become—as even they who do not believe in Him allow—* the great turning point in the world’s history.”* And is it regarding Him that the advancing science, the erudite scepticism of our day has to confess that it knows not what to make of what He was, or what He said, or what Se eee eee * Horler “On Faith and Knowledge in Religion.” p. 46. » — —— el ee eee MANIFESTATION OF THE INVISIBLE, 397 He did? Is it before Him that it must “silently stand as before an, eternal problem?”* This hopeless confusion, this helpless impotence, is surely a pitiful and ignominious result for an electicism which superciliously affects to do without the Bible! Not such the attitude of those who know in whom they have believed. Not so have they learned Christ. They know that “in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.” In His incomparable glory they recognise “the glory as of the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” In the incarnation, the life and death of the Saviour of men, they perceive the distinguishing glory of Christianity—the design to reveal to all mankind “'THE GLORY OF GOD IN THE FACE OF JESUS CHRIST.” I call this “the distinguishing glory of Christianity.” For “God is a Spirit:” where He acts, there only can we see Him. He is the omnipresent Power, the inconceivable Goodness, which we can never see, and never know, except so far as He shall manifest himself by his doings. Does He desire to impress us with the idea of His power? Then He launches His lightnings across the heavens, or shakes the continents by His unseen hand. Then “ Far along From peak to peak, the rattling crags among, Leaps the live thunder! ” Does He wish to beam upon us in love? What can be more expressive than the summer sunset, with the thousand nameless tints and hues which gives its expression of peace and hap- piness to the landscape, ‘¢ When day with farewell beam delays Among the opening clouds of even, And we can almost think we gaze Through golden vistas into heaven?” If He would make us acquainted with His benevolence and skill, He contrives some mechanism which exhibits them. He constructs an eye or a hand, so filled with ingenious con- * Ibid. p. 47. 398 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. trivances for our benefit that we may be centuries in exploring their mysterious wonders, and yet not learn them all. How can He give us some conception of His Infinite Understanding? He can plan the motions of the planets, and so exactly balance their opposing forces, that thousands of years shall not accu- mulate the slightest error, or disturb the unchanging precision of their way. But the great question is yet to come. How can such a Being exhibit the moral principle by which His mighty energies are all controlled? How shall he exhibit to us the moral beauty of justice, and benevolence, and mercy, between man and man? How shall He convince us of His desire that suffering should be mitigated, and injuries forgiven, and universal peace and good-will reign among the members of the great human family? Can He do this by the earthquake or the thunder, by the loveliness of the evening landscape, or the magnificence of countless suns and stars? No. He might declare His moral attributes as He might have declared His power ; but if He would bring home to us the one, as vividly and distinctly as the other, He must use the same means; we must see Him (where only we can see Him) in action; He must act out His moral principles by a moral manifestation, in a moral scene; and the great beauty of Christianity is, that it represents Him as doing so. “No man hath seen God at any time: The Only Begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, HE hath declared Him.” He brings out the purity, and spotlessness, and moral glory of the Divinity, through the workings of a human mind, called into existence for this purpose, and stationed in a most con- spicuous attitude among men. In the movements of a planet, the energy of the Deity shews us such powers and principles as majestic motion can shew; and in the moral movements of a mind in which the energies of Deity equally mingle, and which they equally guide, we have the far more important manifesta- tion which the movements of thought and feeling can shew.” “ Without some direct manifestation of the Deity in the spiritual world, the display of His character would be fatally incomplete ; and it is a beautiful illustration of the more than harmony which exists between nature and revelation, that the latter does thus, in precise analogy, exactly complete what the former had THE GREAT EXEMPLAR. 399 begun.” * Thus the moral perfections of Divinity are exhibited to us in the only way by which (so far as we can see) it 1s pos- sible directly to shew them; by coming out in action, in the very field of human duty, by a mysterious union with a human intellect and human powers. The moral phenomenon displayed before the world in the Person of Jesus Christ is no longer a dark enigma: it is “GoD MANIFEST IN THE FLESH;” the visible moral embodiment of an all-pervading moral Deity, Himself for ever invisible. Nor is this all. Jesus Christ stands forth before the world not more to be admired and revered than to be imitated. He is “The Light of the world,” not more as its Great Teacher than as its Great Exemplar. He appears not only as The Perfect Man, but as The Perfect Model for all mankind. In that He was “holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners,” He has shown us the “ beauty of holiness ;” in ‘“leav- ing us an example, that we should tread in His steps,” He has shown us how the servant may be “as his Master,” and the disciple as his Lord. In the one we have the peculiar glory, and in the other the peculiar perfectness, of that Religion which He came to illustrate and to teach. It is a principle universally recognised, that to give theory without practice, or precept without example, is but labour lost. If therefore even He who is almighty designed to give a perfect and final system of instruction to mankind, it could be done only by placing in their midst a perfect human nature ; a Being who would not only give perfect precepts, but also a complete and perfect practical illustration of them. The conduct of an angel, however perfect, would not be (for us) exemplary. Man must see the discharge of his duties, as man, exemplified in his own nature. Human nature can be perfected in no other way than by the imitation of a perfect model of human nature. But with the perfect rule of duty in his hand, and a perfect model character before him, man possesses a Sys- tem of instruction perfectly adapted to his nature, and adapted to perfect his nature. That perfect model character is Jesus Christ. He came from PR ee gigs ete spe ee i i le 5See Abbott’s “Corner Stone,” ch. 1. 400 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. heaven to earth, that the tabernacle of God might be with men. He assumed human nature, that He might be “able to have compassion on them that are ignorant and them that are out of the way.” He expounded and illustrated the Divine Law in human language ; showed its spiritual import, and applied it to the different circumstances and conditions of human life. He cleared it of those false glosses of ignorance and prejudice by which its lustre had been dimmed. He modified or re- scinded those permissions which were accommodated to the darkness of former times, and the imperfections of the Jewish system ; and then by applications the most striking and defi- nite, he shewed the bearing of this perfect rule of duty upon all the varieties of human action. He did more than all this. For while He thus defined and applied the absolutely perfect Moral Law, His whole life was a continual illustration of its unrivalled excellence. He conform- ed Himself to all its requirements. He fulfilled all righte- ousness. He magnified the Law, and made it honourable. Whether adding to the gladness of the marriage feast, or miti- gating the sorrow of the bereaved ; whether borne along on the high-tide of popularity, or forsaken by His last friend ; He is still our pattern, still The Perfect Man! Thus, in all places and under all circumstances, wherever any of earth’s children are called to act, Jesus, the model Man, is seen living and moving before them—in the world, but “not of the world ”— and His voice falls upon their ear, not more with the cadence of authority than of encouragement—“ FoLLow Mr!” * From this explanation of the fact however, we revert to the fact itself. We ask our opponents for some account of it. They are philosophers (!), they will therefore not deny that so august an Effect must have an adequate Cause. The Scriptural ac- count of the matter is natural, consistent, and complete. Theirs must not be less so. But accounted for or not, the fact remains. In Jesus Christ we see a mind never allured by folly, or deranged by passion, or impeded by sloth: We see a physical frame which no guilty indulgence had impaired, and a countenance bright with its expression of intelligence and * See “Philosophy of Salvation,” ch. x. p. 77. THE CARDINAL FACT OF HISTORY. 401 energy, yet beaming with kindness and love. We see the perfection ef human nature; the carrying out of all that God originally intended in the creation of man. But why? How is it that among the millions upon millions of mankind, this has been the only spotless One? How is it that He alone has walked in purity, never sinned, never sought selfishly His own, never given unnecessary pain, never done an injury, or uttered an impatient word, or struck a blow in anger, or harboured a feeling of revenge? He stands before the world a glorious monument of perfect virtue ; the more glorious as it is solitary. No other nation, or kindred, or people, or clime, ever furnished such a case, or pretended to furnish one. Among the endless fables of ancient, or the proud pretensions of modern times, no historian, or mythologist, no priest, prophet, or philosopher, has ever pretended to find a spotless man. The whole world with- draws its pretensions. Every system of religion, and every school of philosophy stand back from this field, and leave Jesus Christ alone, the solitary example of perfect moral purity, in the midst of a world lying in sin. In this great cardinal fact alone we have irrefragable proof of the Truth of Christianity. We need nothing more to make it indubitably certain that Jesus Christ is “a Teacher come from God:” and that “Gop ... HATH in these last days SPOKEN UNTO US BY His Son.” CC CHAPTER XIV. It IS CERTAIN: THAT THE TESTIMONY OF CHRIST TO THE TRUTH OF CHRISTIANITY RECEIVES IRRESISTIBLE FORCE FROM THE PERFECTION OF HIS CHARACTER. ‘Tf Gop has not spoken and acted through Curist, then there never has been a Gop who hath acted and spoken.””—LavaTer. LET us now inquire—What does history inform us that Christ said for Himself ? In the fourth, third, and second centuries of our era, we find the adversaries of Christianity (Julian, Porphyry, Celsus,) all referring to Christ as having professed Himself able to work miracles. They endeavoured to represent these miracles as an exhibition of magical arts; but they never thought of doubting that Christ said He was endowed with miraculous power. : The Talmudical literature, commencing in the second century, also gives prominence to Christ’s alleged miracles. The later Jews, according to the account of Mr. Baden Powell himself, adopted the account of one of their own writers, in which Christ’s miracles are described substantially as they are now found in the Gospels. Here then we have one clearly indubitable fact. The portrait of Christ, as projected on the mirror of profane history, is the portrait of a professed worker of miracles. But the well known (subjoined) passage from Tacitus presents us with most important information of a still earlier date.* The *“ But neither these exertions, | away with the infamous imputa- nor his largesses to the people, | tion under which Nero lay, of hay- nor his offerings to the gods, did | ing ordered the city to be set on TESTIMONY OF TACITUS. 403 historical character of this passage is undisputed. “The most sceptical criticism,” says Gibbon, whose authority in such a case is absolutely conclusive, “is obliged to respect the integrity of this celebrated passage of Tacitus.” This testimony of Tacitus then puts these facts beyond doubt :— That a religious sect which had originated in remote Judea, a land held in contempt and detestation throughout the civilised world of antiquity, had become in Nero’s time a “vast multi- tude” in the city of Rome. That this sect took the name of Christ: They were Christians. That the Christians retained their designation, and adhered to Christ, in the midst of intense and inhuman hatred. So obnoxious were they to the inhahit- ants of Rome, that it was advantageous to Nero to put them to death, on an accusation notoriously false, in a manner diabolically cruel. It must therefore be concluded that The Person, named _ Christ, after whom these Christians called themselves, had fire. To put an end, therefore, to this report, he laid the guilt, and inflicted the most cruel punish- ments upon a set of men, hated for their wickedness, who were commenly called Christians. The author of that sect was Christ, who, in the reign of Tiberius, suffered death by sentence of the procurator, Pontius Pilate. ‘This pernicious superstition, thus checked for a time, again broke out, not only in Judea, the nest of the mischief, but in the city also, whither all atrocious and scandalous things flow, and where all flourish. At first, those only were apprehended, who confessed themselves of that sect; afterwards a vast multitude discovered by them, all of whom were condemn- ed, not so much for the crime of burning the city, as for their enmity tomankind. Their execu- tions were so contrived as to ex- pose them to derision and con- tempt. Some were covered with the skins of wild beasts, that they might be torn to pieces; some were crucified; while others hav- ing been daubed over with com. bustible materials were set up as lights in the night time, and thus burnt to death. For these spec- tacles Nero gave his own gardens, and, at the same time, exhibited there the diversions of the circus, sometimes standing in the crowd as a spectator, in the habit of a charioteer, and at other times driving a chariot himself, until at length these men, though really criminal, and deserving exemplary punishment, began to be commis- erated, as people who were des- troyed, not out of regard to the public welfare, but only to gratify the cruelty of one man.” (Tacit. Annal., xv. 44.) 404 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. stamped upon them His influence with tremendous potency and vivid distinctness. Now this Person—for whose sake this “vast multitude” endured contempt, detestation, ferocious cruelty—the Person whose influence had extended, not through a district or a parish, . but from the remotest outskirt of Rome’s dominion to the capital of the empire—had been dead considerably less than forty years. And as the sect took His name, found in His name their definite and comprehensive characterization, and shrank from no suffering for His sake, it is absolutely certain that they would seek to know as much of Him as possible, and would do their best to retain the memory of His words and sayings. What advantages had they for attaining this object ? Let the answer be solemnly and earnestly weighed. Every man who had passed the age of thirty-five when Nero was putting to death that “vast multitude” of Christians, had been a co- temporary of Christ. This, too, in an age when memory was in all its freshness, and when thirty-five years stood for a far shorter period in the chronology of mind than in our hurrying, excited, changeful days. The Jews, too, were a wandering people: and it is not difficult to conceive of causes urging men who had mingled in Christ’s audiences to quit Judea, It is therefore in the highest degree improbable that there were not among the Christians of Rome to whom in Nero’s time Christ was dearer than life, some, if not many, who had seen and heard Him. But the fact that a vast multitude believed in Christ, in Rome, in Nero’s time, demonstrates that multitudes believed on Him also in other parts of the empire; and the intensity of Christian faith in Rome would be more than a fair test of its intensity in other places, including Judea. In brief, the words and deeds of Christ were of infinite concern to mul- titudes in the land of His activity, and in the centre of the intelligence of the world, while millions of His cotemporaries were alive. It was a serious matter for a Christian in the time of Nero to have made a mistake about Christ. Unless the crucified “malefactor’” was what Christians at this day believe Him to have been, death by burning in the form of a torch at a public game would have been a terrific misfortune. Man’s sovereign passion, the passion for truth, would in such THE GOSPELS. 405 circumstances come into play. What Christ said and did would be of more practical and earnest interest than a pretty or pathetic tale concerning Him. And if the Christian who was to seal his profession in a death of studied torments, pre- ferred truth touching Christ to fancy, there were thousands, there were hundreds of thousands, of Christ’s cotemporaries alive to whom reference might be made. Turning now from Tacitus to those Christians of whom he speaks, we find, at the earliest period when their own voice - becomes audible in history, that they have four records of the life of Christ to which they attach supreme importance. These are the Evangelical narratives we now possess. They are referred to by the early Christians, as containing in pure and authentic form what they knew of Christ. They are collections of sayings, discourses, and occurrences, which could not have been heard and seen without leaving a vivid impression on the memory ; and they are preserved with the amber-like clearness and crystalline decision with which the mind in an unreading age retains intense impressions. “ Christ committed nothing to manuscript, but those parables, radiant with beauty, those thoughts penetrating to the heart’s heart of every subject, those flashes of moral insight which light up the soul’s inmost caverns with the candle of God, were an ineffaceable writing traced upon the memory of His generation. In Evangelist after Evangelist those-things recur. There is just enough of diversity to obviate all idea of collusion ; there is that manifest identity which proves the impression, though made on many minds, to have been so well marked and profound, that any play of imagination about its keen edges was impossible.”* In a word, there is that which—apart from the incidental corrob- oration furnished by Tacitus, Josephus, and others,—is amply sufficient to convince any reasonable mind that the words and acts of Christ, imprinted on the evangelical narratives, are irrefragably historical. a T= ie a ere eee eros ere ay ee er) On a * Pp, Bayne: from whose mas- | ment of this chapter has been, terly work, “The Testimony of | for the most part, freely con- Christ to Christianity,” the argu- | densed. 406 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. What, then, is Christ’s testimony to His own religion ? What is the proof He offers that it is Divine ? We have its compendious statement in His own ctl John Baptist had been thrown into prison. Naturally per- plexed at such an interruption of his ministry, and probably expecting some intervention of Jesus on his behalf, he sent messengers to Christ to ask, point-blank, whether He was the Messiah or not. ‘Jesus answered and said unto them, Go and shew John again those things which ye do hear and see: The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me.” These words are dis- tinct and explicit. They are related with close coincidence by Matthew and Luke ; the occurrence which called them forth is one likely to have happened; they exactly suit its circum- stances ; and they are such as could not fail to have impressed themselves on the minds of the hearers. We may be as sure of their having been uttered by Christ as if our own ears had heard them. In the evidence here adduced by Christ himself that He was the Messiah of God, two things are broadly discriminated : first, possession of miraculous power ; second, proclamation of good tidings to the poor. In other words, Christ claimed Divine authority, because armed with Divine power, and preaching a gospel of Divine mercy and holiness. It is with the first of these two that our present argument is chiefly concerned ; yet its relation to the second ought never to be overlooked. The truth concerning Christ’s miracles, as taught practically in deed, and expressly in word, by Himself, is not to be clearly and fully apprehended at a first hasty glance. It is a truth whose line is traced with Divine precision by the finger of the Saviour between the falsehood of two opposing extremes: that of the power-worshippers, on the one hand, and that of the power-despisers, on the other; that of those who view miracles as the sole attestation of a Divine mission, and that of those who extenuate their evidential force, and pronounce them mere teaching by example. CHRIST’S VIEW OF MIRACLES. 407 It is certain, first of all, that Christ never spoke of miraculous power asa mechanical, sensible test, by which He was pre- pared to ewtort belief in His mission. The devil asked Him to perform a miracle in proof of His divinity ; the Jews demanded a sign that He was the Son of God: in both cases He refused compliance. “An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign, and there shall no sign be given it.” ‘ Except ye see signs and wonders ye will not believe.” It is, in the second place, equally certain, that Christ ex- pressly, deliberately, consciously asserted His possession of miraculous power. This fact is equally important and undeni- able. Miracles are no brilliant embroidery wrought on the plain web of the evangelical narrative: they pervade it, warp and woof, There is miracle at Christ’s birth and at His baptism ; His ministry is replete with miracle; it is amid the sublime terrors of miracle that’He dies: and He rises miracu- lously into the sky when returning to heaven, From His own lips we have the declaration that He raised the dead: and if . anything is known of Christ at all, it is known that He broadly and distinctly asserted His possession of miraculous power. In the third place, it is beyond question that Christ attached a strictly evidential character to His miraculous works. The sceptre of God’s creative power is not so holy or so august as the word of His mouth ; but it is sacred and august, and it can be borne only in the hand to which God commits it. Christ referred to His mighty works as aggravating the guilt of the cities which rejected, and the men who reviled Him. He did more. He solemnly declared those works to be God’s testimony in His behalf: “My Father which sent Me, He doeth the works.” Now, every hypothesis that Christ was not the Messiah sent from God, must admit of being classed under one of three heads ;—imposture, delusion, or a mixture of the two. Sceptics have put their ingenuity to the utmost strain to invest these various and conflicting hypotheses with some show of plausi- bility ; but the gist of all such theories comes to this—that Christ was a singular type of the moral enthusiast ; that He deceived Himself as well as others; that, when consciously deceitful, the fraud was pious ; and that, after all deductions are 408 - CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. made on account of what his age, nation, and circumstances led him into, he will remain worthy of respect and admiration. In examining the validity of these suppositions, it is to be observed that the third has no place whatever, independent of the other two. It is as to the existence of these two therefore that our inquiry must be directed. There can be no blending of both if either is wanting. Was Christ of weak mind? Was He capable of falsehood? Was He capable of deceiving, or of being deceived? These two are the only suppositions pos- sible to those who reject His testimony. Is there, for either of them, any foundation in fact ? I, Was Curist’s TESTIMONY MISTAKEN ? 1, It is freely granted that the influence of religious enthu- siasm is strange and subtle, and that most religious ¢postors have been self-deceived. But on the other hand it is a notable fact that honest and manly characters, though inflamed in the - highest degree with religious enthusiasm, have not been be- trayed into the fancy that they possessed miraculous power. Mohammed, in a barbarous age, among a barbarous people, was a most vehement enthusiast ; but he was never deluded into the belief that he could work miracles. He expressly declared that he could not.* Edward Irving was a most remarkable enthusiast. He believed implicitly in the visions and revelations of the enthusiasts by whom he was surrounded. But he was an upright man. Even in his aberrations he was a powerfully- minded man. The result was that, while wondering that privileges were not vouchsafed to him similar to those of the persons in whom he believed, he never imagined that he was supernaturally gifted or visited. Was Christ’s enthusiasm, then, so uncontrollable, or His intellectual faculty so weak, that he was beguiled into delusions from which common sense guarded Mohammed and Edward Irving? Was His mind go strangely clouded, so hotly imaginative, that He believed Him- ap E.g., “Signs are in the power | has noted fifteen other places in of God alone, and I am no more | which, with more or less explicit- than a public preacher.” (Sale’s | ness, Mohammed makes the same Koran, c. xxix. p. 828.) Paley | admission. (Evid. ch. ix. sect. iii.) CHRIST’S TEMPERAMENT. : 4.09 self—not to have seen a vision or heard a voice, not to have healed one or two sick persons or calmed one or two maniacs, but—to have cured blindness, deafness, lameness, leprosy, for years, by word or touch ; to have walked on the sea; to have fed large multitudes with a few loaves and fishes; to have dried up a tree with His rebuke ; to have, on several occasions, recalled the dead to life? The answer is, that the Christ who laid claim to all this possessed the most clear, balanced, serene, and comprehensive intellect known to history. 2. The temperament of Christ was of the kind specially opposed to enthusiasm. Personally pure and passionless, his soul was celestially free from sensual taint; and His religion is, accordingly, the least sensual of all religions. But this very purity—this heaven-like spirituality of mind—lays one open to another danger, the danger of asceticism. It is a danger so subtle and so potent, that no religious development known among men has escaped both the sensual snare and the ascetic. Between these false extremes, all earth-born religions, and all corrupt forms of the Divine religion, have oscillated. But Christ was no more an ascetic than a sensualist. He set His brand upon polygamy, but gave no encouragement to celibacy. His manner of life was broadly and healthily human. He par- took of the natural enjoyments of others. He provided wine for a marriage feast. He sympathized with music and dancing to welcome back prodigals. He provoked the sneer of -His enemies that He ‘came eating and drinking.” It was a robust virtue that He taught, a virtue with foot firmly planted on the earth, a virtue arrayed in battle harness and stained with battle dust. Things appeared to Him in their true relations, through the clear eye of sense. This is of all dispositions the least liable to: delusion. The coincidence of such a disposition, with the imagination of pos- sessing power to raise the dead and to create food for multi- tudes, would be a more singular effect than the creation of a world. The human mind absolutely fails to conceive it. Jesus Christ was no shrieking fanatic, no dreaming visionary ; His yea was yea, His nay, nay; His every perception was steady, clear, and calm. When He told the messengers of John that 410 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. He raised the dead, He knew what He was saying, as well as the most scientific head of the nineteenth century. 3. Remark, next, with what lofty and comprehensive dis- cernment Christ rose above the erroneous ideas formed by His own disciples of His kingdom and His work. That kingdom, He said, came not with observation. It was to penetrate the mass of the world like leaven ; it was to grow silently, gradu- ally, as a tree; it was to use no weapon taken from the armouries of earth. ‘Noman who has devoted any attention to psychological or biographical inquiries can fail to perceive that this conception, formed in an age like that in which Christ appeared, involved an exhibition of intellectual power unexampled in history. It is sublime—infinitely sublime. This Jewish peasant, wandering with a few poor mechanics about the inland seas and bordering wildernesses of Judea, homeless as the bird of the air, and the fox of the hill, His meagre retinue forced sometimes to appease their hunger by rubbing out the ears of corn, rises to an apprehension of moral and spiritual power transcending infinitely that of the rulers, the priests, the teachers of His nation, and of all the sages and philosophers of His time. This Jewish peasant looks upon the glories of antiquity, upon the mighty edifice of ancient civilization, and is placidly, immovably assured that the words of truth spoken by His mouth in remote Palestine will smite its pinnacles with the fire of God, and strike down its cloud- capped towers, and of all the fabric of its vision leave not a wreck behind.” * 4. Then again, the Christ of the Gospels is eminently shrewd and cool-minded. The halo of moral light which surrounds Him obscures to us the robustness, the sharp-cutting vigour, the solidity, the acuteness, the adroitness, of His purely human understanding. His Gospel was the Gospel of love, but He was not in the least sentimental :—witness the parables of the talents, the vineyard labourers, and the unjust steward. 5. Observe also, with what a fine, keen, discrimination He deals with different minds. Christ’s mode of treating diver- sities of character is a complete psychological study. The * Bayne. CHRIST’S INTELLECTUAL CHARACTER. 41] deepest root of motive is as clear to Him as the topmost flower of action. Those who believe that He was the Son of God, and that he had a supernatural insight into the heart, may see little wonderful in His “knowing what was 77 men.” But those who believe that He was a moralizing doctor, be- wildered into a notion that His cures were miraculous, are bound to account for His perspicacity on the hypothesis that He was deluded in the matter of His supernatural power. 6. Another series of illustrations of the calm perspicacity of the intellect of Christ, is afforded by His answers to those who approached Him with false and insidious questions. But per- haps the most rare, and so to speak, original quality of the Saviour’s intellect is its many-sidedness ; the habit and capacity of seeing a fact or a truth on every side and in every light. No condemnation so stern as His for the ostentation of the hypocrite; but He forgets not that though villany may take the mask of virtue, virtue must still wear her frank smile and open brow, and commands His disciples to “let their light shine before men.” He enjoins the wisdom of the serpent ; He has no regard for devout maundering and pious inepti- tude: but the wisdom He enjoins must be combined with the harmlessness of the dove. He denounces the substitution of scrupulous exactness in paying tithe of mint and anise and cummin, for the weightier matters of the law, justice, mercy, and faith: but He leaves no opening for the idea that tender conscientiousness is to be despised: ‘These ought ye to have done, and not to have left the other undone.” In a word, His eye embraces the balancings of the clouds and the courses of the heavens ; yet it sees also the shadow cast by the daisy on the stone. . 7. One other characteristic of Christ, not to be classed ex- elusively with either the intellectual or moral powers, but tempering and beautifying both, was His habit of dwelling affectionately on the aspects of nature. It may fairly be doubted whether any man retaining the child-love for green fields and morning flowers, has ever been consciously and in- veterately bad. But in its noble form this love of nature is eminently a trait of Christian times. Paganism did not tone the mind finely enough for sympathy with nature’s poetry. 412 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. “T do not know,” says Mr. Ruskin, “ that of the expressions of affection towards external nature to be found among heathen writers, there are any of which the leading thought leans not towards the sensual parts of her. Her beneficence they sought, and her power they shunned; her teaching they understood never.” For a Christian man, on the other hand, “it is not possible,” says the same great writer, “to walk across so much as a rood of the natural earth, with mind unagitated and rightly poised, without receiving strength and hope from some stone, flower, leaf, or sound, nor without a sense of a dew falling upon him out of the sky.” Now, the Person who introduced this finer influence into life, this gentler music into civilization, was Jesus Christ. He it was who exalted our whole conceptions of nature by habitually associating it with the spiritual instruction of man. He made the wind God’s minister to raise the mind of Nicodemus to a conception of the Spirit’s influence ; He quickened the Christian energies of His disciples by pointing to the fields whitening to harvest ; He marked the fluttering wings over the stony up- lands round the Galilean lake, and drew a warning for the frivolous and the fickle in all ages from the devouring of the seed by the birds, and the withering of the shallow-rooted corn. Yet while nature, in its beauty and hallowed suggestive- ness, was ever present with Christ, He shewed no trace of the ecstacy of mere indolent contemplation. He never paused to lay on the colours of the scene painter. Nature He viewed as made for man ; her illuminated lettering He used to impress upon man the lessons of Divine wisdom ; the lilies of the field were to be considered, in their monitions to humility, in their lessons of trust in God, in their gentle yet most expressive satire on regal glory and gorgeous apparel. All this attests a state of perfect mental health, a settled calm of power and peace, a still and placid elevation of soul, infinitely beyond reach of any cloud or any wind by which the clearness of the intellectual eye might be dimmed or its calm- ness, in the slightest degree, disturbed. II. Was CHRIsT’s TESTIMONY FALSE ? To this question there can be but one answer: The thing is CHRIST’S TESTIMONY TRUE. 413 impossible! Nothing in the world is more certain than that Christ “did no sin; neither was guile found in His mouth.” To the facts adduced in the preceding chapter however, I shall here add no more than a single observation specially worthy the attention of our opponents. Christ’s entire conception of His Messiahship is that of a moral and spiritual, not a material work. The Deliverer expected by His age and country was one who should be like the old deliverers, a man of war. They looked for a conquering Messiah, crested with victory, to bow down the necks of their enemies. They thought His miraculous power would be used to smite down opposing hosts. They were perplexed to see Him working miracles, and yet refusing to be made a king, But He—through the innumerable obstructions and obscura- tions of the time—penetrated to the central and eternal truth, that healing for a nation can only be of the soul, the conscience, the character. He rested everything upon moral renovation. The Sermon on the Mount, indubitably historical, places this for ever beyond doubt. Take away the moral element of Christ’s teaching, and what remains? The whole has vanished. False religions turn entirely on ceremonies and performances ; His was spirit and truth—and nothing else. “Can we con- ceive a teacher whose doctrine was thus profoundly and persuasively moral, binding it up with a falsehood? The Jews looked for signs and wonders: true ; but Christ confronted prejudices and prepossessions of the nation every whit as powerful as this, and why should He give way here alone?” Miracles increased the power of His preaching: doubtless ; but He could refuse to gratify the vague longing to seeasign. If ever there was a teacher who would have dispensed with miracles unless they were true, that teacher was Jesus Christ. And yet this Jesus, who defines the devil as “a liar,” who has the clearest consciousness that a lie is the very escence of evil, tells the Jews that God the Father witnesses for Him ; the form of that witness being the mighty works done by Him. “Were those mighty works a deception? Did the words in which Christ searched into motive and pierced the subtlest hypocrisy go like daggers through His own heart? That is the question, There is no evading it. History has heard of no AT 4 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. Christ who was not a miracle-worker. Jews and disciples, Christians and infidels, Matthew and Luke, Celsus and J ulian, all know Christ as one who constantly, and for years, declared Himself able to raise the dead. Can human conception embrace the very thought that He was lying? No! The conscience and the intellect of the race start back appalled at the imagin- ation of a miracle so stupendous. The crushing of all the stars into powder in one grasp of God’s hand would not be such a miracle,” Besides all this, we have the attestation of Christ’s truthful- ness furnished by His death. His crucifixion was an infinitely solemn ratification of all He had asserted. “It is impossible to read the narrative of the Saviour’s trial, and to observe the calmness and clearness of His answers, without feeling that every occurrence of His ministry must have then lain under the perspicuous glance of His recollection. At that moment, He must have been distinctly conscious that He had professed to raise the dead, to still the tempest, to create food for multi- tudes, to open the eyes of those born blind. In the glare of confronting death, how completely would He have felt every plausible sophistry of pious fraud, every fond delusion of im- agined power, to be shrivelled up! But He never faltered. He was what He had declared Himself to be from the begin- ning. When He was weak as a lamb in the hands of its des- troyer, when the arm of His Father was restrained, when no angel-hand was present to wipe His blood-stained brow, His faith that he had bid the winds be still, and the dead start up alive, was as firm as when the multitudes cast their garments in His way, and hailed Him as the King of Israel, coming in the name of the Lord. That-is a fact—a plain historical fact. Four witnesses attest this attitude of Christ before his accusers, and the wildest credulity of scepticism must shrink from the idea that four men have existed in this world who could have drawn four such pictures as that of Christ in His trial and crucifixion, if there had been no original for the portrait, no actuality for the occurrence. And if Christ died as the Evan- gelists represent Him as dying, can words be found strong enough to express the confirmation thus afforded to all He had previously declared ?” SCEPTICAL THEORISTS. A15 III. This then is our case: and our opponents have utterly failed to meet it. Christ was no deceiver; His works showed Him to be “ God that cannot lie: ” and we have it on His own words, that He raised the dead. We call on our opponents— on their own principles—to account for the facts which they themselves admit. Fichte, the noblest representative of recent pantheistic speculation in Germany, a man of superb intel- lectual vigour, and impassioned devotion to truth and purity, bore Christ the highest testimony which it is possible for a German metaphysician to bear to any one. Jesus Christ, ac- cording to Fichte, was carried by the mere purity and elevation of His character into that region of transcendental and eternal morality, to which a few other minds have risen only after long philosophic study and musing. He, a Jewish peasant, did more than all the philosophers in bringing heavenly morality into the hearts and homes of common men. The philosophers had sects and coteries ; His followers were nations and genera- tions. Yet Fichte never confronted the question, How this Jesus, whose stainless moral character made Him the repre- sentative of purified humanity, could have falsely asserted that He had raised the dead, and fed five thousand on some morsels of bread and fish ? Goethe was the universal genius of modern Germany, and is believed by many to have been the greatest man who has appeared in Europe for several centuries. He calls Christ “the Divine man,” and represents Him as the pattern, example, and model of humanity. No thinker of the first order, since Goethe, has dissented from his estimate of Christ’s moral char- acter. Mr. Carlyle, his great follower in this country, has always referred to it in terms of profound reverence. The life of the Saviour is, in his view, a “perfect ideal Poem.” “The greatest of all heroes,” he says, “is One whom we do not name here!” He invariably mentions Christ as One who stood so far above common humanity, that com- mon men might not unnaturally bow down to worship Him ; yet when we press for an answer to the question how this ideal Man got mixed up with such “ incredibilities ” as feeding five thousand on a few loaves and fishes, walking on the sea, raising the dead,—when we exclaim that the imputa- = 416 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.’ tion to Him of honesty only darkens the enigma of His char- acter if He was not what His disciples believed Him,—Mr. Carlyle is dumb. And no wonder. His very silence is more eloquent than M. Renan’s speech. For what is Renan’s own theory? Even he cannot withstand the conviction that Jesus is the perfect model of humanity. He pronounces over Him this apotheosis : “Repose now in Thy glory, noble initiator. Thy work is achieved ; Thy divinity is established. . . . Between Thee and God distinctions shall be made no more.” But this Divine Being, the Being who is inseparable from God Himself, pro- fessed to work miracles. And the exigencies of Renan’s hypothesis inexorably demand that miracles should be branded as impostures. What then is to be done? How will the critic evade the dilemma of his own creation? He cannot evade it, except by consenting to accuse his paragon of artifice, and to bring in “the model Man” guilty of imposture! Why even Mr. Newman’s theory, astounding and shocking as it is, incon- ceivable and incredible to every one but himself, is at all events more consistent than this. Yet this most monstrous doctrine is the very best that can be propounded by the most ingenious and eloquent of sceptics! “A false Messiah is proclaimed to be the Elect of God, in whom His soul delighteth. The highest Throne of Heaven is in league with iniquity: and the casting out of Satan by Satan becomes the Divine programme of the universe. A more hopeless chaos than the character of Renan’s imaginary Christ no artist ever mistook fora creation.”* “We have read,” says an able writer on this subject, “ We have read every word of M. Renan’s book: we have weighed it as impartially, as we should think, any thorough believer can weigh it; and our deliberate judgment is, that as a defence of scepticism, in spite of its freshness and cleverness, it is an utter failure. He cannot show how it is that the Gospels can be worthy of implicit credit in all parts where they do not testify to the supernatural, but that where they do they are puerile and wholly false. He cannot show how Jesus could be a wise *See the admirable “Charge” | his Second Visitation: June 30, of The Ven. Archdeacon Prest, at | 1864. NON-BELIEF AT A STAND-STILL. 417 and kind man, worthy of the honour of all mankind, if he were not the Christ of God.” ° The truth is, that after nearly two thousand years, those who refuse to ‘have Christ for their King have not succeeded in ex- plaining the enigma of His life. Not only are they not agreed as to the explanation of this enigma ; but against the Christian explanation of the life and character of Christ there is no infidel theory, to the very principle and essence of which infidels profess agreement. The infidel theories of the last century have been dust under the feet of infidels in the present. It may be | doubted whether any sceptical theory has held undisputed sway / among unbelievers in Christianity for ten years. Theory after theory has emerged ; theory after theory has been greeted with exultant welcome by men who had made up their minds to | reject Christ; and theory after theory, fluttermg aloft for a} brief space, like a moth in the wind, has been borne away for ever. What Isaac Taylor said a year or two ago is still strictly true :—“ There is not, so far as I know, at this time afloat any accepted and available non-Christian solution of the enigma regarding the origin of Christianity ; non-belief at this moment has come to a stand-still.” The heart of the enigma lies in the life and character of Christ. And the problem presented by that life and character, infidelity has utterly failed to solve. Still, the great fact remains. The only Christ known to history, broadly, constantly, deliberately, asserted His power to heal the sick, cure the blind, raise the dead. If He did not say that He possessed this power, we may shut up the volume of history, since it can certify no fact ; if He said it, can we imagine Him to have said it falsely? If He said it truly, was He not, and zs He not, the Son of God ? In conclusion, we may commend to our adversaries’ con- sideration their own admissions. “The history of Jesus Christ,” says Rousseau, “has marks of truth so palpable, so striking, and so perfectly inimitable, that its inventor would excite our admiration more than its hero.” To the same purpose, though still more forcible, is the testimony of Theodore Parker :—“< We * Christian Observer, vol. lxii. p. 781. DD 418, CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. can learn but few facts about Jesus. But measure Him by the shadow He has cast into the world, and by the light He has shed upon it, and shall we be told, that such a man never lived —that the whole story isa lie? Suppose that Plato and New- ton never lived; that their story is a lie; but who did their works, and thought their thoughts? It takes a Newton to forge a Newton. What man could have fabricated a Jesus ? None but a Jesus.” CHAPTER XV. IT IS CERTAIN: THAT THE OLD ARGUMENTS IN PROOF OF THE TRUTH OF CHRISTIANITY ARE NOT ANTIQUATED. THEY STILL REMAIN UNANSWERED. “The Bible emptied, effete, worn out! If all the wisest men of the world were placed man to man, they could not sound the shallowest depth of the Gospel of John. O philosophers! break the shell, and fly out, and let me hear how you can sing. Not of passion—I know that already; not of worldly power—I hear that everywhere; but teach me through your song, how to find joy in sorrow, strength in weakness, and light in darkest days; how to bear buffeting and scorn, how to welcome death, and to pass through its ministration into the sphere of life; and this, not for me only, but for the whole world that groans and travails in pain; and until you can do this, speak not to me of a better revelation.’—Henry Warp BrEcuer. Bruno BAukr, in his vain attempt to evade the Difficulties of Unbelief, has recently returned to the long exploded hypo- thesis which ascribes the Gospels to deliberate fabrication. Bishop Colenso tells us that the Pentateuch is not the work of Moses ; and that the book of Deuteronomy, at all events, is a forgery of the time of Jeremiah. These facts prove but too con- clusively that, in the estimation of these gentlemen and their adherents, the Bible is as completely destitute of an Inspiration specially supernatural and divine, as “any other book.’ Be it so, Our account of the matter is that “all Scripture ” was written by “holy men of God” who were specially and supernaturally “moved by the Holy Ghost” for this very purpose. Our opponents, on the contrary, affirm that there is no supernaturalism in the case, but that Scripture, equally with “any other book,” came “by the will of man.” On our view it is essentially divine: on theirs it is entirely human. Suppose we abandon our own view, and adopt theirs: what then? Then the writers are reduced to the level of other 420 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. writers: they are. merely ordinary men. But were they bad, or good men? To the argument we are now pursuing it is immaterial : but it is evident that they were either one or the other, But what follows? Take the first supposition :— I. Were the writers of the Bible bad men ? 1. The idea is inconceivable. For like produces like. “An evil man out of the treasure of his heart produces evil things.” But the excellence of the Bible is admitted on all hands as being beyond all comparison. It supplies the most perfect Rule of Duty. It furnishes the most illustrious examples of Moral Excellence. Its precepts cover the entire field of human obligation. Its motives are at once the purest and the strongest conceivable. “ Whatsoever things are true, whatso- ever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report ;” these are its themes from first to last. To suppose that the men who chose these themes were bad men, is it to suppose that “men gather grapes of thorns and figs of thistles !” For how—in the moral world, any more than in the natural—can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit? It is therefore certain that bad men could not have written these things, if they would. And when we further observe the severity of the condemnation which they uniformly pass upon everything unholy, we feel it to be equally certain that they would not thus have passed sentence upon. themselves, even if they could. The Writers of the Bible were therefore not bad men. 2. They were therefore good men. But being good men, they were true. Nothing can be more express or more emphatic than their “putting away lying,” their “renouncing the hidden things of dishonesty.” With them a lie is the very essence of evil; the Devil “is a liar:” and their highest commendation is reserved for the man “in whom is no guile.” Yet these good men, with whom truth is the first of all cardinal virtues—whose God is a “ God that cannot lie,” whose great attaimment is “Truth in the inward parts”—declare to usin the most positive manner that the words they wrote were not their own ; that they received them “from above;” that they were words which not “man’s MOSES. . LA | wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth.” They tell us how they were specially called, qualified and commis- sioned to go forth with the authoritative declaration, “THus SAITH THE LoRD!” Shall we receive their testimony? Shall we accept their witness as true? If so we must return to the old doctrine of Plenary Inspiration. Shall we reject it? Then we are aban- doning our own hypothesis. These men are not good, if they are not true. They are deceivers, forgers, liars, of the most determined kind. But this is impossible ! for we have already seen that the writers of the Bible could not have been bad men. What then? There is no other alternative: The Writers of the Bible were good men and true. They were therefore what they said they were ; 7. ¢., specially and Divinely Inspired. 3. I am of course perfectly aware that this argument is much too simple and unsophisticated to be very attractive to the ingenious transcendentalism of our opponents. Nor am I ignorant that for their dislike of it they may plead a stronger reason still, It is equally plain and unanswerable. The Bible is either of Divine Inspiration or of human invention. But good men neither would nor could make a book pretending to an authority they did not possess, saying “Thus saith the Lord,” when the Lord had said no such thing, and it was merely their own invention. Nor would bad men write a book which enjoins all duty, exalts all virtue, and passes the severest condemnation upon themselves. Since therefore the Bible is not the invention of men either good or bad, it is “ given by Inspiration of God.” To THIS SIMPLE ARGUMENT, intelligible to a child, OUR ADVERSARIES HAVE NEVER YET BEEN ABLE TO FIND AN ANSWER. II. 1. The perfectly unique character of the writings of Moses and Paul has been already noticed. But a further de- monstration of the divinity of their mission will be found in the character of the writers themselves. Thus Cellérier ob- serves, “ Every imposture has an object in view, and an aim more or less selfish, Men practise deceit for money, for pleasure, or for glory. If in order to procure the triumph of their own opinions or their own party, they do sometimes 422 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. deceive others, they may perhaps, forget their own interests during the struggle, but they again remember them when the victory is achieved. It is a general rule that no impostor forgets himself long. But Moses forgot himself, and forgot himself to the last. Yet there 1s no middle supposition. IF MOSES WAS NOT A DIVINELY INSPIRED MESSENGER, HE WAS AN IMPOSTOR IN THE STRONGEST SENSE OF THE TERM. It is not, as in the case of Numa, a slight and single fraud, de- signed to secure some good end, that we have to charge him with, but a series of deceits, many of which were gross; a profound, dishonest, perfidious, sanguinary dissimulation, con- tinued for the space of forty years. If Moses was not a divinely commissioned prophet, he was not the saviour of the people, but their tyrant and their murderer. Still, we repeat it, this barbarous impostor always forgot himself; and his disinterestedness, as regarded himself, his family, and his tribe, is one of the most extraordinary features of his administration. As to himself: He is destined to die in the wilderness ; he is never to taste the tranquillity, the plenty, the delight, the possession of which he promises to his country- men; he shares with them only their fatigues and privations ; he has more anxieties than they, on their account, in their acts of disobedience, and in their perpetual murmurings. As to his family : He does not nominate his sons as his successors ; he places them, without any privileges or distinctions, among the obscure sons of Levi; they are not even admitted to share the sacerdotal authority. Unlike all other fathers, Moses withdraws them from public view, and deprives them of the means of obtaining public distinction. Unlike the sons of Eli and of Samuel, the sons of Moses are merely the simple servants of the tabernacle. Is it possible to find disinterestedness more complete than this? Is this the character of a forger and an impostor? If forgery and imposture can be found in con- junction with character and conduct such as this, what are the marks of authentic history? How shall we distinguish between trickery and truth ? 2. Turn now to the great apostle of the Gentiles. In Saul of Tarsus we have a man whose terrible propensities and turbulent impulses made him little better than a John of PAUL. | 423 Gishala, a zealot intoxicated with blood, “breathing out threatenings and slaughter.” Yet this was the man*who wrote the thirteenth chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians! Psychologically, a ferocity so boisterous was no qualification for a Christian, or a philanthropist; least of all, for a quietly enduring man. Yet on his conversion to Christ, St. Paul became all this: his vehement emotions subsiding within the limits of a well regulated and noble character. Formerly hasty and irritable, now only spirited and resolved ; formerly violent, now full of energy, and enterprising ; once ungovernably re- fractory, now only persevering ; once fanatical and morose, now only serious ; once cruel, now only firm; formerly unre- lenting, deaf to sympathy and commiseration; now himself acquainted with tears, which he had seen without effect in others. Formerly the friend of none, now the brother of mankind; benevolent, compassionate, sympathizing, yet never weak, always great ; in the midst of sadness and sorrow, manly and noble. See his departure from Miletus: it is like the departure of Moses, the resignation of Samuel, sincere and heartfelt, full of self-recollection, and in the midst of pain full of dignity. His letters furnish evidence of the soundness and sobriety of his judgment. His caution in distinguishing be- tween the occasional suggestions of inspiration, and the ordinary exertions of his natural understanding, is without example in the history of enthusiasm. His morality is everywhere calm, pure, and rational, adapted to the condition, the activity, and' the business of social life, and of its various relations; free from the over-scrupulousness of superstition and the austerities of asceticism, and from, what was perhaps more to be apprehended, the abstractions of quietism and the soarings or extravagancies of fanaticism. His judgment concerning a hesitating con- science, his opinion of the moral indifferency of many actions, yet of the prudence and even the duty of compliance, where non-compliance would produce evil effects upon the minds of others, are so many proofs of the calm and discriminating character of his mind; even were we not to add that the universal applicability of his precepts affords strong presump- tion of his inspiration. - Nor can we fail to feel the force of Lord Lyttleton’s remark 424 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. on the preference which St. Paul assigns to rectitude of principle (1 Co. xiii, 1—8). Did ever enthusiast prefer that universal benevolence here meant by “ charity” to faith and to miracles, to those religious opinions which he had embraced, and to those supernatural graces and gifts which he imagined he had acquired, nay, even to the merit of martyrdom? Is it not the genius of enthusiasm to set moral virtues infinitely below the merit of faith ; and of all moral virtues to value that least which, by St. Paul, is most of all enforced—a spirit of candour, moderation, and peace? Most certain it is, that nothing could be more directly opposed to the temper or opinions of a fanatic than this very passage, To note only one other distinctive trait in the character of this remarkable man:—the impression which the idea of a universal religion wrought upon his mind. Never was any other soul so profoundly engrossed with the idea of a religion for the world. In this he was no man’s scholar ; this he had immediately received from the Spirit of his Master ; it was a spark of the divine light which enkindled him. It was this which never allowed him to remain in Palestine and in Syria, which so powerfully impelled him to foreign parts. Thus he began his career among the different nations of Asia Minor, and when this limit also became too confined for him, he went with equal confidence to Europe, among other nations, ordi- nances, sciences, and customs; and here likewise with the same indefatigable spirit he carried out his plans even to the pillars of Hercules. | “ Here then we have a man of liberal attainments, and in other points, of sound judgment, who had addicted his life to the service of the gospel. We see him in the prosecution of his purpose, travelling from country to country, enduring every species of hardship, encountering every extremity of danger, assaulted by the populace, punished by the magistrates, scourged, beat, stoned, left for dead ; expecting wherever he came a re- newal of the same treatment, and the same dangers, yet, when driven from one city, preaching in the next; spend- ing his whole time in the employment, sacrificing to it his pleasures, his ease, his safety ; persisting in this course to old age, unaltered by the experience of perverseness, ingratitude, THE TESTIMONY TRUE. 425 prejudice, desertion ; unsubdued by anxiety, want, labour, per- secutions ; unwearied by long confinement, undismayed by the prospect of death. Such was St. Paul. “We have his letters in our hands; we have also a history purporting to be written by one of his fellow travellers, and appearing, by a comparison with these letters, certainly to have been written by some person well acquainted with the transactions of his life. From the letters, as well as from the history, we gather not only the account which we have stated of him, but that he was one out of many who acted and suffered in the same manner; and that, of those who did So, several had been the companions of Christ’s ministry, the ocular witnesses, or pretending to be such, of his miracles, and of his resurrection. We moreover find this same person referring in his letters to his supernatural conversion, the particulars and accompanying circumstances of which are related in the history, and which accompanying circumstances, if all or any of them be true, render it impossible to have been a delusion, We also find him positively, and in appropriated terms, assert- ing that he himself worked miracles, strictly and properly so called, in support of the mission which he executed ; the history, meanwhile, recording various passages of his ministry, which come up to the extent of this assertion. THE QUESTION Is, WHETHER FALSEHOOD WAS EVER ATTESTED BY EVIDENCE LIKE THIS. Falsehoods, we know, have found their way into reports, into tradition, into books, but is an example to be met with, of a man voluntarily undertaking a life of want and pain, of incessant fatigue, of continual peril; submitting to the loss of his own home and country, to stripes and stoning, to tedious imprisonment, and the constant expectation of a violent death, for the sake of carrying about a story of what was false, and of what, if false, he must have known to be so?! III. PALEY’s GREAT ARGUMENT IS STILL UNANSWERED. And—judging from the pitiful attempts of our adversaries to evade its foree—not only unanswered but UNANSWERABLE, Paley, we are told,* “dedicated his powers to a factitious ee eee ee) * Hore Pauline ; Conclusion, * issays and Reviews, p. 262. 426 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. thesis.” His demonstration, “however perfect, is in unreal matter.” Such are the hard words ‘flung at the head of Paley’s great argument” by those who fear its power. Un- — happily for them, however, when we proceed to examine these oracular decisions, they fall under their own censure; it is their own thesis which is purely factitious, and their own demonstrations which are in unreal matter. Paley’s work is characterized by his proof of these two propositions :— First, “That there is satisfactory evidence, that many pro- fessing to be original witnesses of the Christian miracles, passed their lives in labours, dangers, and sufferings, voluntarily undergone in attestation of the accounts which they delivered, and solely in consequence of their belief of those accounts ; and that they also submitted, from the same motives, to new rules of conduct.” Second, “That there is not satisfactory evidence, that per- sons professing to be original witnesses of other miracles, in their nature as certain as these are, have ever acted in the same manner, in attestation of the accounts which they de- livered, and properly in consequence of their belief of those accounts,” Now, with these propositions our opponents really know not what to do. They do not like to admit them. They are unable to refute them. They do not even venture to insinuate that Paley has failed to prove them, All they can do is to ignore them as long as possible; and when that is no longer possible, then to disparage them. The proposition is admitted to be proved ; and then it is pooh-poohed as “ factitious.” The demonstration is admitted to be perfect; but “however per- fect,” is in “unreal matter.” Let us see. “A thesis wholly factitious must be one which assumes unreal facts, and argues on the supposition of their truth. Which of the two facts in Paley’s thesis does the Essayist require us to disbelieve? That the Apostle and first Christi- ans really underwent labours, dangers, and sufferings? Or that their sufferings were caused by their belief in the miracles of the Gospel and the Divine authority of Christ ? Hither assertion is equally preposterous. A demonstration can hardly be ‘in unreal matter’? when its materials are THE PERFECT DEMONSTRATION. 427 among THE MOST CERTAIN AND NOTORIOUS FACTS IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND.” An extract from Paley’s own summary of these material facts will be sufficient to substantiate this assertion. It should be premised however, that what gives them all their weight is this :—not one of them is assumed, every one is proved. “The truth of Christianity depends upon its leading facts, and upon them alone. Now of these we have evidence which ought to satisfy us, at least until it appear that mankind have ever been deceived by the same. We have some uncontested and incontestable points, to which the history of the human species hath nothing similar to offer. A Jewish peasant changed the religion of the world, and that, without force, without power, without support; without one natural source or circumstance of attraction, influence, or success. SUCH A THING HATH NOT HAPPENED IN ANY OTHER INSTANCE. “The companions of this Person, after he himself had been put to death for his attempt, asserted his supernatural charac- ter, founded upon his supernatural operations ; and, in testimony of the truth of their assertions, 7.¢., in consequence of their own belief in that truth, and in order to communicate the knowledge of it to others, voluntarily entered upon lives of toil and hardship, and with a full experience of their danger, committed themselves to the last extremities of persecution. THIS HATH NOT A PARALLEL. “More particularly, a very few days after this Person had been publicly executed, and in the very city in which he was buried, these his companions declared with one voice that his body was restored to life; that they had seen him, handled him, ate with him, conversed with him; and in pursuance of their persuasion of the truth of what they told, preached his religion, with this strange fact as the foundation of it, in the face of those who had killed him, who were armed with the power of the country, and necessarily and naturally disposed to treat his followers as they had treated himself; and having done this upon the spot where the event took place, carried the intelligence of it abroad, in despite of difficulties and opposition, and where the nature of their errand gave them nothing to 428 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. expect but derision, insult, and outrage. THIS IS WITHOUT EXAMPLE. “These three facts, I think, are certain, and would have been nearly so, if the Gospels had never been written. The Christian story as to these points, hath never varied. No other hath been set up against it. Every letter, every discourse, every controversy, amongst the followers of the religion; every book written by them from the age of its commencement to the present time, in every part of the world in which it hath been professed, and with every sect into which it hath been divided (and we have letters and discourses written by cotemporaries, by witnesses of the transaction, by persons themselves bearing a share in it, and other writings following that age in regular succession) concur in representing these facts in this manner. A religion which now possesses the greatest part of the civilized world, unquestionably sprang up at Jerusalem at this time. Some account must be given of its origin; some cause assigned for its rise. All the accounts of this origin, all the explications of this cause . . . either expressly allege the facts above stated as the means by which the religion was set up, or advert to its commencement in a manner which agrees with the supposition of these facts being true, and which testifies their operation and effects, ‘THESE PROPOSITIONS ALONE LAY A FOUNDATION FOR OUR FAITH; for they prove the existence of a transaction, which cannot even in its most general parts be accounted for, upon any reasonable supposition, except that of the truth of the mission.” Passing over the particulars by which he shows the authen- ticity of the Christian Scriptures now in our hands to be established, * we find the chief characteristics of the Christian miracles thus distinguished :— “In viewing the detail of miracles recorded in these books, we find every supposition negatived, by which they can be resolved into fraud or delusion. They were not secret, nor momentary, nor tentative, nor ambiguous; nor performed under the sanction of authority, with the spectators on their * Paley’s “ Evidences,” pp. 68, 298. (Ed. 1850.) BISHOP BUTLERS ANALOGY. 429 side, or in affirmance of tenets and practices already established. We find also the evidence alleged for them, and which evidence was by great numbers received, different from that on which other miraculous accounts rest. It was cotemporary, it was published upon the spot, it continued ; it involved interests and questions of the greatest magnitude : it contradicted the most fixed persuasions and prejudices of the persons to whom it was addressed ; it required from those who accepted it, not a simple, indolent assent, but a change, from thenceforward, of principles and conduct, a submission to consequences the most serious and the most deterring, to loss and danger, to insult, outrage and persecution. How such a story should be false, or, if false, how under such circumstances it should make its way, I think imposible to be explained; yet such the Christian story was, such were the circumstances under which it came forth, and in opposition to such difficulties did it prevail.” * Utterly inadequate as these brief extracts must be to convey a just idea of the complete success of Paley’s argument, they may yet serve in part to shew (what few students of the evidences can have failed to feel,) the simple justice of the eulogy pronounced by Robert Hall, when he characterized “Paley’s Evidences” as “probably without exception the most clear and satisfactory statement of the historical proofs of the Christian religion exhibited in any age or country.” The single point to be especially noted here however, is this ; that however (by those who dislike it) the argument may be disparaged, its force remains UNIMPAIRED. IV. Bp. BUTLER’S ARGUMENT ALSO, IS STILL UNANSWERED, AND—UNANSWERABLE. Dealing with the actual facts and observations of every-day life, our adversaries find it impossible to describe it as dealing with “unreal matter.’ But they dis- like it none the less. They are as unreasonable as the “children in the market-place.” “The reading even of the Analogy,” we are told, is “so depressing to the soul:” we weary of it as ‘“‘we weary of a long journey on foot, especially through deep sand.” Not a doubt of it! Had it only left them a single * Ibid. p. 299. * Essays and Reviews, p. 293. 430 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. standing-point, how welcome had it been! But as it is— leaving them not even one solitary spot where they may set their foot—how wearisome ! 1. In the First Part of this (inconveniently troublesome !) “Analogy,” it is shown that the immortality of the soul, and its existence in a future life, as a stated -and fixed law of God’s Providence, must be admitted on the evidence of Reason. It is then shown “as a plain matter of fact, rather than a deduction of reason,” that, in the present world, we are as much under God’s government, as under that of the civil magistrate. The Bishop then considers those objections against the credibility of a future state of Rewards and Punishments, which may be drawn from the frailty of human nature as doing away with the guilt of human vices; or from the doctrine of Necessity and Fatalism ; or from an idea that the will of a Supreme Being cannot be contradicted, or that He cannot be provoked ; and shows that the analogies furnished by the facts of every-day life are such as to answer fully all those objec- tions: such as are full of awe to “persons the most free from enthusiasm, and of the greatest strength of mind.” God’s government is then shown to be Moral; and our Present State, one of Trial, and Moral Discipline. The very notion of Necessity or Fatalism is shewn to be a plain “con- tradiction to the whole constitution of Nature, and to what we may every moment experience in ourselves ;” while all objec- tions against God’s Moral Government are refuted by the fact that we are in (necessary) ignorance of most of the particulars essential to a right comprehension of so vast a scheme. 2. The Second Part commences with a demonstration of the importance of Christianity. Viewed in its lowest aspect, Christianity is an authoritative republication of Natural Re- ligion, But besides this, it set up a visible Church to attest the Truth in all ages. In its characteristic aspect, it is distinguished as a Revelation of things undiscoverable by Reason. The untenability of the presumptions against Miracles is next demonstrated ; and then IT IS PROVED THAT THE OBJECTIONS raised against the scheme of Christianity (as well as those against its evidence) ARE FRIVOLOUS. Objections against ABSURDITY OF DISBELIEF. 431 particular parts of Revelation follow :— The need of a Media- tor; Christ as a Propitiatory Sacrifice ; the non-universality of Christianity :— and then we come to a consideration of “The Particular Evidence for Christianity :” 7.¢, the direct and collateral evidence as, together with miracles and prophecy, making up one great argument in its favour. And this argument is thus summed up :— Holy Scripture contains a history of this world for nearly six thousand years, for, after all, prophecy is but the history of events before they come true in fact; and doctrines and precepts are matters of fact also. And _ this history is amply corroborated from other sources, The chro- nology of Scripture is undoubtedly true; and the past history and present condition of the Jewish nation, compared with prophecy, combine to make a standing miracle. And, in fine, the promised Messiah did actually live and die on earth, did work miracles and establish his religion in the world. THESE ARE ALL PLAIN HISTORICAL FACTS, WHICH CANNOT BE SET ASIDE. Now, let any one read the above history for the first time, and, on asking whether it be really true, let him be informed of the several acknowledged facts which are found to correspond with it in daily life ; then let him compare together the history and the prophecy, and observe the astonishing coincidence of both ; such a joint review must appear to him, at the very least, to possess great weight, and to amount to EVIDENCE MORE THAN HUMAN. And unless the whole series and chain of events be considered as the result of mere accident, the truth of Christianity is at once established for all practical purposes ; for the credibility of the common history of Scripture, and its miraculous history, are so interwoven as to imply each other, and they must stand or fall together. Finally, in refuting the Si ltt which may be brought against this mode of arguing from analogy, and pointing out the precise force of his own Treatise, the Bishop thus concludes :— “Those who believe, will here find the scheme of Christianity cleared of objections, and the evidence of it in a peculiar manner strengthened: those who do not believe, will at least be shown THE ABSURDITY OF ALL ATTEMPTS TO PROVE CHRIS- 432 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. TIANITY FALSE; the plain undoubted credibility of it ; and, I hope, a good deal more.” ° The more we review the whole argument, the more impossible does it become to avoid the conclusion of an eminent living authority : ’—“ I am convinced that Butler is not to be refuted. * .. . Assuredly, for the specific object in view, no book written by man was ever more conclusive than that of Butler... and the conclusiveness of his logic has been shown in this, that however easily ‘analogies’ may be ‘retorted,’ the parties affected by it have never answered it.” “Butler wrote but little; but when reading him I have often thought of Walter Scott’s old wolf-dog, Maida, who seldom was tempted to join in the bark of his lesser canine associates. ‘He seldom opens his mouth,’ said his master; ‘but when he does, he shakes the Eildon hills. Maida is like the great gun at Constantinople— it takes a long time to load it; but when it does go off, it goes off for something !’ ” V. To take but one other instance— LESLIE'S DEMONSTRATION of the Truth of Christianity Is STILL UNANSWERED, AND UNANSWERABLE. Here the argu- ment is neither long nor complicated ; plain and simple as the Truth itself, it lays no tax on the leisure or patience of any ; and lies open to the comprehension of all. It consists in his (a) Laying down such marks, as to the truth of matters of fact in general, that where they all meet, such matters of fact cannot be false ; and then (b) Showing that they all do meet in the matters of fact of Moses, and of Christ; and do not meet in those reported of Mohammed, or of the heathen deities, nor can possibly meet in any imposture whatsoever. The marks are these :— 1. That the facts be such as men’s outward senses can judge of ; * Analogy of Religion, Part II, | ler? Each, at all events, is the ch. viii. greatest in his own department.” ” Mr. H. Rogers, in “The Eclipse | (Inaugural Address of the Bp. of of Faith.” London, at the Edinbro’ Philoso- * “ Whether shall we place high- | phical Institution: Noy. 4, 1864.) er the name of Newton or of But- LESLIE'S “INFALLIBLE PROOF.” 433 2. That it be performed publicly, in the presence of wit- nesses : 3. That there be public monuments and actions kept up in memory of it ; and, 4. That such documents and actions shall be established and commence, at the time of the fact, The two first of these marks make it impossible for any false fact to be imposed upon men at the time when it was said to have occurred, because every man’s senses would contradict it. The two last make it equally impossible that the credulity of after-ages should be induced to believe, as real, things which were only fictitious. It is not pretended that every thing which wants these four marks is false; but it is fearlessly asserted that every thing which has them all must be true. Few things in ordinary history, even when received without question as un- doubtedly true, do actually combine these four ‘marks of truth: eg., the existence of Julius Cesar, his victory at Phar- salia, etc. But they are all found in the Scripture History of Moses and of Christ; and their presence furnishes an INFAL- LIBLE PROOF that this history is true. To these are subjoined “four additional marks ; the three last of which, no matter of fact, how true soever, either has had, or can have, except that of Christ,” When to this we add that none of the persecutors of Chris- tianity, whether Jewish or Roman, when referred to by its first teachers as witnesses of its great facts, ever ventured to deny them ; that no apostate disciple, under the fear of punishment, or the hope of reward, (not even the artful and accomplished Julian himself!) ever pretended to detect in them any decep- tion ; that neither learning nor ingenuity, in the long lapse of so many years, have been able to show their falsehood ; although, for the first three centuries after their promulgation, the civil government strongly stimulated hostile enquiry ; while their original relators, after lives of unintermitted hardship, joyfully incurred death in attestation of their truth—we cannot imagine the possibility of a more perfect or abundant demonstration. If, after all, there remain any who think they can resist the overwhelming force of evidence like this, Let them produce their Ceesar or Mohammed, EE 434 | CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. 1. Performing a fact, of which man’s outward senses can judge ; 2. Publicly in the presence of witnesses ; 3. In memory of which public monuments and actions are kept up ; 4, Instituted and commencing at the time of the fact ; 5. Recorded likewise in a set of books, addressed to the identical people before whom it was performed, and containing their whole code of civil and ecclesiastical laws ; 6. As the work of one previously announced for that very period by a long train of prophecies ; 7. And still more peculiarly prefigured by types both of a circumstantial and personal nature, from the earliest ages ; and lastly, 8. Of such a character as made it impossible for either the relators or the hearers to believe it, if false, without supposing a universal deception of the senses of mankind. Further: Let them display, in its professed eye-witnesses, similar proofs of veracity ; in some doctrines founded upon it, and unaided by force or intrigue, a like triumph over the pre- ~ judices and passions of mankind; among its believers, equal skill and equal drligence, in scrutinizing its evidences,— Or, let them submit to THE IRRESISTIBLE CERTAINTY OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. ee ee ee CHAPTER XVI. I'v IS CERTAIN : THAT THE MOST RECENT, SUBTLE, AND POWER- FUL ASSAULTS ON THE BIBLE HAVE UTTERLY FAILED TO SHAKE THE FOUNDATIONS OF OUR FAITH, “Can length of years on God Himself exact ? Or make that fiction, which was once a fact? ”—_CowPeEr. SURVEYING the immoveable ground of Certainty traversed in the last chapter, one naturally asks—What is the ground in possession of our adversaries? And the answer is, “ A tissue of Uncertainties—nothing more!” Not all the ingenuity ever exhibited on the side of unbelief has availed to substantiate a single argument against Christianity. Not one of all the pretexts ever devised by that ingenuity, that has not been triumphantly refuted and destroyed. It may be useful, in this chapter, to corroborate the correctness of these two assertions by some instances drawn from recent publications. I. 1. Take a single instance from “ Essays and Reviews.” What could be more insulting than the bitter mocking tone of contemptuous derision in which the writer of the Second Essay spoke of those who professed their faith in the old-fashioned Bible? How loud his boastful bravados on behalf of his idol, his “remorseless criticism,” and his “ vast induction on the destructive side!” Now, what was it all worth? What was the amount of actual fact substantiated in evidence against the Bible? The answer to this question shall be given (not in the words of some bigoted -believer, but) in the words of the most eminent of all the apologists for the Essays themselves :— “Conclusions arrived at by the life-long labours of a great German theologian are pitchforked into the face of the English 436 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. public who never heard of them before, with hardly a shred of argument to clothe their repulsive forms.” * It may help the reader however, to appraise at their proper value these “life-long labours of a great German theologian,” to be told that even this admirer of Bunsen, this eulogist of Prof. Jowett,” and sturdy apologist for the Essays, goes on to say in the very next sentence :— “ ASSERTIONS which even the learned and sceptical would hesitate to receive after long discussion, ARE ASSUMED AS CER- TAIN, WITHOUT A WORD OF PROOF, and without any connexion with the context in which they occur.” Nor does he fail to establish this charge against his friends ; for in a note he adds :— “Such is Mr. Wilson’s statement respecting the date of the fourth Gospel, (p.116,) and that ‘the taking of Jerusalem by Shishak is for the Hebrew history that which the sacking of Rome by the Gauls is for the Roman.’ (p. 170.) This last ASSERTION WHOLLY UNSUPPORTED BY ARGUMENT, IS, not only according to our humble belief, but according to the whole tenor of the great work of Ewald, EQUALLY UNTENABLE IN ITS NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE ASPECT.” 2. So much for the character of the attack: but how triumphant was the defence which that attack provoked! The “Replies” were Legion ; and few of them but were worthy of the occasion. Of those which still stand in the front rank, Mr. Birks’s admirable volume* alone supplies a complete refutation, without conceding one inch of ground ; while among the writers of two others‘ we have a combination of the learning, the eloquence, and the conclusive argumentation of ten of the first men of our times. Any one of these three volumes is more than a sufficient answer to “ Essays and Reviews ” ; but taken altogether, they present an aggregate of solid learning and valuable thought, the like of which the Church has 1 Edinburgh Review, 1861, p. ; the rising generation of English AVA. students and theologians.” (Ibid. *«“ The production of Professor | p. 476.) Jowett has a significance of its * The Bible & Modern Thought. own... He stands confessedly mas- *« Aids to Faith,” & “ Replies.” ter of the situation in the eyes of DR. COLENSO ANSWERED IN FULL. 437 scarcely had offered to her in any former year of modern times. II. 1, Very much the same must be said of Bp. Colenso’s productions; and of the answers they have evoked. He publishes a volume of what he calls “ insuperable difficulties ; ” and forthwith there step forward champions of the Faith who solve them one by one. Than Dr. Me. Caul, “there is no Jewish Rabbi, either in England or on the Continent, more conversant with every form of Hebrew literature, and no man in England who is more intimately acquainted with the German writers for and against the truth, the ‘real scholars’ to whom Dr. Colenso appeals.”* But this same Dr. Me, Caul has not only met the difficulties proposed by the Bishop—met them fairly and fully—but he has shewn that every problem is capable of at least one solution. In many he submits two or three, taking first the difficulty as stated by the Bishop, and shewing that if even it were real it would not be insuperable ; afterwards proving that it is of the critic’s own making. Some of the most remarkable of these difficulties result entirely from the critic’s unauthorized additions to the Sacred Text; some from omissions and perversions, the result of careless haste or excessive zeal ; many from ignorance so gross as to evince the writer's utter disqualification for the task he has undertaken ; but among them all there is not one which, when cleared from misrepresentation and mistake, can fairly be laid to the charge of the Sacred Writer himself. 2. Mr. Birks’s refutation of the Bishop’s argument, though proceeding by another method than that of Dr. Mec. Caul, reaches the same result. He deals less with the Hebrew and more with the arithmetic of his opponent. The result is, that (n the words of an able reviewer,’) “The arithmetician is beaten on his own ground.” “Mr. Birks does not propose, as Dr. Mc. Caul has done, to give several alternatives, every one of which may be a possible solution of a difficulty, and there- fore sufficient to silence an objector. He selects one which he ° See Dr. Colenso’s Letter to the ®The Christian Advocate and “ Athenzum.” Review, vol. iii. p. 326. 438 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. believes to be the surest and the best, and which may by itself bear the whole weight of the argument. This he follows out in all its bearings upon the question. Its cumulative weight and strength become so great, that it seems to be after all much more than an hypothesis—much more than a possible or probable solution. It approaches to certainty ; it may be wielded not only for defence, but as an instrument of attack against the enemy.” “The most careful and studious reader will find nothing superficial here ; no hasty assumptions, —no imperfectly examined theories. It is the reply of the Wrangler of Trinity, to his fellow Wrangler of St. John’s; and there can be no question at all about the thoroughness of the investigation, or the triumphant success of the argument. It is not so much the novelty or originality of the proposed solutions which characterizes the volume, rather it is the laborious minuteness of the details, and the almost merciless pursuit of the adversary into every corner and cranny of his defences. It is an answer in full to Dr. Colenso’s objections ; in many cases it is an utter demolition of them.” 3. But besides the demolition of objections, there is the positive evidence adduced in demonstration of the Truth which defies objections. Dr. Mc. Caul shews a continuous stream of evidence (from the latest page of the New Testament, traced backward to its source, in the time of Joshua) for the existence of a book called “The Law of the Lord.” He demands a refutation of this evidence. Mr. Birks, though adducing his evidence from the English Version only, yet accumulates an amount so overwhelming and conclusive, that ten thousand difficulties such as those of Dr. Colenso, could not only never out- weigh it, but never even greatly diminish its force. He shows that the whole Bible is full of the Law. The spirit of these five Books informs the Old Testament and the New. The authenticity and inspiration of the Psalms, the Prophets, and the Gospels depend on the same proofs as those which establish the Books of Moses to be the Word and Will of God. 4. The Bishop of Ely’s work’ has a peculiar value. He ” The Pentateuch and The Elo- | Professor of Divinity. (Parker and histic Psalms. By the Norrisian | Son, 1863.) HIS PREMISES UNTRUE; HIS CONCLUSIONS ILLOGICAL. 439 has clearly shewn that Dr. Colenso’s conclusions would not follow, even on the admission of all his premises. All the great facts of Bible history remain firm and immoveable, though the arithmetical puzzle and the apparent interpolations and anachronisms of the text be found incapable of solution. He shews that the three facts, for instance, of the residence of the Jews in Egypt, their long wanderings in the Desert, and their conquest of Canaan, could no more be disputed than the invasion of England by the Saxons or the Danes. These three facts have given a strongly marked character to all their literature, and to the life of the whole people to this day. These facts must not only be admitted, they must be accounted for, and the Bible history is not only the best, it is the only conceivable way of accounting for them. “ Besides a number of solutions of minor difficulties, the carefully elaborated argu- ment of Dr. Colenso on the Elohistic and Jehovistic Psalms is met, and utterly demolished, in the most simple and intelligible manner. The principle of Dr. Colenso’s argument is this, that the use of the word ‘Elohim’ for God is a proof that such a chapter or psalm is of earlier date than one in which ‘Jehovah’ is freely and commonly used. Professor Browne has shewn that the Psalms when examined by their language, and even by their titles, prove the very reverse of what is contended for ; the more ancient ones being precisely those in which the name Jehovah is most frequently used. This whole theory of determining the age and character of a document by the use of the Divine name is completely overthrown, and the argument neutralized by the fact that there are the same unaccountable, and apparently capricious changes from the use of one name to another, in later portions of Scripture, where the document-theory and the age and authorship of the composition can offer no solution. In the book of Proverbs only ‘ Jehovah’ is found, in the book of Ecclesiastes only ‘God.’ In the book of Job, ‘God’ is found in all the verse and ‘ Jehovah’ in all the prose. In short, the evidence is clear as the sun, that whatever determined the choice of the writers in the use of the Divine names, it certainly was a free choice. The use of one name does not prove ignorance of the other, nor does it even prove what was the usage of the time, for 440 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. strange to say, in the prophet Daniel the name ‘ Jehovah’ only occurs in the 9th chapter, and in that chapter no less than six times! . . . We can truly say we have read no book which has given us such a feeling of conscious safety from even partial and temporary harm. It strengthens our convictions that the foundations of the truth are laid deep and secure, and that the whole superstructure is worthy of that kingdom which ‘cannot be shaken,’ but which must for ever and ever remain.” ® III. After the curiosities of Colenso comes the romance of Renan. But after what has been said above, is there any need to say more in proof of its utter inutility and fallacy as an apology for scepticism ? Surely not. It is in all respects A TRIUMPH FoR THE TRUTH! “A well-meaning, clear-headed, scholar-like man has come forward to show how Jesus might have founded the Christian religion by His own unaided genius, apart from any super- natural qualification, personal or relative. Most reluctantly he has been obliged to pourtray him as an enthusiast and an impostor. He has used every artifice to soften down the charge. He has lavished upon him, what, coming from him, must be called unmeaning adulation. He has apologised for his falsehood, till he is in danger of charging him with lunacy. He has made him yield to the persuasion of others, till he becomes chargeable with irresolution and imbecility. He allows him to confuse the imaginary with the real, till he becomes a visionary, looking forward to a perfectly utopian kingdom ; so that after all, the characters drawn by this new apologist is expressed by St. Paul in two single words, not complimentary to mortals even of ordinary standing, wdavdv Kat rraVvapeEVO0s, ‘Deceiving and being deceived.’ The Vie de Jesus is in fact a reductio ad abswrdum. It shows that the Founder of the Christian religion could have been none other than THE Son OF GoD; and that the history of His birth and life, and ministry and death, cannot but be ALL TRUE.” ® IV. There is a large class of persons however, who in the romance of Renan and the calculations of Colenso can sce a ers ait pol) i aoe eee ae * The Christian Advocate and Review, vol. iii. p. 466. ° Ibid. p. 510. M. RENAN’S FAILURE. 44] nothing more than an exercise of the characteristic ingenuity of those gentlemen, but who think it is from the progress of scientific discovery that the old faith in the Bible has most to fear. They are well assured that the principal difficulties of the Bishop of Natal exist only in his own imagination ; and that the fanciful portraiture drawn by M. Renan, so far from reflecting the actual Christ of the Gospels, is merely the visionary ideal of the most skilful of all romancers. But while they rightly regard these as idle speculations, they turn to the facts of Science as solid truths. “To THE FACTS of Science”: yes; and so do we. But not to the supposed facts ; not to mere presumptions or pro- bable conjectures ; but to facts that have been proved. Let theologians only beware of making Scripture responsible for what may after all be only some hasty assumptions of their own ; and let philosophers be no less cautious in obtruding their fancied discoveries as proving the erroneousness of Scrip- ture ; and we shall soon cease to be told that Scripture and Science are at variance. Meantime it is important to note the fact that Science properly so called—while it has done very much to establish—has done absolutely nothing whatever to overthrow “the old faith in the Bible.” We have seen in the preceding pages” the professors of different sciences, the parti- sans of different schools, arrayed not only against each other but against themselves, on all those points which involve the correctness (and consequent Inspiration) of Scripture. The votaries of Science must settle their own controversies—must ascertain to their mutual satisfaction what 1s fact—before they can presume to assert that the declarations of the Bible are contrary to fact. And this, often as it has been attempted, has yet never been achieved. Not all the unquestionable ability of Sir Charles Lyell, Prof. Huxley, and Mr. Darwin, has availed to discover one solitary indisputable fact at variance with the plain declarations of the Bible. Nor is this all. He who undertakes to set up Science in opposition to Scripture must needs find all the Certainty on one side and all the Uncertainty on the other. The Certainties ® Vide supra, pp. 198—273. 442 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. of Science are corroborative of the Certainty of Scripture: that which admits of being represented as antagonistic to Scripture is merely a tissue of Uncertainties. How many of the alleged discoveries adduced to prove the high Antiquity of Man might we have been spared, if their originators had but showed the caution displayed by Professor Owen at Jarrow!" How very few admit of satisfactory verification! And then besides the original uncertainty as to the actual facts, there is the further uncertainty of doubtful computations based on the data which those (supposed) facts (are supposed to) furnish. Thus, to take a recent instance, we are informed (in the Report of the Pro- ceedings of the British Association at Bath) that “A careful computation by Professor W. Thompson, on selected data, which determines the rate of cooling of earthy masses, assigns » The lesson taught by the inci- dent here referred to is one which calls for such frequent reiteration in these days of rash and positive speculation, as to justify the in- sertion, in this place, of the ac- count given by Professor Owen himself, at the Meeting of the British Association in 1858 ;— “ Professor Owen said that some time ago he was sent for to the North, to examine a fossilized tree, which had been found in digging the Jarrow dock, which bore undoubted evidence of hay- ing been cut by human hands. It was supposed to be a most im- portant discovery, as showing the antiquity of the human race; and at first every thing appeared satis- factory. On prosecuting his en- quiries, however, he learnt that one of the. navvies, not then on the works, was said to have dis- covered a similar tree, in another part of the dock, which he cut to lay down a sleeper. The man was sent for, and on his arrival he declared that the tree pointed out was the one he had cut. It was endeavoured to be explained that this was impossible, as the place had not been excavated before; but, looking with supreme con- tempt on the assembly of geolo- gists and engineers, the man per- sisted in the identification of his own work, and exclaimed, ‘The top of the tree must be some- where.’ Upon which he (Profes- sor Owen) offered half-a-crown to the first navvy who produced it. Away ran half-a-dozen of them, and in a few minutes they return- ed with the top. This explained the mystery. The man had cut off the top with his spade; the stump afterwards got covered up with silt, and on being again un- covered, it was supposed a great discovery. Never had he so nar- row an escape from introducing ‘a new discovery’ into science, and never had he a more fortunate escape.” HYPOTHETICAL “RESULTS.” 443 98,000,000 years for the whole period of the cooling of the earth’s crust, from a state of fusion to its present condition ; so that, in his judgment, within one hundred millions of years all our speculations regarding the solid earth must be limited. On the other hand, Professor Haughton finds from the data which he adopts, 1,018 millions of years to have elapsed while the earth was cooled from 212 degrees Fahrenheit, to 122 de- grees Fahrenheit, at which temperature we may suppose the waters to have become habitable ; and 1,280 millions of years more in cooling from 122 degrees to 77 degrees, which is as- sumed to represent the climate of the later Eocene period in Britain. Computations of this kind cannot be applied, except on the large scale here exemplified, and they lose all their value in the eyes of those who deny the general doctrine of a cooling globe.” Is it to be wondered at if they “lose all their value in the eyes of those” also who deny the validity of all doctrines based merely on conjecture? No one attempts to impeach the correctness of these gentlemen’s computations ; but what is the value of correct computations founded on incorrect data? Conclusions so widely divergent as these— results, one of which is twenty times as great as the other— cannot both be right. And yet these are the results obtained by “philosophers of eminence,” “two eminent mathemati- cians!” Is this the certainty of philosophy? Is this the highest result obtainable by “careful computation” and ma- thematical accuracy? Well and wisely did Professor Phillips, in adducing these specimens, point out the inevitable uncer- tainty which must attach to them.” Is it improbable that he remembered his own pertinent question addressed to the Geo- logical Society, four years before ?—-“Is not this abuse of arithmetic likely to lead to a low estimate of the evidence in “In these words (—preceding | the true rate, but the limits with- those above quoted—) in which it must have operated, “The time required to produce | the result of the calculation will these effects can be calculated, if | have a corresponding uncertainty ; we know at what rate in time, | if we have no knowledge of the whether uniform or not, they | rate, calculations are out of the were produced ; if we know, not | question. In applying this gen- 4.4.4, CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. support of such random conclusions, and of the uncritical judgment which so readily accepts them ? ” Referring to other, yet not dissimilar assumptions, the writer of The Times leader on the inaugural address of the President for the year, (Sir Chas. Lyell,) remarks—“Cases of this kind cannot but make us cautious in yielding to the claims of scien- tific dogmatism. Relative ignorance may be a good reason for expressing no opinion on a disputed point, but it is no reason for receiving and echoing that of the last speaker or writer. Whatever may be the weight of the presumptions, it is vain to deny that many so-called ‘results’ of geology are hypothetical —hypothetical in that sense in which Newton protested against hypotheses. Few of these have been more generally adopted than that of ‘an original central heat and the igneous fluidity of the earth’s nucleus’; yet here we find. one of the greatest living geologists guarding himself against the appearance of building on it. ‘The manner in which volcanoes have shifted their position’ is not more remarkable, and is much less certain, than the manner in which professors of geology have shifted their position in these high regions of conjecture ; and while we pay them the deference due to their superior know- ledge, we may well limit our intellectual homage to a provisional assent.” We repeat these words—we accept this testimony of a wit- ness who will not be suspected of partiality on our side :—“It is vain to deny that many so-called ‘results’ of geology are hypothetical—hypothetical in that sense in which Newton pro- tested against hypotheses ;” and because they are so, they are as powerless as the speculations of Mr. Darwin, or the paradoxes of Professor Huxley, to shake the foundations of. our well- grounded confidence in the CERTAINTY of those revealed truths wherein we have been instructed. a ee eral view to the history of the earth, philosophers of eminence in physical science have employed different considerations and ob- tained a variety of results. The conclusions of two eminent ma- thematicians which have lately appeared may be cited with ad- vantage. A careful computation by Professor W. Thompson, on selected data,” &c., &c., as above. (Prof, Phillips’s Address on open- ing the proceedings of Section C: Geology. Sep. 15, 1864.) CHAPTER XVII, It IS CERTAIN: THAT AGAINST THE EVIDENCE FOR CHRIS- TIANITY—CUMULATIVE AND CONGRUOUS AS IT IS— : OUR OPPONENTS ARE UNABLE TO MAINTAIN ANY SINGLE ARGUMENT WHATEVER. ‘Do you ask me to bring forward irresistible proof that Christianity is from Heaven? I can do this to such an extent as that you will fail, by any fair means to overthrow my argument.”’—Isaac TAytor. “Tell me all that ever you heard against Christianity from its enemies: I am more than able to refute them all. Tur Evipences or ovr RELIGION ARE OVERWHELMING.” —Dr, CHALMERS, “ON a subject like that of the Christian Evidences, a man of powerful and comprehensive mind, after he has once made himself master of the argument, feels on all occasions that the approach of doubt is nothing but a symptom of some momen- tary torpor of the reasoning faculty ; and in alarm, not so much for the question, as for the integrity of his own powers, he rouses a manly strength, and shakes off the debility that had crept upon him. That this sort of vigorous faith does not more often show itself among Christians, is because the two elements whence it should spring are but rarely united: for, on the one hand, those whose fervent piety gives them an interior or ex- perimental conviction of the truth of the Scriptures, are not very often, in any good degree, familiar with the documentary argument, or perhaps have not the intellectual power requisite for appreciating its force. And, on the other hand, the few who do possess these advantages, too often labour under coldness at heart, or a secularity of character, which makes Christianity and its principal doctrines distasteful, or un- intelligible.” But a healthy intellectual energy, enlivened by 446 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. the fervour and ingenuousness of a cordial faith, carries the mind forward in full course, clear of frivolous sophisms, to the great facts, whether more or less mysterious, that are distinctly affirmed or indubitably implied in the Scriptures. To review the principal facts with which our argument is concerned :— It is certain I. That the “inner principle” is imsufficient for human need. * The Grecian peasants, of whom Mr. Parker tells us, doing homage to Phoebus Apollo, grim-faced Calmucks worshipping the great god of storms, savages with their hands smeared all over with the blood of human sacrifices,—these, though humbling, are instructive exhibitions of the insufficiency of Conscience, or Reason, or the Moral Intuitions, or the “inner principle,” to raise mankind from the degradation of a depraved nature. Nor these alone: Mr. Parker himself has shown us that Conscience, in his own case, was unable to restrain him from bearing false witness against his neighbour, by affirming it to be a Protestant doctrine, “That God would slaughter men in hell by the million, for having committed no fault except that of not believing an absurd doctrine they had never heard of.” II. It follows therefore, that an “outer Law” is necessary.’ When Paley sat down to write his “Evidences,” he deemed it unnecessary to prove that mankind stood in need of a reve- lation, because he had “ met with no serious person who thought that even under the Christian Revelation we have too much light, or any degree of assurance which is superfluous.” He added that, in judging of Christianity, it should be remembered that “the question lies between this religion and none: for, if the Christian religion be not credible, no one, with whom we have to do, will support the pretensions of any other.” Mr. Newman is one of that large class of persons who have an invincible dislike for “evidences”; and no man has done more to exalt the inward light, and the inner principle ; yet even he —remembering the many dark phases, and final eclipse of his * Vide supra, pp. 357—360. CHRISTIANITY ESSENTIALLY SUPERNATURAL. AAT own faith—will certainly not venture to say that “we have too much light, or any degree of assurance which is superfluous.” III. But this outer Law, thus indispensably necessary, must be shown to be Divine, or men will not receive it as Authoritative. In what way can its Divine origin be attested (—in the first instance—) but by miracles? In none which we are able to conceive. Consequently, in whatever degree it is probable, or not very improbable, that a revelation should be communicated to mankind at all; in the same degree it is probable, or not very improbable that miracles should be wrought. IV. It is certain that the Bible is such a Law; and has been so attested. It is the common language of our opponents—“ Christianity is an exceptive instance because it comes to us laden with miracles, which no evidence can avail to authenticate; and in truth we are granting it more indulgence than it can rightly claim, when we concede to it any footing at all upon the ground of rational argumentation. Let Christianity rid itself of the supernatural and then we will think about it.” But this language is altogether untenable. Again and again has it been proved that, “in the instance of the canonical documents of Christianity, the connexion of the historic mass with the supernatural, is a case of cohesion, and that it is absolutely indissoluble.” * “Remove from Christianity everything in it which is super- natural and divine, and then the problem which we have to do with is this :—A revolution in human affairs, in the highest degree beneficial in its import, was carried forward upon the arena of the great world, by means of the noble behaviour of men who command our sympathy and admiration, as brave, wise, and good. But this revolution drew the whole of its moral force from a Belief, which—how shall we designate it ? —was in part an inexplicable illusion ; in part a dream, and in large part a fraud! This, the greatest forward movement * Those who demur to this *See (e.g.,) “The Restoration statement will do well to read that | of Belief,’ p. 121, et seg. Or amusing and instructive chapter | Bishop Butler, quoted above, p, in “ The Eclipse of Faith,” which | 4381. describes “ The Paradise of Fools.” AAS CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. which the civilized branches of the human family have ever made, took its rise in bewildered Jewish brains! Indestructible elements of advancement to which even infidel nations con- fessedly owe whatever is best and most hopeful within them, these elements of good, which were obtained for us at so vast a cost, had their source in a congeries of exaggerations, and in a mindless conspiracy, hatched by chance, nursed by imposture, and winged by fanaticism !” V. Further: It is certain that the Bible is now substantially and essentially the same as when first given. This affirmation is not affected by questions of authorship ; or of Various Readings. The number of these latter in the Old Testament alone is thirty thousand ; but their consequence and value are in exactly inverse ratio to their demand on our labour and patience. To estimate their practical value (in either Old or New Testament) as an element of uncertainty, Take any thousand, and see how many will vary even the most literal translation in any modern language : Then see how many (or rather how few) of those which have changed a word, have at all affected the sense : Lastly, of these changes of expression, see how few have touched a fact or doctrine, or any point of the least importance beyond the mere question of textual accuracy.* The text of the New Testament has been all but miraculously preserved.* The care of Divine Providence in bringing the same text from the most opposite quarters, and from parts of the church diametrically opposed to each other in faith and practice, is as great a miracle as if the original autographs of the writers had been kept to this day. Besides: It is not necessary to the possession of the Word * For example: see above, pp. 183, 134. *Ibid. Compare the statement there made as to the variations in the Comedies of Terence. All the criticism which has been concen- trated on the Sacred Text since the time of Bentley, has but served to confirm the truth of his observation, that The New Testa- ment has suffered less injury by the errors of transcribers than the works of any profane author of the same size and antiquity; that is, there never was any writing in the preservation and purity of which the world was so interested or so careful. THE DOCTRINES REST ON THE FACTS. AA of God that we should have a mathematically accurate text.' The moral assurance of its logical exactness, which we do pos- sess is even more satisfactory to our faith than the existence of any autograph copy could be ; the identity of which must, after all, rest on evidence which no infidel would receive, VI. We have already seen that—apart from the Bible— nothing is more true than the great facts of Christianity.’ No historical fact is more certain than that the original propagators of Christianity voluntarily subjected themselves to lives of fatigue, danger, and suffering, in the prosecution of their under- taking. The testimony of Pliny, above cited,” proves also that both the teachers and converts of the religion, in consequence of their new profession, took up a new course of life and behaviour. Now, what did they do this for? There can be but one answer: The narrative of Tacitus (quoted above) makes it certain that it was for a@ miraculous story of some kind or other.’ The institution of The Lord’s Day—the transference of the Sabbath to the “ first day of the week ”— makes it still more certain that that miraculous story was the story of Christ’s Resurrection. These facts are undeniably true. But their relation to the religion founded upon them is such that uf the facts be not false, the religion must be true.’ The first preachers of Chris- * The autographs of the Bible have never existed together.” Hence, a Bible “ gifted with this ideal and mathematical perfection has never been in the hands of a single human being.” But not- withstanding this, the flaws in- curred in transmission, “few in number, and chiefly in numerical readings or lists of names, cannot affect in the least the direct evid- ence which affixes a Divine sanc- tion to all the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.” (Rev. T. R. Birks, in “The Bible and Modern Thought ;” and “ Chris- tian Advocate and Review,” vol. ili. p. 343.) FF ° See above, p. 427—434. 7P. 387. §“Tn whatever degree, or in whatever part, the religion was argumentative, when it came to the question, ‘Is the earpenter’s son of Nazareth the person whom we are to receive and obey?’ there was nothing but the miracles at- tributed to him, by which his pretensions could be maintained fora moment. Every controversy and every question must presup- pose these.” (Paley’s Ev. Pt. I. ch. vi.) *“ Tf every one of the Canonicad books of the New Testament— every one of those in behalf of 450 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. tianity could not be deceivers. ‘“ By only not bearing testi- mony, they might have avoided all their sufferings, and have lived quietly. Would men in such circumstances pretend to have seen what they never saw ; assert facts which they had no knowledge of; go about lying, to teach virtue ; and though not only convinced of Christ’s being an impostor, but having seen the success of his imposture in his crucifixion, yet persist in carrying it on; and so persist, as to bring upon themselves, for nothing, and with a full knowledge of the consequence, enmity, hatred, danger and death ?” Itis most certain that they would not. In other words, IT IS CERTAIN THAT—apart from the Bible—THE GREAT FACTS OF CHRISTIANITY ARE UNDENIABLY TRUE. VII. But it is equally certain that of these facts the Bible supplies the only possible explanation :—and not of these facts alone. Why there should be a nation unlike every other nation, as were the conquerors of Canaan; why there should be an Egyptian bondage, a Babylonish captivity, a Jewish dispersion ; why there should be a Messiah at all; why He should have come at that particular epoch in the reign of Caesar Augustus ; why He should have suffered an ignominious death, although His religion has given new Life to the world : of all these things we may say (in words already quoted)” “These facts must not only be admitted, they must be accounted for, and the Bible history is not only the best, it is the only conceivable way of accounting for them.” VIII. The actual connexion between the Facts and the Sacred Books in which they are recorded, is such as to stamp the latter with the authority of a Divine Inspiration. For the facts were brought about in order to establish the doctrines. The works of Christ and of His Apostles, were appealed to as which Inspiration is alleged, had perished, and if nothing were now before us but the uninspired docu- ments of Christianity, (those of the second century,)—I must still be a Christian, although I should often be at a loss as to the sepa- rate items of my creed. But now if the Canonical writings—Inspi- ration not considered, were dealt with in the historic mode, with- out prejudice or favour, Disbelief would wither like the grass of the tropics.” (Rest. of Bel. p. 127.) PR 2sey. THE FORCE OF CONGRUITY. 451 so many infallible proofs of the truth of His words and of theirs. The works that He did bare witness of Him: and of them it. was also true—He confirmed their word “with signs following.” Besides, as we have already seen, in the Sacred Books, the his- toric is one with the supernatural. But the supernatural has been shewn (apart from these Books) to be true: the historic therefore is true also ; and God’s works are the testimony ad- duced to prove the verity of His word. IX. The cumulative evidence which demonstrates the Truth of Christianity, is still further strengthened by the Force of Congruity. The direct historical evidence we have seen to be unanswered and unanswerable. But this is not all. The very firmest of our convictions come to us not in the way of a sequence of evidences following each other as links in a chain, and carrying with them the conclusion ; but in the way of the CONGRUITY of evidences, meeting or collapsing in the conclusion. This is not what is called ‘cumulative proof, nor is it proof derived from the coincidence of facts. Those impressions which com- mand the reason and the feelings in the most imperative man- ner, and which we find it impossible to resist, are the result of the meeting of congruous elements; they are the product of causes which, though independent, are felt so to fit the one the other, that each as soon as seen in combination, authenticates the other ; and in allowing the two to carry our convictions, we are not yielding to the sophism which consists in alternately putting the premises in the place of each other, but are recog- nizing a principle which is true in human nature. “You have to do with one who offers to your eye his creden- tials—his diploma, duly signed and sealed, and which declare him to be a Personage of the highest rank. All seems genuine in these evidences. At the same time, the style and tone, the air and behaviour, of this personage, and all that he says, and what he informs you of, and the instructions he gives you, are in every respect consistent with his pretensions, as set forth in the Instrument he brings with him. It is not then that you alternately believe his credentials to be genuine, because his deportment and his language are becoming to his alleged rank ; and then that you yield to the impression which has been made 452, CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. upon your feelings by his deportment, because you have admit- ted his credentials to be true. Your Belief is the product of a simultaneous accordance of the two species of proof: it is a combined force that carries conviction, not a succession of proots in line. “Tt is from the same force of Congruity, not from a catena of proofs, that we receive the most trustworthy of those im- pressions upon the strength of which we act in the daily occa- sions of life; and the same Law of Belief rules us also in the highest of all arguments—that which issues in a devout regard to Him, by and through Whom are all things. On this ground where logic halts, an instinctive reasoning prevails, which takes its force from the confluence of reasons.” ” The Bible stands above the sublimest effusions of human genius. It reveals truths concerning man’s highest interests, and lying beyond the sphere where science and genius make their discoveries. It possesses a history altogether unparalleled and miraculous. It produces on individuals and communities such radical and beneficent changes of heart and life, as no other book in the world has even attempted. It claims to have received its grand revelations directly from heaven, and to have transmitted them under such infallible guidance as entitles it to be regarded as the oracle of God. And if, on the ground of the evidence internal and external, this claim be not conceded, then—in its structure, in its characteristic truths, in the simplicity and majesty of its style, in its matchless portraiture of Christ, in its influence on the world—the Bible is a greater miracle than the miraculous inspiration which naturalism would set aside. Considered merely as a book of morality, the Bible is in- comparably a more complete, intelligible, and popular manual than any other composition. In whatever relates, either to the great principles whence virtue should emanate, or to the detail of the virtues and the vices, or to the application of general rules to particular occasions, the inspired writers leave nothing to be desired, or even imagined, in the way of perspi- cuity, or definitiveness, or of diversified expression and exemp- lification. In the plain matters of duty, of temper, and of 1 Restoration of Belief, p. 103. eee ee ee tee ee — a SCEPTICISM DOES NOT REASON. 453 social behaviour, the Bible comes home at once to the under- standing of the rudest part of mankind ; and is very nearly the same book to the peasant, as to the doctor of divinity. But “the morality of the Bible excepted, no ethical system, oriental or western, has ever appeared which might not fairly be described as a splendid enormity, or a glittering fragment, which owed all its value to the spoliation of some spurned and forgotten qualities,” ” X. It is certain that of this evidence, thus varied and com- prehensive, thus congruous and cumulative, our opponents are unable to rebut or to refute one single particle. “Nothing can be more contemptible than the argumentative resources of modern infidelity. J¢ does not reason, it only postulates ; it dreams and it dogmatizes.”* Sceptical pub- lications, whether of the present or of former ages, are filled from one end to the other with objections against Christianity rather than with answers to the arguments for it. And these are two very different things. “There are objections against a plenum, and objections against a vacuum ; but one of them must be true.” Objections may be raised by any body, and against any thing: but they invalidate nothing. The histories of Cxesar and Napoleon are liable to objections quite as formid- able as any that have ever been urged against the Bible. “This is a prominent feature on the face of the controversy between Christians and their opponents, which must strike every observer. The writings of Infidels—even those little deserving notice—have in almost every instance been carefully answered, from point to point, by Christian authors; and, in the last century, this was done so effectually, that the Infidels were notoriously driven out of the field, and reduced to a silence in England which has only of late years begun to be broken.” And now that it has been broken, no advantage has been gained on the side of Disbelief. “Our English disbelief can pretend to nothing of originality ; for it is all a copy after the German ; and yet German theories, though they have broken down, in quick succession, at home, have been imported, as if still good, “ «Saturday Evening,” p. 147. * Professor Garbett: “ Modern Philosophical Infidelity ;” p. 5. 454 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. and have been done into English without scruple: is there one of these theories that is not insufferably absurd?” “But on the Christian side, there are many works of high character— well known, standard and popular books . . . to which, as far as we know, NO INFIDEL HAS EVEN PROFESSED TO WRITE AN ANSWER.” Christianity is a fixed and not a floating thing. It “comes to our times as the survivor of all systems ; and after confronting, in turn, every imaginable form of error, each of which has gone to its almost forgotten place in history, itself alone lives’— lives, not as a creature of the mind’s development,—a thing of mere sentiment or intuition, but lives with its firm footing in history, and its powerful hold of men’s hearts. Isaac Taylor has rightly said, that every particle of the German infidelity disappears, when once it is proved that Jesus rose from the dead. But the idealist, entrenched behind his speculative philosophy, will not listen to the proof. He pretends to supersede the question of historical testimony, by raising abstract questions. And this idealism of his own, he dignifies with the name of a religious philosophy, or a philosophical religion, for which we are invited to barter our actual and historical Christianity. From the abstractions of these dreamers however, we make our appeal to undeniable facts. Until our opponents have disproved the resurrection of Jesus, they have done nothing to the purpose. At present we may say of that resurrection what we have already seen to be true of the Life and Character of Jesus :—there is no infidel theory of either in the field. And the same is true of the character of the Apostles. Let any man read in succession the fourteen Non-Supernatural Epistles. He will spontaneously say of them, “ Whatever I may think of this Theology, which is so new and amazing, it is manifest that these writings embody, with great harmony of intention, an elevated and consistent morality ; it would be well for the world if it would receive it. It is also manifest that the writers, whether they be right or wrong in their religious * Restoration of Belief, p. 111. * Bp. Fitzgerald: in the “ Cautions for the Times ;” pp. 5038, 504. a THE UNBELIEVER’S CREED. ADS belief, are sincere in their profession of it :—it appears also that they are sober-minded, and of good judgment ;—it is clear that they are, earnestly affected in relation to whatever is of un- doubted importance, and that they treat slightingly what we all feel to be indifferent.” Let him then take up any one of the Supernatural Epistles: eg. that to the Romans. In reaching the close of it he is startled to find the writer, with whose inmost thoughts he had become familiar, boldly affirm- ing that, in a missionary circuit of several hundred miles, he had wrought miracles, in each town and city as he passed. Under the perplexity that has thus arisen, the alternative is just this :— Either, To yield our belief to Christianity, as a supernatural dispensation ; Or, To suppose that “the apostolic men, not one of them, but all, stand as a class by themselves, of which no other samples have occurred among the myriad varieties of the species: for they are wise, and mad: they are always vir- tuous, and always wicked: they are prudent and they are absurd, and they are both in an extreme degree. They are at all times consistently inconsistent with themselves, and with human nature.” He who imagines this to be a caricature, will do well to try and put into his own words, his own. idea of the apostles, the facts duly taken vnto the account, on the supposition that no miracles were wrought in attestation of their ministry. He will then perceive how absolutely unavoid- able is the sceptical absurdity here enunciated. After all, what does it matter? Itis but one of a thousand: a single article in the unbeliever’s creed.” 6 «T will not tell you that your supposition as to the apostolic character is ‘uncharitable,’ is ‘un- warantable,’ is ‘ungenerous,’ and the like; for I am content to tell you, what is simply the fact, That it is a jumble of incoherencies to which no semblance of moral, or of immoral unity can be given. I do not tell you that your con- ception is wrong and unfair ;—for it is no conception at all—it is a naked absurdity!”— (Isaac Tay- lor: Rest of Bel. pp. 218, 219. 7 Tue UNBELIEVER’S CREED. “T believe that there is no God, but that matter is God, and God is matter; and that it is no matter whether there is any God or no. I 456 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. Then again, what about the Gospels themselves? Is there to be found among the Rationalists any single theory which has not been laughed to scorn by themselves? Bauer (as already noticed) has returned to the hypothesis of the Wolfenbiittel fragments, which ascribes the Gospels to deliberate fabrication. But to this the followers of Paulus of Heidelberg still reply that the thing is impossible. The fabrication of the Gospels by Galilean Jews, would be a greater miracle than any there recorded, Besides, Christianity is a FORCE in the world :—a force available for the good of man, not because it is Wisdom, but because it is Power. Whence comes its power? Whence will it come after the world has been persuaded that in the book of history the Gospels must be catalogued along with Frauds ? Perhaps however, the republication of Strauss’s Leben Jesu is to be taken as an indication of a return to the mythical theory :—a theory indeed, which though inexpressibly absurd, is yet quite as reasonable as any other on the side of unbelief. A theory which, while it fails to account for a single fact, stands out in direct contradiction to every conceivable possibility. To apply it to the single instance of the Resurrection :—The Apostles had been disappointed, and their faith had. failed. Hope, Faith, and Courage, had been buried in their Master’s tomb. . These might rise again with Him, but they could not raise Him, when they were not themselves revived. And the question is, What revived them? It is idle to say “an altered view of the prophecies,” because that is only suggesting again the same question in another form— What altered their view of the prophecies? Was it some fact? Or was it merely a fancy ? The choice is indeed a hard one; but Scepticism, when driven to the last, will boldly prefer an absurdity to a Miracle. Perhaps the Myth arose of itself—or else it was produced by believe also, that the world was not made ; that the world made itself; that it had no beginning ; that it will last for ever, world without end. “IT believe that a man is a beast, that the soul is the body, and the body is the soul; and that after death there is neither body nor soul. “I believe there is no religion; that natural religion is the only re- ligion; and that all religion is unnatural. . . Lastly, I believe in all unbelief.” ABSURDITY OF THE MYTHIC THEORY. 457 SOMETHING. “SOMETHING,” says Strauss, “sensible to the ear or eye, sometimes perhaps the aspect of SOME UNKNOWN PERSON, gave them impressions of an appearance of Jesus.” But this is not all. Let the cause be what it will, or let Myths be mushrooms that spring naturally in some soils with- out any cause at all, still it is impossible that, in such a case, the Myth should have arisen, or, having arisen, should have been propagated. For if the idea of Christ’s Resurrection occurred to the disciples at all, it must have occurred to them as a thing to be proved. “SOMETHING” may have made it congenial to their own minds; but nothing could have be- witched them to believe it would turn out congenial to the minds of priests and people reeking with the blood of a murdered Messiah. And they must, therefore, have plainly perceived that, in spreading such a story, their personal safety was at stake. We read, accordingly, of their being “straitly threat- ened” by the Jewish rulers, as intending to bring “on them this man’s blood.” Now was ever Myth generated under such circumstances as these ? “Still less is it possible that a Myth should have been pro- pagated under such circumstances. The character of Jesus may have produced as strong an impression as you please on his few immediate followers: but to talk of an impression made on a vast multitude who never could have known him familiarly, by a man of low birth and mean fortune—who never performed any dazzling exploit, who was crucified, dead, and buried, and whose body, if He did not rise, must have been forthcoming—an impression so strong as to alter all their strongest national prejudices,—to revolutionize the Faith of their childhood, and persuade them, on no evidence at all, that He had risen bodily, and bodily ascended into Heaven,—this is to talk such nonsense as infidelity alone can venture on, when engaged in the desperate task of evading a Miracle. In the most Mythic age that ever was, this would have been impossible. Myths have been founded on many a religion, but no religion yet was ever founded ona Myth.” Christianity, from the first, both professed and believed itself, to stand upon the evidence of testimony: not on preconceived fancies, 458 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. “With these pretensions then, it arose in an enlightened and sceptical age, but amongst a despised and narrow-minded people. It earned hatred and persecution at home, by its liberal genius and opposition to the national prejudices. It earned contempt abroad by its connexion with the country where it was born, but which sought to strangle it in its birth. Emerging from Judea, it made its way outward through the most polished regions of the world—Asia Minor, Egypt, Greece, Rome: and in all it attracted notice and provoked hostility. Successive massacres, and attempts at extermination, prosecuted for ages by the whole force of the Roman Empire, it bore without resistance, and seemed to draw fresh vigour from the axe; but assaults, in the way of argument from whatever quarter, it was never ashamed or unable to repel ; and, whether attacked or not, it was resolutely aggressive. In four centuries, it had pervaded the civilized world, it had mounted the throne of the Ceesars, it had spread beyond the limits of their sway, and had made inroads upon barbarian nations whom their eagles had never visited. It had gathered all genius and all learning into itself, and made the literature of the world its own. It survived the inundation of the barbarian tribes, and conquered the world once more, by converting its conquerors to the faith. It survived an age of barbarism. It survived the restoration of letters. It survived an age of free enquiry and scepticism, and has long stood its ground in the field of argument, and commanded the intelligent assent of the greatest minds that ever were. It has been the parent of civilization, and the nurse of learning ; and if light and humanity and freedom be the boast of Modern Europe, itis to Christianity that she owes them. Exhibiting in the life of Jesus a picture, varied and minute, of the perfect human united with the divine, in which the mind of man has not been able to find a deficiency or detect a blemish—a picture copied from no model, and rivalled by no copy—it has satisfied the moral wants of mankind ;—and it has retained, through every change, a salient spring of life which enables it to throw off corruption and repair decay, and renew its youth, amidst outward hostility and inward divisions. Yet this religion, and all its moral miracles,—this mighty impulse, which no time or ACHIEVEMENTS OF CHRISTIANITY. 459 space can check or exhaust—proceeds, if we believe Strauss and his admirers, from a Myth casually produced in the fancies of some Galilean peasants. The moral world of modern civil- ization has sprung from the fortuitous concourse of some atoms of Mythology in the brains of unknown SOMEBODIES !””* * Bishop Fitzgerald: ‘‘ Cautions for the Times,” XXIX. CHAPTER XVIII. IT IS CERTAIN : THAT THE CERTAINTY WHICH CHARACTERIZES THE DEMONSTRATION OF THE TRUTH OF CHRISTIANITY, IS CERTAINTY OF THE HIGHEST KIND. ‘There always exists a class of minds to whom the plain and simple is distasteful ; who have no pleasure in ordinary proofs or unentangled deduc- tions. GIvE THESE MEN WHAT KIND OR AMOUNT OF EVIDENCE YOU MAY, THEY ARE CERTAIN TO DEMAND OTHER AND MORE.’’—C,. Forster. I. Wuart is the highest kind of certainty ? From a consideration of the circumstances in which mankind are placed it will appear that the several kinds of evidence, that derived from intuition, from demonstration, from the senses, from moral reasoning, and from human testimony, have each their respective provinces, and, if complete in themselves, carry with them an equal degree of assurance. Any attempt to exalt one of these species of evidence to the depreciation of the rest, is scarcely less unphilosophical than to misapply them. Des Cartes has been justly ridiculed for taking the pains to prove his own existence by demonstration, which he learnt from consciousness, But it is, in fact, a similar absurdity to require demonstrative proof of that which we know by sensation, as the existence of external things, or to demand sensitive proof, or demonstrative proof, or intuitive conviction, of that which is in its own nature incapable of any other evidence than that which is called probable. “Probable! well, perhaps so;” says an objector; “but as far as the evidence for Revelation is concerned, I should have liked it better if it had been mathematical.” What! a mathe- matical demonstration of moral truths? Is this a rational eS ee ee ee Ee CHARACTER OF THE EVIDENCE, AG 1 request? Will the objector undertake to show how it could be possible even to Omnipotence itself, to furnish demonstra- tive proof of an historical fact? Or, with his extravagant exaltation of mathematical certainty, will he pretend that he is more certain of the equality or inequality of certain angles in his diagram, than of the real existence of the pen with which he describes that diagram ? He has the most perfect confidence in the certainty of mathematical demonstration. Very well: but has he less confidence in the certainty of that operation of the senses by which (in aid of the reasoning faculty) he has arrived at that demonstration? He is sure that mathematical proof will never deceive him. But how is he sure of it? Is it from consciousness? Then is he sure of his consciousness? If not, he is not sure after all. But if he is sure of his consciousness ; then he posseses a certainty which is independent of demon- stration. But it will be said, We may with comparative safety trust the evidence of consciousness and that of the senses ; it is only “probable evidence” that is untrustworthy. Language, such as this, however, betrays a misconception of the meaning of terms. The word probable, when applied to evidence of this nature, “does not imply any deficiency in the proof, but only marks the particular nature of that proof, as contradistinguished from other species of evidence. It is opposed not to what is certain, but to what admits of being demonstrated after the manner of mathematicians.” But even in the ordinary ac- ceptation of the term, the fact’ is, that for all the weighty concerns of daily life, men trust implicitly to probable evidence alone. ‘PROBABILITY is the very guide of life.” “Indeed, if it were not just and reasonable to place effectual reliance on what is termed probable evidence, the business of the world would soon stand still) Human testimony is the main spring of all. that is planned or done at the bar, in the forum, or in the senate. Moral probability is all that we attain, or seek to attain, in politics or jurisprudence, or even in most of the sciences. Nor is it too much to affirm, that every individual * Stewart’s Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, vol. ii. ch. iv. sect. 4. 462 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. risks without hesitation his health, or his life, or his fortune, or reputation, daily in some way or other, on the strength of evidence of which, if it came to be narrowly examined, would not appear to have half the certainty which we may arrive at, respecting the miraculous deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt, and the veracity of the Mosaic records.” It should also be considered that the evidence of a Divine Revelation must not be such as to annihilate the conditions on which man is to be made virtuous and happy, if he is to be made go at all. It must not be inconsistent with the exercises of either his reason or his faith ; nor prevent the play of his moral disposi- tions, nor triumph by mere violence over his prejudices; it must not operate purely upon the passions or the senses, nor overbear all possibility of offering resistance. The happiness which God originally designed for his intelligent and moral creatures was a voluntary happiness springing out of the well- balanced and well-directed activity of all the principles of their nature, Any revelation, therefore, must proceed on the same basis, both as regards itself and the mode in which it is given. Moral evidence is the appropriate proof of moral truth, The evidence that attests the truth of Christianity, vast, varied, and of great cumulative power, though it be, is not, therefore, irresistible. Moral subjects can admit of no evidence which is incompatible with human responsibility. So that to object that Christianity has no certainty because it has not mathematical certainty is the same thing as saying that it cannot be true because it wants the evidence which would deprive men of the liberty of rejecting it. IT. What is it that we want to know ? We want to know—whence we came—whither we are going ? Whether there be in truth, a tremendous Personality, to whose infinite faculties the “great” and the “little” (as we call them) equally vanish—whose universal presence fills all space, in any point of which he exists entire in the amplitude of all his infinite attributes—whose universal government extends even to us, and our fellow-atoms, called men; within whose ‘ Archbp. Sumner’s “Records of the Creation”: vol. i. p. 257. NATURAL RELIGION: UNNATURAL. 463 sheltering embrace even we are not too mean for protection ;— whether if there be such a being, he is truly infinite ; or whether this vast? machine of the universe may not have developed tendencies or involved consequences which eluded his fore- thought, and are now beyond even his control ;—whether for this reason, or for some other necessity, such infinite sorrows have been permitted to invade it ;—whether, above all, he be propitious or hostile towards a world in which we feel too surely, in the profound and various misery of man, that his aspects are not all benignant—how, if he be offended, he is to be reconciled ;—whether he is at all accessible, or one to whom the pleasures and the sufferings of the poor child of dust are equally subjects of horrible indifference ;—whether, if such Omnipotent Being created the world, he has now abandoned it to be the sport of chance, and we are thus mere orphans in the universe ;—whether this universal frame be indeed without a mind, and we are in fact the only forms of conscious existence ; whether this conscious existence of ours is to be renewed ; and, if so, under what conditions ; or whether, when we have finished our little day, no other dawn is to break upon our night ;—whether the vale, vale in weternum, vale, is really the proper utterance of a broken-heart as it closes the sepulchre on the object of its love.’ But who shall tell us of these things? Reason? Science ? Naturalism? Reason knows nothing of things beyond her province: but this knowledge ‘is high;” she cannot attain to it. Science may count the stars, may fathom the depths, may weigh the mountains ; but when we ask, “ How shall man be just with God?” “Ifa man die shall he live again?” “Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” “What must I do to be saved ?”’—Science is dumb: and the silence is broken by Revelation alone. “Lord, to whom shall we go but unto Thee? THovu hast the words of eternal life !” “Natural religion is decidedly against nature. When, in bewilderment, I have run through its three or four merciless dogmas ; when I have passed a few moments at the bottom of this ice-house, I feel an invincible want of light and heat again. * The Eclipse of Faith ; p. 59. 46 4 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. I must love, and I must feel myself loved. What should I do with your Supreme Being, your immoveable Creator, to whom I owe my life (and what a life!), and who is waiting me with his balances? I am a sinner; how will you change me? I am sick ; how will you heal me? Iam condemned; how will you deliver me? I seek a heavenly Father; what have you done with him! I want to pray ; what becomes of prayer in your system? ‘These griefs, these injustices in me and out of me, agitate and overwhelm me; what solution do you give me of these problems? These are the only questions worth solving, and you leave them unanswered! I wander confounded among your deserts, finding nowhere the two great Christian solutions —the Fall and Salvation. It is truly the moment to ery with Mary, ‘They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him.’ And without the Saviour, what an in- describable solitude is created around us! If there are only laws; if there is neither Father, Son, nor Holy Spirit; if all intercourse between heaven and earth is interrupted ; if the supernatural in Providence has disappeared ; if it be not true that the angels ‘ascend and descend,’ oh! what a horrible silence in the whole creation! Your telescopes have extended its limits ; you have discovered more worlds ; you have obtained a glimpse of nebula where myriads of suns and worlds, larger than ours, travel in space. Well, so much the worse! The regions you thus people are only the more empty ; these my- riads of worlds do not make up for the least breath of sympathy and love! Give me back one word of restoration, one word of the Gospel! Deliver my nature from your natural religion, and I shall feel at ease—at home in the midst of this magnifi- cent creation. I shall once more see clear, and my heart will beat !”* “It is no especial depth of reflection,” says a well-known continental theologian,* “it is merely an average degree of moral earnestness that we need, to keep us stedfastly gazing on one aspect of human life, and constantly renewing our researches into its nature. I speak,” he adds, “of human life’s evil aspect ; WEL EGR mC a FTP SSS hc tee) Re Ree Te Oe * Count de Gasparin : in “ Les Perspectives du Temps Present.” * Julius Miiller. GLORY OF THE GOSPEL. AGS of the presence of an element of disturbance and discord just where we most intensely feel the need for unity and harmony. This element meets us wherever and whenever our minds review the history of the human race, and its progressive development, as a whole. It reveals itself no less clearly in countless ways when we fix our attention upon the particular relations of human society, nor can we conceal from ourselves its existence when we look within our breasts. It is a dark shadow which casts its gloom over every circle of human life, and constantly swallows up its gayest and brightest forms.” Is there no possibility of escape from this “dark shadow 2?” None whatever ; if the Bible be not from God. By the nar- rowness of human wisdom, and the feebleness of human power, we are alike “shut up (éppovpotvucba ovyxexreropévor) to the faith” of the Gospel. But let that Faith be accepted, and everything is changed. Then the pages of the Bible are seen and felt to glow with the light and warmth of the Sun of Righteousness, who rises on the nations “with healing in His wings.” Then “the people who sit in darkness see a great light ; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up.” Then Jesus of Nazareth appears —as Helis; “The Light of the world:” and he that believeth in Him “shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.” Then is destroyed “the face of the covering cast over all people, and the veil that is spread over all nations ;” and life and immortality are brought to light. Why this is just what we want. This is the great need of mankind. It is the cry for this, that meets us in the pages of our greatest poets— ‘* An infant crying for the light, And with no language but a cry!” in the dying utterance of our greatest sages—“More light!” in the passionate wailing borne across the sea from bereaved mothers in heathen lands—“O God, annihilate or else enlighten me !” No wonder that a Revelation so exactly adapted to satisfy the cravings of human need should be called a Gospel ; “glad tidings of great joy, to all people ;” “the glorious gospel of the GG AG6 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. blessed God.” But after all, its actual value depends entirely on the answer to be given to the question—IS IT TRUE? If true, it is precious beyond all price: if untrue, it is nothing better than a mockery, a delusion, and a snare. Thank God! that which, above all things else, makes Christianity to be “worthy of all acceptation,” is its absolute and infallible cer- tainty ; It is “a FAITHFUL saying.” III. What then is the certainty which the Bible gives? and what the modes by which it is given ? Its facts are certain. Its doctrines are certain. There is a certain corroboration of its history. There is a certain demon- stration of its theory. The religion of the Bible is distinguished by its certainty from all other religions whatsoever. 1. Its FACTS ARE CERTAIN: Their monuments are around us. As long as the Jews continue -to observe their passover, and rite of circumcision, so long will it be impossible (rationally) to deny the reality of the occurrences out of which those insti- tutions sprang. As long as the Christian Sabbath and the Christian Sacraments are celebrated, so long will it be impossi- ble to account for their existence except by admitting the truth of the facts recorded in the Bible. For observe how the matter stands. The Christian Sabbath is a standing monument :—of what? Of Christ’s Resurrection: or—of nothing! The ab- surdity of this latter alternative drives us back upon the former: and we are consequently more sure of the fact of Christ’s resur- rection than if we had ourselves witnessed it. For in that case we should have had nothing more than the evidence of our senses ; and our senses (we are told) might have deceived us: but there is no instance on record in the history of the world, where it is pretended that consequences such as those which have followed in this instance ever did follow from any other than a REAL cause. And in this instance, no other cause than the actual Resurrection is even assignable. No other cause is adequate (or can pretend to be adequate) to the effect. It is therefore absolutely certain that Jesus Christ did rise from the dead. But this Resurrection was repeatedly foretold. Christ him- self pointed to it as a proof of the Divinity of His Teaching ; THE SINAITIC INSCRIPTIONS. 467 a “sign” of His authority. When He said “ Destroy this tem- ple, and in three days I will raise it up:” “He spake of the temple of His body.” In the verification of the prediction, therefore, we have the proof of the infallibility of the Prophet. But this Prophet accepted and endorsed the whole of the Old Testament Scriptures. He authenticated the leading facts recorded in the Pentateuch ; and described the Jewish Law as “The Law of Moses.” Now if in this He erred, His teaching was not Divine: and His claim to be the Messiah was a false claim: and the omni- potent “God that cannot lie” would not endorse a fraud, by raising Jesus from the dead. But Jesus did rise from the dead. The Resurrection is a fact. Its monument is before us. And its effect is to demon- strate the Divinity of Christ, and to authenticate the facts recorded in the Bible. 2. ITS DOCTRINES ARE CERTAIN. For they depend upon the facts which were wrought to attest their truth. Here are no equivocal utterances, no ambiguous voices. Take eg., that doctrine which meets with such invincible repugnance from modern criticism—the doctrine of The Atonement.* How ex- press are Christ’s own words! “The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister; and to give His LIFE, A Ransom for many.” 3. THERE IS A CERTAIN CORROBORATION OF ITS HISTORY :— a corroboration which as shown in the pages of Lardner, Paley, Blunt, and others, no one has ever attempted to gainsay or resist. The same may be said of the discoveries of Rawlinson and Layard; and of the Sinaitic Inscriptions photographed by Mr. Forster. At a time like the present, when the historic verity of the Pentateuch is so unblushingly assailed, the im- portance of a work like Mr, Forster’s" can hardly be too highly estimated. By his painstaking and persevering research we * For examples of the insepara- | call to the apostleship of the sons bility of the historic and doctrinal | of Zebedee. ® See App. Note D. elements in Scripture, see, ¢.g., in * “ Sinai Photographed: or Co- Prof. Blunt's “ Undesigned Coin- | temporary Records of Israel in cidences,” the removal of The Ark | the Wilderness.” By the Rev. C. to the house of Obed-Edom;and the | Forster, B.D., &c. (Bentley ; 1862.) 468 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. have been put in possession of the actual “Cotemporary Records of Israel in the Wilderness.” This new Testimony of the Rocks verifies not only the main facts, but also the minute particulars, of the Mosaic history. How is it to be met? “It cannot be answered with supercilious sneers; it cannot be passed by in silent contempt ; it cannot now be hinted or sur- mised that the inscriptions are falsely copied, or that some of them do not really exist. Photography cannot be made to lie ; the sun in the heavens will not lend his beams to illuminate and engross a forgery.” A more valuable external testimony to the exact veracity of the Mosaic history than that which these inscriptions on the rocks of Sinai afford, can hardly be conceived. Unconscious witnesses to the truth of God’s word ; a hidden testimony lying unnoticed for ages, but “graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever ;” and at length pro- duced to strengthen the faith of those who believe “all Scrip- ture” to have been written by inspiration of God, and therefore, in the minutest particular, unalterably true. 4, THERE IS A CERTAIN DEMONSTRATION OF ITS THEORY. Its theory is this :— That man cannot, by searching, find out God; that God has therefore’ been pleased to reveal Himself to man. That by nature, man is “ dead in trespasses and sins:” but that “God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son.” That the Scriptures are the depository of that life; because it is by them alone that we can obtain an authentic knowledge of Him, “whom to know islife eternal.” That this knowledge (although the special gift of God) is offered to all (without respect of persons,) on one single condition. That condition is this :—That men shall take God’s word. That they shall believe in Him :— so believe in Him as toobey Him. And on this single condition, God’s promise of absolute certainty as to the Truth of Christianity, may be verified by every man who is willing to comply with the condition. Could anything be more reasonable? The mysteries of art are known only to the practical artist. The secret of success is the exclusive possession of those who succeed. The demon- strations of chemistry are taken on trust by thousands; but the knowledge of their absolute certainty belongs to those only THE APPEAL TO EVIDENCE. 469 who have conducted the experiments. And it is a certainty analogous to this, but infinitely higher, that results from the same method in religion. No man ever yet tried the EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE for Christianity, and found it fail him. 5. THE RELIGION OF THE BIBLE IS DISTINGUISHED BY ITS CERTAINTY from all other religions whatsoever. The religions of Paganism were merely popular delusions which were deemed essential to the well-being of society,” Their truth was not only not evident; it was non-existent, No one ever pretended that they could be established by evidence: it was deemed enough that they were established by law. With respect to them, truth, and belief in the truth, seem scarcely to have entered men’s minds. No wonder therefore that Pilate should be perplexed when, in answer to his inquiries, the founder of Christianity declared Himself to have come into the world for this very end—that he might “ bear witness unto the Truth.” (What is truth?) But so it is. The Christianity of the Bibleis “The Truth.” Christ’s disciples are “sanctified through the Truth.” They “know the Truth ;” and the Truth makes them free. And the reception of Christianity is the reception of “The Truth.” In all this it is not only implied that the religion of Christ is true, and is the only true one; but when the Gospel was first preached, the very pretension to truth, the very demand of faith, were among its characteristic distinctions. The heathen mythology not only was not true, but was not even supported as true: it not only deserved no faith, but it demanded none. Christianity, on the other hand, is distinguished not merely by the strength of its claims, but by their nature. Its friends can point not only to the force of the evidence in its favour ; but also to the fact that it alone dare boldly appeal to evidence.* It appeals to the evidence of Miracles, The reality of the miracles involved in the creation of the 7“ The various modes of wor- | useful.” (Gibbon’s “Decline and ship which prevailed in the Roman | Fall”; ch. ii.) world, were all considered by the * See Abp. Whately’s “ Essay on people as equally true; by the | some of the Difficulties in the philosopher, as equally false; and | Writings of St. Paul”; p. 8. by the magistrate, as equally 470 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. first man, ° and the history of the first “Sunday,” is not at all affected by the most incessant shouting that “miracles are impossible.” Even Science herself (through the pages of Prof. Babbage ®) has shown the absurdity of disbelief with regard to miracles. The miracles of the New Testament are unique. They are so in themselves ; in their consequences ; in their uniform subordination to moral ends; and in the character of the witnesses by whom they are attested. If the Christian Miracles were not true, we should then have to confront the greatest miracle of all:—the miracle involved in the existence of Christianity without miracles! But the Christian Miracles are true; their monuments still confront us ; and they furnish urefragable proof that the Christian Religion is Divine. It appeals to the evidence of Prophecy. The antiquity of the prophecies that foretell the extirpation of the Edomites, the preservation of the Jews, the coming of Messiah, is undisputed. The pretence that any prophecy of Scripture was mere history, thrown by some forger into the prophetic form, has been driven from its last lurking place in the animadversions on Daniel. The character of these pre- dictions, not less than their singular and exact fulfilment, proves their prevision to be divine. The Prophecies of Scrip- ture do more than foretell, they instruct. They have a preceptive element inseparable from the predictive: and by their Divine Morality as well as by their comprehensive Unity, they are distinguished from all other oracles whatever. It was of Messiah, that “The Prophets,” as well as “ Moses, in the Law,” “did write.” The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. And just as in the miracles of Christianity we see the monu- ments of Christ’s words and deeds, so we see their foreshadows in those prophetic utterances which “testified beforehand of the sufferings of Christ, and of the glory that should follow.” The vision vouchsafed to Peter on the Mount of Transfiguration made him an eye-witness of Messiah’s majesty ; he saw “the excellent glory ;” he heard the attesting voice: but typed on the pages of the Bible, and imprinted on the history of nations, is an evidence more infallible than that of the senses; an * Vide supra, pp. 833, 334. ® The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise. THE EXTERNAL ATTESTATION. 471 evidence which he who runs may read; “a MORE SURE word of prophecy.” It appeals to the moral fitness of its doctrines, and the moral excellence of its precepts. Is there any other system which unfolds to us the diagnosis of our moral malady? which gives us at once, the knowledge of the disease and the knowledge of the cure? Any other which explains the nature, and supplies the antidote, of the moral evil within us and around us? Give us only the parable of the lost sheep, and of the prodigal son; a Reconciler who can bring to an end our long estrangement and alienation from our Father in heaven ; a Deliverer “mighty to save”; “Christ our Passover, sacrificed for us;” even “The Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world!” and we want no other proof that the Bible is from God, and Christianity divine. Its adaptation to our need is perfect. “We have found Him” our souls so long have sought ; and we clasp the precious truth to our heart—It is “a faithful saying, and worthy of all accepta- tion, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” It appeals to the moral character of its penmen and preachers. For this alone presents a phenomenon inexplicable if not divine.” The Christian miracles are the result of Divine Power ; the prophecies of Divine Knowledge; the moral excellence of the teaching flows from Divine Goodness; and the moral character of the teachers, from Divine Purity. So that Christianity may be said to be built on these four immove- able pillars ;—the power, the wisdom, the goodness, and the purity of God. But although the manifestations of the Divine Presence may be seen conspicuously in these particulars, they are not confined to these. The verity of Inspired Scripture is attested by external history, in such minute particulars, and to such a large extent, that a recent writer forcibly remarked that the shortest way of dispelling Scepticism would be by a thorough investigation of St. Luke’s account of the voyage of St. Paul (Ac. xxvii). And internally itis attested (independent of its moral traits) by those innumerable and “deeply-latent coincidences, which, if fraud employed them, overreached fraud “Vide supra, pp. 871-374; 423-425. 472 - OHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. itself ; lying so deep as to be undiscovered for nearly eighteen centuries, and only recently attracting the attention of the world in consequence of the objections of infidels themselves.” It appeals to those undeniable facts which prove that it cannot but be true. If the Bible be merely human, how came it to be written ? How came it to be so very widely different from every other book? Above all, how came its writers to be Jews? For the Jews (as Theodore Parker truly says,) were “a nation alike despised in ancient and modern times.” Yet it is from this nation that we receive a book to which neither Greece, nor Rome, nor Italy, nor England can offer any parallel. Here is a miracle, open to all men’s view, which not even that sturdiest disbeliever of “supernaturalism ” can deny or question. But besides being written, the Bible has been believed. How came it to be believed at first, if it is not true ? And first as to the New Testament. If the alleged facts there recorded have no reality they are romance of the most monstrous kind. But how came these fictions, containing such monstrous romance, and equally monstrous doctrines, to be believed? To be believed by multitudes of Jews and Gentiles, both opposed and equally opposed to them by previous inveterate superstition and prejudice? How came so many men of such different races and nations of mankind to hasten to unclothe themselves of all their previous beliefs in order to adopt these fantastical fables? How came they to persist in regarding them as authoritative truth? How came so many in so many different countries to do this at once? And yet it is not only certain that they did so; but (as already shewn) these “very peculiar fictions” were believed by many before they were even compiled and published ! As to the Old Testament: How are we to account for the intense, obstinate, and unanimous belief of the Jews for so many ages, and afterwards of their enemies, the Samaritans, not only in the historic character, but also in the Mosaic authorship and inspiration of the Pentateuch?—a belief never troubled by a shadow of doubt or suspicion, or contradicted by one echo of opposing testimony ; a belief which they were ever palpably interested in throwing off, if erroneous, and yet which they THE PENTATEUCH. 473 would sooner die than surrender! This fact is in itself equally incomprehensible—if the Pentateuch be indeed un- historic—at whatever date we fix its composition. If these monstrous fables were from the beginning foisted on the nation as the true history of the events in which it originated, how can we account for its unanimously accepting them, and proceeding to mould the national life, laws, and manners upon them? Above all, how shall we account for this people’s affirming, in this case, that they had seen marvels, which every body was appealed to as having seen, but which they knew had never been wrought; and on that egregious faith— or rather /ie—proceeding to bend their necks to a burdensome yoke of laws and ceremonies, which in the language of Peter, “neither they nor their fathers had been able to bear ;” and then (to complete the thing) handing down through all coming ages, without one misgiving of heart, one protesting whisper of conscience, this unanimous and stupendous lie? At the very least, how can we imagine the nation moulding its life, forming its institutions and manners, on what that whole nation knew, by the very appeal to it, to be a pure romance ? It is these very difficulties that principally incline our modern sceptics—who are at all events resolved to get rid of the miraculous element—to contend for the late composition of the Pentateuch. But if that theory be adopted, we are soon led to some similar difficulties, and equally insurmountable. For if this book was really a late composition—long after the nation had a history of its own, and had got (no one can tell how) its institutions and its laws—how came the Jews unani- mously to endorse books in which that history is throughout so egregiously caricatured? Above all, how came they at that time of day, to vouch for supernatural fictions of the most monstrous character so freely superfused over the whole Mosaic books? How came they, at so late a period of their annals, to accept without a dissentient voice this document as their true history? how came they to be universally hoodwinked, so as not to perceive the juggle that was being passed upon them, or so universally wicked as to join, without a murmur that has ever reached their posterity, in adopting, consecrating, and handing down the cheat? not one of them even for a moment ATA CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. relenting, in a momentary treason to this conspiracy of wicked- ness, so far as to express doubt or detestation of this prodigious and unanimous lie? How could they do it if they would, or how would they do it if they could? How ought we to charac- terize the supposition of the whole Jewish nation, and even their bitter enemies the Samaritans, receiving, as no less than inspired truth, these impudent contradictions of their true history, and, when first published, of their very senses and consciousness, to boot! “Again, how came this singular people to receive, not only as historically true, but as worthy of suffering martyrdom for, if called to it, records which, if not his- tory, are but one long libel upon themselves? Would this make them more willing to toil in procuring credit for that enduring and unanimous lie, by which alone these records could be effec- tually consigned to the veneration of posterity? Would not all patriotism, as well as everything else, lead them to denounce chron- icles which are but little else than chronicles of their shame !”” 2 Mr. Rogers’s “ Vindication: ” Letter V. “If I may judge from one or two hints in Part I., I fancy | our author will endeavour to prove that the Pentateuch is a series of fictions, composed as a sort of Jewish ‘Library of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge,’ by Sam- uel or Nathan or Gad, or all of them; much as Aisop composed his ‘Fables, or John Bunyan his ‘Pilgrim’s Progress ;’ that though they everywhere protest they are telling mere matter of fact, and somehow uniformly produce the effect that they meant to do so, and everywhere appeal to God that they speak in His name and by His authority, yet they really meant nothing of the kind at all: that on the other hand, the Is- raclites, finding that all this was very delightful reading —though they, as well as all their fore- fathers, are branded and libelled in every page, ‘are huffed and cuf- fed and disrespectit,’ are told that they will never come to any good, that they will always prove an ‘ ob- stinate, stiffmecked generation,’ and will at length (which has curiously come to pass) be scat- tered among the nations, and be- come ‘a hissing, a bye-word, and a proverb,—yet were so tickled with this pleasant story-book, that they were somehow completely taken in, fancied it was their true history, and forthwith handed it down, without one sound of pro- test, doubt, or repugnance, to all future generations, as not only true in fact, but as divinely in- spired! Here is likelihood, here is wisdom! I cannot say Credat Judeus, for certainly no Jew ever would or did believe such non- sense; credulous scepticism alone is equal to that.” (Ibid. p. 101.) UNITY OF THE BIBLE. 47 5 Another undeniable fact is that of the mutual relation, the perfect agreement, the complete unity, which we have already seen to exist between the Old Testament and the Néw. Situa- ted as were the writers, collusion was impossible ; and yet they everywhere present us with the same central Truth. If the Gospel comes with the glad announcement that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin; it comes as the comple- ment of the Law, which had previously made it notorious that “without shedding of blood” there could be no remission, If the great apostle of the Gentiles shows us “Christ our Passover, sacrificed for us ;” it is the great prophet of the Exodus that shows us the full meaning of those precious words :—“The blood shall be to you for a token ; and when I see the blood I will pass over you.” From Moses to Malachi, every Jewish writer of Holy Scripture points us to The Messiah who should be cut off, but not for Himself; and their Christian successors, with one voice, bid us “Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world.” Prefigured in types, foretold in prophecy, and recorded in history, the fact is incontrovertible, that Jesus Christ has come, to make an end of sin, and to bring in an everlasting righteousness. If we admit the action of a Divine Superintendence, choosing its own heralds, and giving to each his separate proclamation, then we have a con- sistent and satisfactory solution of the problem furnished by the agreement of the sacred writers. But without this admis- sion, it is a problem which eighteen centuries of sceptical speculation have failed to solve. Take the New Testament alone. Our adversaries themselves tell us of its “unapproachable greatness.” Let them account for this greatness. It is an undeniable fact. It must have a cause ; and the cause must be adequate to the effect. But no such adequate cause has ever yet been assigned but one — “Inspiration of God.” Take the problem presented by the life and character of Christ. We have seen the proofs of His superhuman spotless- ness, wisdom, power. The Christian doctrine says that He was Divine: and in so saying it does what no other doctrine has ever done—it accounts for the facts. The truth of the fact is a phenomenon: the truth of the doctrine accounts for the 476 - CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. phenomenon. And the undeniable fact that no other explana- tion ever yet attempted does account for the phenomenon, proves that the Christian doctrine cannot but be true. Take the success of Christianity. Other religions (Moham- medanism, for instance,) have succeeded by the sword. Chris- tianity succeeded against the sword. Others have been established by the power of the State in this or that particular nation. Christianity was established in opposition to the power of the mightiest empire of antiquity ; and has spread through- out the world. Other religions, set up by sages and philoso- phers, after a brief and decaying existence have been buried beneath their own corruption. But Christianity, with fisher- men and tent-makers for its apostles, is an indestructible Power, equal to the regeneration of a world. Here then is another undeniable fact. And if the Bible is true, the fact is fully accounted for. For this is that which was foretold by Daniel the prophet: —“In the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed.” But if the Bible is not true, what then ? Why, then, the success of Christianity—with all its inexhausti- ble and inestimable benefits for the millions of mankind—is the success of a LiE! Now we might make our appeal to the evidence furnished by these several particulars taken singly ; for there is not one of them that is not sufficient to demonstrate the truth of our proposition. What then must be their wnited force? Yet it is their united force that the unbeliever has to resist. He has to account not merely for one or two (though he has never got that far yet,) but for all the moral phenomena presented by the Composition of the Bible, Its unparalleled Preservation, Its unrivalled Effects, Its relation to Christ, The Life and Character of Christ Himself, and—under circumstances peculiarly ad- verse and unprecedented—The Success of Christianity. In- ability to account for any one of these is fatal to his cause. Together, they furnish a combination of moral proof which— when men are willing to be convinced—is found to be perfectly * Da. ii. 44. Cf. The corresponding declarations in the Gospels: e.g, (Lu. x. 9.) “The kingdom of God is come nigh unto you.” THE FORCE OF CONGRUITY. A477 irresistible ; and which—be they never so unwilling—is always unanswerable, And ‘yet these proofs, strong as they are, are our weakest, They are more prominent indeed, but not more potent than those MORAL CONGRUITIES which, as we have already seen, though not strictly definable, do more really, though uncon- sciously, sustain our belief, than these formal “proofs in line.” “The vast difference, as to its bearing upon our principles of action, and our every-day habitudes, between catenary reason- ing and THE FORCE OF CONGRUITY, is felt in the instance of the argument concerning Christianity more than perhaps in any other case that could be named.” Theoretically, the demon- stration of the truth of that Belief is complete, without any reference to The Force of Congruity ; but practically, our reli- gious convictions come to us in much the same way, as con- victions on other subjects. And it is notorious “that those of our convictions upon which we are accustomed to act with the most unhesitating confidence, and to which we commend our- selves without fear, when life itself, or estate, is at risk, are not, or seldom are, those which we may obtain by processes of catenary deduction ; or by a course of reasoning which, in a technical sense, is logical. It is not so. Man such as we find him on the beaten road of real life, is no such syllogistic automaton as that he should bring propositions in threes to bear upon the business and conduct of every day. Pedants do this, and break their heads in consequence. It is by the force of congruous evidence—it is by help of wind and tide together, that we launch upon the dangerous atlantic of life, and cross it in confidence, and reach port in safety.” But the best proof, after all, is the one least thought of. It is least thought of because it is most practical : and in religion men prefer the speculative to the practical. It is the best proof, because it is the shortest, and the surest: it is within the reach of every man, and it puts an end to controversy. Here is a bit of phosphorus. No; says a bystander: you are mistaken, it is no such thing. How shall I best make good my assertion? I may trace back its history before it came into my possession. My servant bought it, by my order, 478 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. from the chemist, who said it was phosphorus. Reasonable evidence, certainly ; but not absolutely conclusive. I supple- ment it however, by pointing out the exact resemblance be- tween the alleged and the real phosphorus. But I am again liable to be told that my specimen is too light or too heavy, too dark or too hard. Tired of this gainsaying, I try it ; and as the bright and vivid flame breaks forth before my eyes, I exclaim, “There can be no possible doubt about it ; just see how it burns!” It is this evidence, the experimental, that is alone demons- trative and final. And this evidence of its own infallible Truth, Christianity puts within the reach of every reader of the Bible. Even this evidence however admits of different degrees of certainty. Proverbially true as it is that “seeing is believ- ing,” it is not less true that the sense of sight is capable of beimg deceived. But men cannot in the same manner be imposed upon in the matter of feeling. An attack of tooth- ache, or of gout, is a matter of feeling too real to admit of mistake. And mental emotions are not less real than physical. The pang of bereavement, whether endured in desolate widow- hood, or by “ The heart of Rachel, for her children erying,”’ is a thing whose reality was never doubted yet—by any one who has felt it. And so is the sorrow for sin. And it is the CONSCIOUSNESS of this painful reality that constitutes the beginning and foundation of that CERTAINTY which (—characteristic of Christianity—) is possessed by every man who has made the religion of Christ, matter of experiment. The case stands thus :— Whoever is willing to Do God’s will, shall KNow the truth of Christianity. Now what, in its relation to mankind, is God’s will? Here is an explicit declaration of it :—“ God now commandeth all men everywhere to repent.” This command to repent, isa very different thing from a dreamy speculation on the doctrine of repentance. The doctrine itself is distasteful and disagree- able to the mass of mankind. What the Bible says of the nature of repentance, they regard as the exaggeration of hyper- THE PROOF POSITIVE. 479 bole: What it says of the necessity, is contemned as the intolerance of dogma. The language of the penitential Psalms, of the Prophets, of the Apostles, on the subject of Sin, and its consequences, is to them, alike incredible and inconceivable. But how is it with the man who has—in this first particular— begun to do God’s will? Why, the Scripture is fulfilled in him. He has begun to know God’s truth. He has received a convic- tion of the actual truth in his own cage which, painful as it is, constrains him to adopt the strong language of Scripture as being the exact and adequate expression of the sorrow of his overburdened heart. For such a man however, there is now another expression of God’s will. What should he do (he asks,) that he may work the works of God? And the answer is, “This is the work of God ; that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent.” This is the command to believe. And he who obeys this command finds “joy and peace in believing ”—“ the peace of God that passeth all understanding ;” a “joy unspeakable, and full of glory.” He finds a fresh and irresistible proof that the doctrine is true. He is now more than ever determined to do God’s will. Again he finds it in (what he has now proved to be) God’s Word :—“ This is the will of God, even your sanctifi- cation.” He “follows after holiness ;? he makes it the first business of his life to “grow in grace,” and to attain “the stature of a perfect man in Christ Jesus ;” and in go doing he receives that ‘“ unction from the Holy One,” that transforming “from glory to glory,” in a word, that perfect proof which nothing but practical obedience can supply; he “knows” that the doctrine is true, that the beatific vision is a glorious reality, and the pure in heart shall see God. He KNows: not by an external attestation, but by a con- sciousness divinely inwrought within him. And to deprive him of this absolutely certain knowledge, you must first deprive him of that consciousness which constitutes his identity. So profoundly and literally true is the Scripture which saith “He that believeth hath the witness In himself.” “But” (says some objector,) “I don’t understand one word of all this; and I don’t believe it, either ; and (what’s more) I don’t mean to,” God pity you! and bring you to a better 480 CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY. mind! Why should you persist in that unbelief which a simple experiment would dispel? It is one of the unalterable Moral Laws by which God governs the world, that “none of the wicked shall understand; but the wise shall under- stand.” And “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” And “the secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him.” “There isa path which no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture’s eye hath not seen.” There is a wisdom, of which “The depth saith, It isnot in me; and the sea saith, It is not with me.” But let him that lacketh that wisdom, “ask of God.” He who could say “I understand more than the ancients,” found the cause—not in his natural abilities, not in his natural acquirements, but—in this: “ Because I keep thy precepts.” The servants at the marriage in Cana knew that of which the “governor of the feast” was ignorant, simply because they had been engaged in the work of doing God’s will. Inferior in everything else, they were superior in this :— a perpetual illustration of the significance of that word— “Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it.” It is a rule of universal application—do not question it, do not dispute it, but—po mt. And the result is infallibly sure—“