MP OUP Ghee! be BE Oe be Pas aeumns a Seah or aoe. eLDle nf THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH py The Facts and Mysteries eat < ter ORL LHe SOA LEI LCR EIN! The Christian Faith A Brief Statement of the Things Christians Believe, and the Reasons Why They Believe Them. BY ALBERTUS ‘PIETERS, D.D. Dosker - Hulswit Professor of English Bible and Missions in the Western Theological Seminary Reformed Church in America WM. B. EERDMANS PUBLISHING CO. The Reformed Press 208 Pearl St., Grand Rapids, Mich. wt 3 JAN 2 1 1927 A ~~ Copyright by Wm. B. EERDMANS PUBLISHING CO. Grand Rapids, Michigan 1926 CHAPTER I. II. TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE MI AOCTSLANIG LV VteTIOS Micra) is cay ON a ae ic DV AE AEN © EL OE Oe Te rs ae Sie 12 Why We Beheve/in God a iy 15 ne Great: Dilemmas sie et ene 19 The Greatest Thing that Ever Happened.................... 22 God’s Visit—the Documents..............-....-2..------+---------- 25 Why We Believe the Gospels Tell the Truth. I......... 29 Why We Believe the Gospels Tell the Truth. IT,...... 33 The \Promise of His;Coming! eco 37 Prophecy.and Hultimenten eee ead 40 TY DY ENG GOd) COT eee eee eer eae eC Dy 44 1 F Godd Mihi ci ahi ay COON, aR RAL DIVE RE RNSer dea ME BUREN UAC D RA ans LU) AT ue UU PINENG WIA V. piecclee re Nea I hh apa 51 RIQUIVELANCE TTOM lt Anes io bai sse ace eal, eacuN 54 the Pharisee and the Publican::.).02:.0.0200 ns 58 Everlasting Life eek EO EONS Rinne 62 Sanbboves the \Worldia cs. mi We one Ma 66 OP TSG nL COCHRAN ea WN 70 NON TE GR TVS SEE: Wi PENG TUL OH toh Diag Nae AA RAV RE AM 74 FE MGe DIPSSCONEHA OL DOETO Weil. coos ses sce ceesssucuotssecmlosbauasaces 78 REESE TOL DAS POU ICU. Sunita Toe tl. led shut etea Une s Mat 82 MITACICS “ANG CIeNCe yee ye eee 86 PEO MITRCIOS OL F OBUBI on Whe tare i Lyacuctdesaetih actus 90 Alternative Explanations of the Miracles.................. 94 The Importance of the Miracles................0........2..2..... 99 Pee PALM LOT OnTIstie teu. Nitto tee ee ETN e Ae 103 CHAPTER XXVII. XXVIII. X XIX. XXX. XXXI. XXXII. XXXIII. XXXIV. XXXV. XXXVI. AXXVII. XXXVIII. XXXIX. XL. XLI. XLII. XLITI. XLIV. Table of Contents (Continued) PAGE Christ's Death V oluntary acco iccctos festoceeeeeeca epee 107 The. Resurrection: of }/Christ-.i0.00 2 i eager 114 The Resurrection and the Apostolic Church................ 118 The Evidence of the Resurrection. I...........---..----..----- 122 The Evidence of the Resurrection. II............-..--.......- 127 Indirect Evidence of the Resurrection...........-...--------.-- 132 The Resurrection and Revealed Religion.................... 137 The Mystery of the Atoning Death....................2.......-- 142 The ‘Offense of the’ Crossiiiic2c-2Ac20.. closeness 147 The Mystery of the Mystic Union............................-.-- 152 The Mystery:of Saving Faith... Ae eee 157 ‘Lhe: Lordship of Jesuse. fe 162 The Mystery of the New Birth..............002.2022222222-2...- 166 The Mystery of Divine Selection..................2.22..-22.------ ip The Mystery of the Holy Trinity.........000000202020022.2. 176 The Mystery of the Virgin’ Birth)... 181 The Mystery of the Expected Return................-...--..-- 188 The Mystery of the Life After Death.........................- 194 i THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH E SHALL ENDEAVOR, in this book, to set forth, as clearly and plainly as possible, what the Christian religion is, and why it is worthy to be believed. We do this in the hope that some, who already believe in Christ, may have their faith strengthened, and may get a clearer insight into the reasons why it is a reasonable faith; and in the further hope that others, who are not yet Christians, may learn to accept the gospel. In other words, this discussion will bear testimony to the Catholic apostolic, historic Christian faith. We do not look upon ourselves as giving utterance to “opinions” on religion, whether our own or those of others. Our effort will be constantly to state, as the Christian faith, only what the great mass of Christian believers, of all communions, accept, and always have accepted, whether they were able to formulate it in so many words or not. There is such a thing as the Christian religion, one in its essential essence, however manifold in its forms. That in such an effort many controversial points will be touched upon, is inevitable, but we shall not discuss them in a controversial way. In stating our own convic- tions positively, we intend no disrespect to those who do not yet accept the Chistian religion, or to others, who be- lieve themselves to be Christians, but would find them- selves excluded if they accepted our testimony as to what the Christian religion is. There are many such, and if this book should find readers among them, we beg them earnestly to consider whether they really stand upon the Christian platform. ya 8 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES In the course of the discussion, we shall from time to time notice the opinions of those from whom we differ, but we shall not be able to do that in every case. This does not mean that we do not know what has been said on the other side and have not considered it. Most of these topics have been so long and so thoroughly dis- cussed that the standard arguments on both sides are well understood. On the main points we hope to give satisfac- tory reasons, but we shall not be able to take the space to prove everything we say. We cordially invite the reader to check up our statements of fact in the public libraries by consulting competent authorities. We believe the Chris- tian religion, but we do not believe it ignorantly or thought- lessly, and our earnest desire is, not only to lead men to faith, but to lead them to a well-grounded and intelligent faith. , This book bears the dual title: FAcrs AND MYSTERIES, because the Christian religion bears this two-fold nature. It is a revealed religion, but there is an element in it that is not revealed. Beyond every other system of religion or philosophy, it is rooted first of all in the soil of facts, by which we mean externally observable and _ historically provable events, things that really happened, and can be shown to have happened. It is not based on fiction. As the apostle says: “We have not followed cunningly de- vised fables”. Neither do its fundamental facts belong to a pre-historic age, comparable to the mythological stories of the Gentiles. Important and precious as the first chap- ters of Genesis are, it is not in them that we find a firm basis for our faith. We accept them by faith, but the facts upon which our faith stands must themselves be provable otherwise than by faith. Christianity took its rise in the full daylight of history, not in its misty dawn. Neither is the Christian religion the product of human OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 9 thought, like the great systems of Buddha, Confucius, Plato, or Aristotle. It had its origin in experience, not in thinking — the thinking came later. Much of the disfavor with which some educatéd men regard religion would be dispelled if they saw this more clearly. The scientific spirit of our age has great respect for facts; it sets little store by anything that is mere speculation, without a firm basis in observation and experiment. This is right. The Christian religion, by virtue of its origin and nature, meets this demand for facts. We invite the reader first of all to examine the facts. If he does this patiently and fairly, he will be prepared to consider the other element in the Christian faith. This other element we have called the Mysteries. The Christian faith makes assertions not only with re- spect to externally observable and historically provable events, but also with respect to things no man can see and none can prove. It is greatly concerned with God’s love to man, with the atonement of Christ, with the life beyond death, with the regeneration of the soul, and similar sub- jects. These lie quite outside the range where human ob- servation is possible, or where human reason can function with any prospect of leading us to true knowledge. This is the field of the “Mysteries”, by which term we mean, not things that are mysterious. and incomprehensible (al- though some of them are), but things that must be given us by revelation; things that can indeed be proved to have come from well-accredited organs of revelation, but that can not, independently of such revelation, be supported by sufficient proof — many of them by any kind of proof. For instance, let us take the Second Coming of Christ, or the Resurrection of the Body. These things are gener- ally believed among Christians. They are taught in the Apostles’ Creed. Yet every one will admit that there is no 10 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES possible proof for them, apart from revelation. It can be _ easily proved that these doctrines were taught by Christ and the apostles, the authorized and accredited teachers of the Christian faith. Hence Christians believe them, without even seeking any other ground. This is what we mean, in this discussion, by a “Mystery”, a doctrine received upon authority, without any appeal to reason. This is what the apostle meant when he said:* “Kye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for those that love him, but God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit.” (I Corinthians 2: 9, 10.) This he calls speaking “the wisdom of God in a mystery”. He uses the word in the same sense when he says: “Be- hold I show you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed”. To receive one of the mysteries is to perform an act of faith in the intellectual realm, to bow before another as having information we can not attain to by our own powers, and to accept what he teaches, without other proof than his word. This is such an act as a child per- forms, when he is told by his teacher that the earth is round, and believes it, although the assertion contradicts the evidence of his own senses, and is utterly contrary to all the reasoning of which he is capable. To the child it is more credible than his senses should deceive him, and ~ that his own reasoning should be at fault, than that the 7“ teacher should say what is not true. Precisely so it is with the mysteries of the Christian religion. We receive from Christ and the apostles what they teach, in the spirit of a child. This is part of what Christ meant when he said: “Verily I say unto you: Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little * Quotations from the Bible, in this book, are taken sometimes from the King James Version, and sometimes from the American Revised Version. OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 11 child, he shall in no wise enter therein’. The facts are the external, earthly, natural part of the Christian religion; the mysteries are the heavenly and spiritual part. “How- beit, that was not first which was spiritual, but that which is natural, and afterward that which is spiritual’. It is our right and duty to examine the facts. We must not take them on faith, we must demand evidence, and good evidence, of their truth. If we are satisfied that the facts are as the Christian religion holds them to be, then, after that, it is our duty to receive the mysteries reverently, in faith, in the spirit of a little child, without being so un- reasonable as to demand evidence for that which is in its nature beyond evidence. 12 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES Il. WHY ARE WE HERE? N DISCUSSING RELIGION, let us start at the beginning, with the undoubted fact that we are here in this world, men and women together, human beings, living our little lives and presently passing away. What are we here for? What does life mean to you? Has it any meaning or pur- pose that makes it worth while? Here is Mark Twain’s view of life, as given in his re- cently published autobiography—is it yours? “A myriad of men are born; they labor and sweat and struggle for bread; they squabble and scold and fight; they scramble for little mean advantages over each other. Age creeps upon them and infirmities follow; shames and hu- miliations bring down their prides and their vanities. Those they love are taken from them, and the joy of life is turned to aching grief. The burden of pain, care, misery, grows heavier year by year. At length ambition is dead, pride is dead, vanity is dead; longing for release is in their place. It comes at last —the only unpoisoned gift earth ever had for them — and they vanish from a world where they were of no consequence; where they achieved nothing, where they were a mistake and a failure and a foolishness; where they left no sign that they have existed _ —a world that will lament them a day and forget them ’ forever.” (Autobiography, Vol. I, p. 37.) It is a black picture, but it is a true outline of human life —if there is no God. Listen to the great words of St. Augustine: “Q God, Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts find no rest until they rest in Thee”. OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 13 That was the trouble with Mark Twain; he had not learned to find his rest in God, and he found rest nowhere. All Asia follows the teaching of the Buddha, which means, “The Enlightened One”, the one who has learned to understand things as they truly are, to look through the appearance of things to the reality behind them; and the teaching of the Buddha in regard to human life is not far from that of Mark Twain. Among other characteristic ex- pressions of the Buddhists is this: “The Four Sorrows”, by which they mean sickness, death, old age, and also to be born into the world! Think of a view of human life that makes babyhood one of the four greatest evils that,” come upon the human race. One of their ancient writers says that there is no sadder sight than to see a mother with her baby. Contrast that with the Christmas story among us, and ask yourself what makes our view of life so different. If there is no God, the Buddhist and Mark Twain are right. As St. Paul says, to be without God is to be without ' hope. Prof. George Romanes was one of the most famous scientists of the nineteenth century. He was a co-worker with Darwin in establishing the scientific view of evolu- tion, and it profoundly influenced his thinking. In his book, Thoughts on Religion, the product of his mature years, he has this to say in regard to the nature of man without God: “Man’s nature without God is thoroughly miserable .... 90me men are not conscious of the cause of this misery; this, however, does not prevent the fact of their being miserable. For the most part they conceal the fact as well as possible from themselves by occupying their minds with society, sport, frivolity of all kinds; or, if intel- lectually disposed, with science, art, literature, business, etc. 14 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES This, however, is but to fill the starving belly with husks. I know from experience the intellectual distractions of scientific research, philosophical speculation, and artistic pleasures; but am also well aware that even when all are taken together and well sweetened to taste, in respect of consequent reputation, means, social position, etc., the whole concoction is but as high confectionery to a starving man. ... There is no finality to rest in, while disease and death are always standing in the background. “T take it, then, as unquestionably true that this whole negative side of the subject proves a vacuum in the soul of man which nothing can fill save faith in God.” Professor Romanes, when he wrote these words, was not a Christian. He had been one in early life, but his scientific work had drawn his mind away from Christian faith. Finally, after a lifetime of study, he came back to it again, influenced, in part, no doubt, by his clear percep- tion of the great fact that life without God is a life with- out purpose or meaning. Thus did he illustrate the aphorism of Bacon: “A little philosophy inclineth men’s minds to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth them about again to religion”. OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 15 HIT. WHY WE BELIEVE IN GOD. HEN WE SPEAK to men of God, and of the neces- sity of faith in Him, they often say: “That’s all right, we should like to believe in Him, too, but how do you know that God really exists? Can you prove it?” No, we cannot prove that God exists. We can prove that the earth is round, that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, and a few other things — chiefly in mathematics, chemistry, and similar sciences. That is to say, we can show by a process of reasoning that these things are true, so clearly that for every one intelli- gent enough to understand the argument, it becomes im- possible to doubt. We cannot prove the existence of God in that way. : “Canst thou by searching find out God?” said one of Job’s friends to him. Job could not, nor has any one else ever been able to do it. “In the wisdom of God man by wisdom knew not God”, says the apostle Paul. That is: God has wisely so ar- ranged the world and so adjusted the processes of human knowledge that if a man seeks to know God he must go about it in some other way than by pure reason. God is not to be discovered by something like a mathematical demonstration. Hence no man who insists on reasoned proof, and refuses to stir until he has it, will ever come to a knowledge of God. But, observe, that in spite of this absence of proof men do believe in God. Such faith is a fact; in one form “. — 16 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES or another, an almost universal fact. There are tribes that wear no clothing, others that build no houses, some that do not know enough to kindle a fire, but none that have no gods. Terribly degraded as this belief in God may become, it is there, this incurable craving to lay hold on some unseen and superhuman Power. Men believe in God because they can’t help it, being men. Of course, there are exceptions. Men normally have two eyes, but some are blind. The normal child has two arms, but here and there a child is born with only one. That only shows that there are defective individuals, and does not alter the rule. So a man who really has no craving after God, no tendency to believe in Him (if such a man there be) may well ask himself whether he is a normal human being. Observe, also, how few things there are that can be proved by a process of reasoning, and how little that dis- turbs us in many of the most important affairs of our lives. Who can prove that a given man was his father? Does he not depend in this vital matter absolutely upon the word of another? Is this conclusive evidence? Have not mothers been known to give false testimony in such a case, and have not many adopted children been allowed to remain under the impression that they were born of those who adopted them? If a man chooses to challenge the statement that So and So was my father, how shall I satisfy him? Assuredly I shall not be able to produce evidence that excludes all possibility of doubt. Yet, who is seriously disturbed by such a lack of demonstration? Who can by any process of reasoning prove the beauty of a painting, or the excellence of a musical composition, or the fact of love, or the nobility of self-sacrifice, or the validity of the great principles of justice upon which society is organized, or the reliability of the senses, or the freedom of the will? OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 17 Observe, again, that we are in a position where we must choose to believe in God or to disbelieve in Him. If it were a matter that did not concern us — like the ques- tion whether there are canals on Mars — we might well say: “We are agnostics, we neither believe nor disbelieve. We simply refuse to form an opinion without evidence”. That is a reasonable position on such matters as the said canals, but with regard to God we can not sit on the fence in that way. Every man, every day, has to act as if there is a God or qs if there is not. If he offers no prayer and gives no thanks, if he goes about his business without tak- ing God into account, then he is living the life of an atheist, whether he intends to do it or not. If he does the other thing, he expresses in his life his belief in God. Now nothing is clearer than that we must do the one thing or the other. We cannot escape it. We must make our ven- ture, and lay our wager, either that there is a God or that there is none. “To be a Christian is to bet your life that there is a God’, some one has said. This is not a complete defini- tion of the Christian life, but it is good as far as it goes. The adventure of being a Christian begins precisely there. You don’t bet on an absolute certainty, but you lay your bet and stake your life that there is a God. If you will do that, certainty will come later, by another road. A man who had heard that there was gold in Alaska sold all that he had and went in search of it. He had no absolute proof, either that there was gold there or that he would find any of it, but he had good reasons to think / there was gold there, and on the strength of these reasons he started out. When he found the gold he had the certainty. 18 — THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES In the same way, we can not furnish a man before he starts with such proofs of the existence of God as will take out the element of adventure, but if he will start out with such evidence as we can offer, he will find the certainty later. We cannot prove the existence of God, but we can show reasonable ground for believing it. We shall offer two or three reasons of that kind in the next chapter. OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 19 TY: THE GREAT DILEMMA. E MUST LIVE as if there is a God or as if there is none. We must do that today, right now. Which shall it be? Which is the more reasonable course? We believe that it is reasonable to proceed upon a be- lief in God; in the first place, because such belief furnishes a better account of the existence of the untverse than any other that can be given. Since the universe exists, it is certain that it either had a beginning or had none. In itself, each of these two pos- sibilities is about as difficult to believe as the other, and yet one of the two is certainly true. As between the two, science makes it more reasonable to believe that the world had a beginning than that it had not; for science speaks of forces constantly at work to produce a process of change. That process has always been going on; so far as we know it is going on now, and will continue to go on. If this is so, then it is certain that ten millions of years ago the uni- verse was in a different state from the present, and that ten million years hence it will be different again. This is the same as to say, in other words, that the present state of the universe has been reached by this process operating over a certain length of time, neither more nor less. We do not know how long a time, but that doesn’t make the least difference, it was some definite length of time. If so, then the process had a definite beginning, it was not eternal. The only escape from this conclusion is to suppose that somehow the forces of nature return upon themselves — work in a circle — making the universe a sort of perpetual 20 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES motion machine. Science gives no encouragement to such a view. It is scientifically more reasonable, therefore, to believe that the universe had a beginning than that it had none. Such a beginning must be due to some cause either within the universe itself or outside of it. The former alternative is obviously absurd; the latter is the only rea- sonable proposition. If we suppose there to exist a Being intelligent, eternal, self-existing, almighty, and all-wise, who created the universe, we get an account of its origin that, though it far surpasses our comprehension, is yet the most reasonable account that can be given. Therefore we believe that “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth’’. In the second place we hold it more reasonable to be- lieve that God exists than that He does not, because only on the basis of such belief can we account for the moral nature of man. We are all agreed that there is a differ- ence between right and wrong. We know that we ought to do certain things and ought not to do certain other things. We may disregard this conviction in our lives, but within our own hearts we bow to it absolutely. But these words: “right”, “wrong”, “ought”, “ought not’, and the like, have no meaning aside from certain laws or rules with which we feel that we are under obligation to comply. They ex- press our feeling that we are responsible for our actions to some One outside of us who has authority over us. Who is that? Law has no meaning without a law-giver; so conscience has no meaning without God. “Two things”, said the great philosopher, Immanuel Kant, “fill my soul with awe: The starry heavens above me and the moral law within me”. In the third place we consider it more reasonable to believe in God than not to believe in Him, because of the OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 21 order, meaning, and purpose we find in nalure. The hier- oglyphics on the monuments of Egypt were for ages unin- telligible. Men seeing them did not know whether they were words or scratches without meaning, but finally some one found a clue. Working on that, little by little, they discovered meaning in what seemed meaningless marks; and presently they discovered records of kings and laws. When this came to pass, no one doubted that intelligent men had engraved these hieroglyphics upon the rocks. That the writing was intelligible proved the writers to have been intelligent. This is a parable of what has happened in our study of nature. Phenomena, at first meaningless and unrelated, have been found to be full of order and beauty. The more progress is made by science, the more order and meaning there are found. Since it is an intelligible universe, is it not reasonable to believe that it had an intelligent Author? We have an answer also to those who say: “You reason from only a portion of the facts. If there are things in nature that seem to show that the world had an intelligent cause, there are many other facts that fail to show it, or that go to show the contrary”. We reply that the inscrip- tion is not yet wholly deciphered. Much, indeed, still re- mains confused and dark. Yet, as in the inscriptions of Egypt a single sentence deciphered proved more for the intelligence of the writers than a thousand not yet under- stood proved against it, so a little knowledge gained of the order and beauty of nature weighs more heavily in evi- dence than all the rest that is not yet understood. We may know little, but the little that we do know is more valid for our interpretation of the world than the much that we do not know. Hence, we believe that “the in- visible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead”. 22 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES Vi THE GREATEST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED. E BELIEVE that we have shown that it is more rea- sonable to live as if there is a God than as if there is not, and that every man must needs do either the one thing or the other; but we do not imagine that real faith in God, least of all Christian faith, can be produced by such argu- ments. They are intended only to prepare the way, to make men willing, without prejudice, to listen to the Christian message, which is this: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God... And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth’’. This is the greatest event that ever took place in hu- man history, perhaps — who knows? — the greatest event in all the history of the universe. God came to visit us. In the person of Jesus Christ He lived for a time among us, shared our babyhood, youth, and manhood, walked our earth, drank our water, ate our food, bore our sorrows, healed our diseases, taught us of Himself, atoned for our sins, tasted death on our behalf, broke the power of death by rising from the grave, remained long enough among us after that to prevent any possibility of mistake, and then went back to heaven, after promising some time to come again. In the hope of that coming we wait for Him. Thus did the Creator stoop to share the life of His creation; thus was God once for all made manifest in the flesh. It is no wonder that the sons of men date history OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 23 backwards and forwards from the time when this took place. This ts the Christian message. This message of the incarnation is the distinctive thing about the Christian religion, the thing that makes it “Christian”, as contrasted with all other religions in the world. Let us lay aside for a moment the question whether this amazing thing is true — we shall come back to that later —in order that we may concentrate our thoughts upon the meaning and importance of it, assuming it to be true. In that case, if God really came to visit us, and if we have a reliable record of that event, then all question of His existence is at an end. Then what we could not prove, what we could only show to be a reasonable faith, so long as we confined ourselves to a process of reasoning, becomes at once an established fact upon the basis of ex- perience. To those who accept this message, God has be- come a reality in a way that is impossible so long as we depend upon logic. To them the conception of God must henceforth have a vividness, a sharpness of outline, that it did not have before and could not have without such a revelation. This is found to be true in experience. [tf Is historically certain that such a change in the conception of God, from vagueness to vividness, did actually take place suddenly in the first century. Noble as are the con- ceptions of the Old Testament, and in the Mohammedan religion (borrowed largely from the Old Testament) they are yet far from having the satisfying clearness of the Christian faith. | If God was in Christ, then we not only know He exists, but we have in Christ a way to get acquainted with Him. We can know the character of God by the character of 24 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES Jesus Christ. He is the translation into concrete human terms of the ineffable mysteries of the Godhead. Try to tell a friend how another friend looks, and even if you de- scribe him well, the impression upon the mind of the hearer is indistinct; but produce a good portrait and show it to him. At once he gets a clear and correct idea of the person you are trying to make known to him. So it is with Jesus Christ. He is the portrait of God, “the express image of His person”. “Philip saith unto Him, Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us. Jesus said unto him: Have I been so long time with you, and hast thou not known Me, Philip? He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father’. If Jesus was the incarnation of God, then He can reveal God to us, and this is one of the chief things He came on earth todo. “No man knoweth the Father but the Son,and he to whom the Son willeth to reveal Him”. “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one cometh to the Father but by me”. If Jesus Christ was God Himself in human form, mov- ing and living among human conditions, then He can bring us into a satisfying fellowship with God, and nothing is plainer, in the New Testament, in the records of the early church, and in the subsequent church history, than that this has actually taken place. “As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, O God”, said the psalmist, but this is not the New Testament atti- tude. Not panting, longing, hoping to know God, but actually knowing Him, was characteristic of the apostles, and has been the privilege of thousands since that time who have accepted their message. Deep in the nature of all mankind, consciously or un- _ consciously, there lies a great hunger after God. The ' Christian message is that this hunger can be satisfied. That is good news; THE good news, the Gospel. OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 25 Ab GOD’S VISIT — THE DOCUMENTS. OD ONCE VISITED this earth, and spent some time with us, that we might get acquainted with Him. ~ ff This is the great good news we Christians have to tell the world. We know very well that this is too wonderful a thing to be lightly believed, and, therefore, nothing is more wel- come to us than to be thoughtfully asked how we know that this is so. We know the facts from two sources: from the testi- mony of the Christian church, and from the documents of the New Testament. Strictly speaking, these are but one, for the documents are a form of the testimony of the church, but for the sake of convenience in discussion we make the distinction. The truth of this testimony is corroborated by evidence from ancient history, by a comparison of prophecy and its fulfilment, by the results that have appeared in human experience, and by the reaction which this gospel has produced in our own hearts. What is often forgotten, but is nevertheless very im- portant, is the fact that we all of us owe our first knowl- edge of the events of Christ’s life, not to the New Testa- ment documents, precious as they are, but to oral instruc- tion, which oral instruction is a part of the teaching of a body that has had a continuous and unbroken existence from the very time when Christ was in the world; namely, the Christian church. How did almost all of us learn of Jesus? Was it not long before we knew how to read, from 26 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES the lips of our parents and teachers? And did they not get their first knowledge of Him in the same way? Go back to the time when this story was first told to our savage and unlettered forefathers in Europe; was it not presented to them in oral form? How did their teachers first learn it? In the same way; and so the line goes back to the very men who had seen Jesus Christ and talked with Him. Here is an apostolic succession that is beyond question. Hence our knowledge of Jesus Christ is very different from our knowledge of the ancient Babylonian and Assyrian kings, whose very existence had been for- gotten for centuries, until the day when the inscriptions were deciphered on the monuments they had erected. Our Christian knowledge is a living knowledge, a continu- ous and unbroken testimony, reaching back even to the years before this testtmony had been committed to writing. Christianity is the religion of a book, to be sure, yet not in the same sense in which Mohammedanism and Mormonism are book religions, that the whole thing starts with a book and comes out of it. The facts antedate the book. In addition to this unbroken oral testimony, preserving it, indeed, in its original form, we have the documents of the New Testament; the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the Acts of the Apostles, and the various epistles. It is quite common for those who are not Christians to assume that these writings are accepted by Christians thoughtlessly, by a kind of superstition, which demands of men that the Bible shall be received as the Word of God, without any candid inquiry. This is very far from being true. Certainly there are Christian people enough OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH De who do accept the Bible as true upon the authority of their pastors and teachers (just as men accept authority in science and history) without being qualified to examine the facts for themselves. Such people find for themselves a subjective ground of faith through the appeal which the Holy Scriptures make to their spiritual natures. Nor is this sort of evidence to be despised. It is not valid for those who have not the same experience, but that does not destroy its validity for those who enjoy it. The Christian church as such, however, did not at the first accept, and does not now continue to accept, the documents in question in any such way. At the very beginning they were received only as the result of the most careful scrutiny, because it was known from whom they emanated; and ever since that time they have been subject to the most minute and painstaking investigation. Great scholars have devoted their lives to collecting and comparing all the obtainable manuscripts. Every refer- ence to the New Testament books in the most ancient au- thors, and every other scrap of information from what- ever source, has been carefully treasured. One theory after another bearing on the time of composition, author- ship, etc., has been proposed and submitted to the test of evidence, especially within the past two or three generations. The result of all this rigidly scientific study has been that it is now more firmly established than ever that these books are genuine productions of the first century of the Christian era, written by the men whose names are attached to them, within a comparatively short time after the events they relate and refer to. There is still some dispute about the Gospel of John, the book of Revelation, 28 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES and some of the minor epistles; but in the case of St. John’s gospel especially, the most recent scholarship is coming more and more into line with the older views. Whatever doubt remains does not affect the case materially. It is an independent question whether these writings -are true or false, but that we have contemporary docu- ments from which to glean our knowledge of Jesus Christ and early Christianity is no longer open to dispute. OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 29 Vil. WHY WE BELIEVE THE GOSPELS TELL THE TRUTH. I. OME ONE will say to us: “Let us admit that the gos- pels and epistles were written during the first cen- tury — what of it? People could make mistakes and could lie as well then as they can now, couldn’t they? What is to hinder our regarding these books as deliberate fiction, the work of designing priests, or at best as legends, perhaps believed by the people who wrote them down, but without any basis in fact?” Well, there is a great deal to hinder a man’s thinking such a thing, if he’s got some common sense, and will take the pains to inform himself about the matter. There weren't any “designing priests” to begin with. The Chris- tian priesthood, or ministry, was the result of this story, not the origin of it. There were Jewish priests, but the last thing they “designed” was that this story should be - believed. As for legend, the necessary conditions for the growth of legends did not exist. Legends are like mush- rooms, they grow best in the dark, out of stuff that has had time to decay. There was no such time, and there was too much light. The New Testament story began to be told against the most relentless opposition, at the very time and place of the alleged events, in the fierce light of the most pitiless publicity. That is not the way legends come into existence. As for the theory of deliberate lying, a man must be very ignorant, or very thoughtless, or both, to take any stock in it. 30 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES The decisive answer to all such objections is that we need the facts related in the gospel documents to explain the course of history. It is on record that in the year 64 A. D., during the reign of the Emperor Nero, there was a great fire in Rome, and the blame was laid on the Chris- tians, many of whom were put to death with cruel tor- tures. Now up to the death of the Emperor Augustus, in . 14A.D., no one anywhere appears to have heard of such people as “Christians”, or of what that title implies. Therefore, during that half century something very re- markable had certainly occurred. A new religion, built upon a most remarkable story, had arisen among the people of a distant province, had had time to reach Rome, and had so many converts in the imperial city as to make its adherents a convenient scapegoat in time of public calamity. Yet fifty years is not a long time. It is as far as we are now from the exciting political campaign in which Ruth- erford B. Hayes was elected (or at any rate became) the President of the United States, and many of us can re- member all about it. That is no length of time in which important and well-known facts can grow dim in the recollection of mankind. From the time of Nero on, every Emperor has trouble with the Christians, and repeatedly the whole strength of the Roman government is exerted to annihilate them, but in vain. In less than three hundred years the Emperor himself becomes a Christian, and the victory of Chris- tianity is complete. During these and the immediately succeeding centuries the Christians are everywhere; in China, where the Nes- torian tablet remains to this day; in India, where the church established by St. Thomas still survives; in Abys- OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 31 sinia, where likewise the ancient church has maintained to this day its unbroken continuity; in all northern Africa, and to the distant islands of Great Britain. Now, as we have just said, you need the story told in the epistles and gospels to account for such a course of affairs. If that story is essentially true — if God did come to visit this earth at about that time — then you have an adequate cause. Indeed, in that case the question is more legitimate why the results have not been greater than why they have been so great. If, on the other hand, you deny the truth of that story, then you leave the whole course of the history hanging in the air. If no such man as Jesus ever lived, or if He was not the kind of person the gos- pels say He was, then what did happen? Something happened during that half century to alter the course of the world’s history, that much is dead sure. If not this, then what? Another reason why we believe the gospels to be true is because we can check them up at numerous points, and everywhere they stand the test. The story opens with the words: “In the days of Herod the King,” and the first thing we know this Herod orders all the male infants in Bethlehem murdered, because a council of scholars told him that the Messiah was to be born there. There is a whole group of points to be tested right here. Was there ever such a man as Herod? Was he king of Judea, and at that time? Was he the kind of man that would off-hand order a dozen babies’ throats to be cut? Were the political conditions such that he could do that without causing a revolution? oe THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES Was there such a group of scholars for him to consult? Would they be likely to give him such an answer? Where could they get that information? What did they mean by “Christ,” or “Messiah”? Was there any expectation, at that time, that such a person was about to be born? Here are nine questions, every one of which can be adequately answered from secular history outside the Bible. So it goes on almost every page of the New Testa- ment. The record fairly bristles with points of contact with contemporary history. As we read it, the names of kings, emperors, governors, official titles, descriptions of cities, climate, roads, voyages, and countries, with refer- ences to laws, customs, and geography, crowd upon us, challenging us to convict the writers of error or fraud if we can; and all yielding a united testimony to their truth- fulness and accuracy. When we find books so reliable in all points that can be checked up, it is only fair to be- lieve that they are equally so where such checking up is impossible. OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 33 VIII. WHY WE BELIEVE THE GOSPELS TELL THE TRUTH. If. NE OF THE most convincing proofs that the gospel story is neither legend nor deliberate fiction is found in the character of the story itself. Taking now all the New Testament documents together, consider what a story it is. They tell us of one whose coming was foretold long before his birth, and quote prophecy after prophecy to prove it. They speak of His having existed before the foundation of the world, of His being rich, yet becoming poor for our sakes, of His being in the form of God, and yet hiding His glory within the likeness of a man. They tell how He was born of a virgin, in the humblest sur- roundings, how He grew up as a carpenter’s son and lived by manual labor, yet how He presently stood forth as a teacher of the deepest things. They record for us what He said, and twenty centuries have agreed that “never man spake as this man”. They tell us what He did, and surely, if the things told of Him are true, He was. mighty in deeds as well as in words. They say that He was with- out sin, and yet was the associate and friend of sinful men and women, among whom He moved as a physician among his patients. He dared to make Himself equal with God, and yet the impression conveyed by His life was that of meekness and humility. The keenest minds of His day—equal to the keenest of any day—were arrayed against Him in debate, and they propounded the deepest questions, yet He was easily the victor. He was finally 34 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES hounded to His death with the most malignant ferocity and betrayed by one of His intimate friends, yet the moral sublimity of His life was maintained to the end. He was dead and buried, and the Roman soldiers guarded His grave; yet He came forth, and left behind the empty sepulchre as the irrefutable proof of His living again. That is the story, and there is no other story like it in the whole wide world. Now if all this, or any great part of it, is legend, where and how did such a legend arise? Dr. Adolf Harnack gives us, as the fruit of exhaustive study, the following verdict: “We can now assert that during the years 30 to 70 A. D., and on the soil of Palestine, more particularly in Jerusalem, this tradition (by which he means this story) as a whole took the essential form which it presents in its later development.” (“Luke the Physician,” p. vi of preface.) With such a verdict from the leading liberal historian of Germany, there can be no talk of “legend”. There was ...no time for a legend to develop, and no such legend could grow up in the face of bitter opposition, in the very city where the events are alleged to have taken place, while the actors in the drama were still alive. Nor is the idea of fiction any more tenable. If some one invented the story, who was it? The man who could invent such a character as that of Jesus and could put such words into His lips would himself be as great as Jesus or greater. Who, then, was this remarkable writer of fiction? But wait! There would have to be more than one. The epistles were written before the gospels, and are absolutely indépendent of them—yet they present OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 35 the same portrait of Christ. The three gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke have a large common element, yet there is enough new material in each to show that they are independent productions. Did a number of people separately imagine the same fiction, and successfully palm it off upon the public as fact? Moreover, did all the apostles agree to unite in this deception, even at the cost of their lives, and did they do all this lying in order to win men to honesty and virtue? A remarkable set of liars, surely, if any one can believe that to be true. We refrain from piling proof upon proof any further, lest it weary the reader. The fact is, it is impossible to think this thing through soberly without coming to the conclusion that these records are bona fide narratives of what the writers believed to be true, written very shortly after the events took place, by men having reliable sources of information; and that the events therefore took place, at least in the main, as here recorded. This much we ask every reader who is not yet a Chris- tian frankly to admit, or else to give himself some other more reasonable account of how the gospels and epistles came into existence—which we are sure he cannot do. Of course, the full Christian belief goes a great deal further. Most Christians believe that these documents were not only written in good faith by men competent to know the facts, but that behind this human competence and good faith stood God Himself, guiding the writers in their choice of material, and in the form of its presenta- tion, so as to preserve them from error: either, as some would say, from any error at all in the original manu- 36 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES scripts, or, as others would prefer to say, from any essen- tial or important error. Hence we call these documents inspired scriptures. Conviction of this kind, however, does not come from historical evidence, and we cannot ask it of any man who is still outside the Christian circle. Nor shall-we assume the inspiration of the Bible in these discussions. One step at a time is enough for us. If the reader will admit as much as is asked above—which we think is only fair— we shall have sufficient common ground to proceed with our study. OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH od IX. THE PROMISE OF HIS COMING. NE THING is certainly true of all the great men that have ever appeared in the world—with one excep- tion—and that is that before they were born no one ex- pected them. Names like those of Moses, Plato, Confucius, Buddha, Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, Kepler, Newton, and Louis Pasteur adorn the pages of history, and men treasure the memory of what they did: but of which of them all can it be said that either the world at large or any part of it was longing for and expecting his birth beforehand? A man’s personal history begins with his birth and ends with his death—with that one great exception of Jesus Christ. As the story of the gospels does not close when He was laid in the tomb, so it does not open when He was laid in the manger. Men then were waiting, and had already waited long, for His coming. When the angel announced the great event to the shepherds of Bethlehem in the words: “Unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord,” the name “Christ” was already familiar as the title of the Coming One. For this reason the angelic announce- ment was intelligible to those who heard it. This Messianic expectation preceding the birth of Jesus Christ ts one of the most unique, the most significant, and the most certain of all historical phenomena. It is unique, because it is found nowhere else, nor is anything remotely like it found anywhere else, in con-_~ nection with the birth of any other man. Much has been made of the parallels to the virgin birth alleged to exist 38 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES in certain non-Christian religions. About these we may upon another occasion have something to say, but will any one dispute the uniqueness of the Messianic expecta- tion? Let some one find us, in connection with the birth of Gautama, or Confucius, or Mohammed, or any other great leader, religious or secular, some proof that before ~~ he was born there was a general and eager expectation that some such person was about to appear. It is a significant fact because it is utterly beyond explanation on any other theory but that God cherished a great redemptive purpose, and was careful to prepare the minds of men, so that, when the fullness of time was come for His incarnation, He might not be altogether un- welcomed and unrecognized. Any other theory fails to account for the known facts. It is also one of the most certain, that is to say, one of the best attested facts in all human history that there actually was such an expectation. When Frederick the Great, thinking to embarrass a Christian nobleman at his court, asked him to give in the fewest possible words an argument for the truth of the Christian religion, he replied: “The Jews, your Majesty.” Certainly on this one crucial point the answer was pat. The Jews, to be sure, do not believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ, the long expected Messiah, but that the Messiah would surely come was their conviction long before Jesus was born, and that He will come has remained their hope and expectation for more than two thousand years. The very learned Oxford professor, Dr. Alfred Edersheim, himself a Jew who had accepted the Christian faith, gives in Appendix IX of his “Life and Times of Jesus the Mes- siah” a list of 456 Old Testament texts that are found to be . Messianically interpreted in the most ancient Rabbinical writings; and he is careful to state that the list is far from complete. OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 39 Now it is perfectly easy, of course, to take any one of these texts, or some of those so referred to in the New Testament, and to dispute the correctness of. the interpretation. But even if you convince yourself that YOU can not see any such meaning in them, and that other people are mistaken when they so understand them, what have you accomplished? The undisputed fact that such Messianic expectation existéd before the birth of Jesus remains and keeps staring you in the face. Since the purpose of genuine Messianic prophecy would be to create such an expectation, and since the expectation was in fact created, it is merely an academic amusement to carp at certain individual texts. More- over, the expectation had to be created in the minds of Jews in the period before Christ, not in our minds or in the minds of modern Jews. Whatever the means taken, whether they seem adequate to us or not, the end was achieved; and that remains a fact so unique, signifi- cant, and well attested that it rises like a mountain peak above the plain of ordinary human history—majestic, immovable. Two great questions cover the essentials of Messianic prophecy: (1) Was there such an expectation? (2) Is Jesus the fulfillment of that prophecy? The answer to the first is not in doubt and establishes the fact of Messianic prophecy. Very few among us except Jews will accept the fact of such prophecy and then look for the fulfillment any- where but in Jesus of Nazareth; and if there should be any Jews among the readers of this book, we venture respectfully to commend to them also the question whether it is not Jesus and He alone, among all the sons of men, who can possibly be thought of as meeting the requirements of the case. If not He, then who? 40 . THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES X. PROPHECY AND FULFILLMENT. N THE PREVIOUS CHAPTER we have argued that the undisputed fact of the Messianic expectation before the birth of Jesus Christ is in itself sufficient to show that there was genuine Messianic prophecy; but it may be that some would like to have a few passages cited to show what such prophecy is like. In complying with this de- sire, we shall quote chiefly passages that have the broad- est possible sweep, and are most clearly fulfilled before our eyes, as the least open to any possible dispute. We shall show that the coming of a Messianic era was pro- phesied, and that this centers in Him. In Genesis 12:3, in connection with the calling of Abraham by God, which furnishes the starting-point of all Jewish and Christian development, we read the following words: “In thee shall all families of the earth be blessed”. This promise is repeated three times to Abraham (Gene- sis 12: 3; 18: 18; 22: 18), once to Isaac (26: 4), and once to Jacob (28: 14), no less than five times in all. The form in which it is most commonly referred to is that used to Jacob: “Tn thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed’’. There is no other promise so great as this. It forms the keynote of Israel’s history and is a forecast of the gospel, in which sense it is twice quoted in the New Testament (Acts 3:25 and Galatians 3:8). In Ephesians 2:12 it is referred to as “THE PROMISE”. There is no possible doubt about the antiquity of this OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 41 great promise. All questions as to the date or authorship of Genesis aside, the book is known to have been trans- lated into Greek fully two hundred years before Christ, which is antiquity enough for our purpose. It contained then already the assurance that through the descendants or a descendant of Abraham there should come a blessing to “all the families of the earth’. In these America must be included, and if the prophecy has been fulfilled we have a right to expect that it has been fulfilled right among us, as well as elsewhere. That it has been so fulfilled is abun- dantly clear to any one who can appreciate the blessings of Christian civilization. The danger here is that we shall fail to see how much we owe to the coming of Christ, just because we have grown so accustomed to these blessings that they seem commonplace to us. It takes a little study of pre-Christian civilizations or of conditions today in non-Christian countries to bring that out. Should any one desire to be shown in detail what Christ has meant to our race, let him read such works as Gesta Christi, by C. Lor- ing Brace, or, The Divine Origin of Christianity Shown By Its Historical Results, by Dr. Richard Storrs. Should he further wish to know whether these blessings are being ex- tended to all nations, and how great is the revolution thus wrought in the social life of great and ancient races in our own day, we commend to him the three massive volumes of | Dr. Dennis, Christian Missions and Social Progress. If he reads these books, let him remember all the time that the outward blessings that can be thus catalogued and de- scribed are but the outward and visible results of an in- ward change in which the heart of the matter is found. Another noteworthy Messianic prophecy is the following: 42 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES “Tt is too light a thing that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel; I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation to the ends of the earth’. (Isaiah 49: 6.) No one can doubt that this has come to pass. Light and salvation have come to the Gentiles, that is, to those not of Jewish blood, through Jesus Christ. Our fathers lived as heathen in northern Europe. They worshipped Woden and Thor, and offered human sacrifices. That we do not today is a debt we owe to Christ. The prophecy has been fulfilled in Christ, and in Him alone. Other similar prophecies are found in Isaiah 25: 7, Micah 4: 2 and 3, Isaiah 2:18 and 20. In these passages, and in many more like them, it is clearly foretold that the time is to come when idolatry shall lose its hold on men, and that this movement, which is to make monotheism universal, will take its rise from Jerusalem. This has come to pass. Centuries, indeed, elapsed before the prophecy seemed likely to come true; but with the coming of Jesus Christ into the world, the fulfillment began, and it has been going on ever since. Japan is now the only considerable nation in the world that is officially and avowedly polytheistic. Everywhere the gods of heath- enism are passing away. The era of Jehovah has come, as foretold, and it has come to pass through Jesus of Nazareth. If you desire a definite prediction of His birth, let this one suffice, which the Jewish scholars quoted to Herod the Great: “But thou, Bethlehem Ephrathah, which art little to be among the thousands of Judah, out of thee shall one come forth unto me that is to be ruler of Israel, whose goings forth are from of old, from everlasting”. (Micah 5: 2.) OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 43 In the same connection is a prediction not yet fulfilled: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more’’. (Micah 4:3.). This has not yet come to pass, but a man must be blind not to see, on the one hand, that events are shaping them- selves towards this end, and, on the other, that the influ- ences brought into the world through Jesus Christ offer the only hope of a warless world. The development of history is following the prophetic program, and at the center of it all stands Jesus Christ, in Whom and through Whom all the prophecies have their fulfillment. 44 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES We XI. WHY DID GOD COME? HE CENTRAL MESSAGE of the Christian religion is the incarnation, the good news that God once came to visit us in this world, which has made the world a different place ever since. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth”. So great an event as the coming of God into human life requires a great purpose. We can believe that such a thing actually took place only if we can see an adequate reason for it; some desperate need that only such an incar- nation could meet, some terrible danger that only this event could avert, or some measureless good that only God, humbling Himself to become man, could achieve. It requires also a motive of overwhelming strength, holiness, and dignity; a motive worthy enough and great enough to move to such a deed Him who sits on the throne of the universe, the King, eternal, immortal, invisible, the only-wise God, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto. In a passage of surpassing beauty the Saviour Himself has set all this before us: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life’’. This is an epitome of the gospel, its inmost essence stated in the simplest words. Not for nothing has this text always held the foremost place in the affections of Christian people, among all the precious passages of the Holy Scriptures. OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 45 Here is the incarnation. God sent His only begotten Son into the world. Notice the word “only-begotten’. No other man was ever born as Jesus was, by the direct and wondrous act of God, enabling a virgin to bear a child; and this was but the physical corollary of a still more wondrous “begetting” before the world was. God not only sent His Son into the world, He “gave” Him. Just wherein this “giving” consisted is not here said; we learn to understand it only in the light of the cross; but here already it is clear that it means some great sacrifice for God, something very hard and painful for Him to do, but done nevertheless for the saving of mankind. Here also we find the great motive needed to render such a story credible: “For God so loved the world”. That is the only motive exalted enough to move God to such a sacrifice. Finally, here is the great purpose: “That whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life”. What do these things mean? We shall try to answer that question in our next chapter. There is a dread and terrible mystery involved in this sweetest of all gospel texts, and to offset its darkness there is a gleam of celes- tial light. There was, indeed, an impending danger to avert, a measureless good to be achieved or God would not have sent His Son. Some people speak of this text as “the simple gospel”. They say they are tired of theology, and wish that the churches would confine themselves to the simple gospel ~ of John 3:16. They are partly right; this is, indeed, the simple gospel. A child can learn the words and under- 46 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES stand their meaning to a very good degree. This text can never be preached too much if men will only preach all of it, but if you mean by “simple” a thing that is not complex, then this text is not so simple as it looks. It is like a ray of light. The sunshine is clear, pure, and simple, in the sense that it does not appear complex. Yet it is —it is one of the most complicated things in the world, when you come to study it. Pass it through a prism and it breaks into the seven primary colors; look at it with the spectroscope and it tells a surprising tale of the elements at the heart of the sun; learn the chemical and medicinal effects of the violet and ultra violet rays, and you find to your astonishment that it is the most powerful disinfectant known, with medicinal power to cure some of the most stubborn diseases; study it, finally, from the standpoint of physics and you are face to face with the ultimate problem of matter and force. Simple? Oh, certainly, what is so simple as a ray of light? But complex also, as if the complexity of the universe were concentrated in it. So it is with the sixteenth verse of the third chapter of St. John’s gospel. Let the darkened heart find here its light, the burdened heart its relief, the despairing heart its hope; but those who hate the profound and the complex in religion will find this text an uncommonly bad choice. OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 47 XI. HELL. ¢¢W7S THERE A HELL? I should worry! Why, the preachers themselves don’t believe it any more. That bunk is out of date”. This is about the way many a man will talk about the subject of eternal punishment. Does he really think that such a subject can be disposed of in such a way, or is he simply incredibly incapable of sober thinking? Neither, the man is bluffing. He talks that way with his mouth because he is afraid in his heart. If he believed what he says, he would dismiss the matter from his thoughts. Alas, there are some men who do that! The word “Hell” has been so debased by superstition and cheapened by profanity, that one hesitates to use it, and yet it is an indispensable word; for the English lan- guage contains no other that tersely and clearly sets forth the essential thought involved—that of a just and terrible retribution in the future life for the man who persists in defying the moral law. This is a thought inseparable from the gospel of Christ; indeed, unless this conception is vividly present in the mind, one cannot understand what the gospel is all about, or what Jesus came to do. We would like to pass this whole subject over without discussion, or to soften to some extent what must be said, but it would not be right. One might as well undertake to discuss medicine without the mention of disease as to tell the old, old story of Jesus Christ and His salvation without making clear what men are to be saved from. | 48 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES “This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners”’. To save them from what? From two things: from the consequences of sin, and from the sin itself. It is an essential element in Christian teaching that the soul of man is a separate thing from his body, and that when the body dies the soul remains in conscious being, capable of knowing, willing, loving, hating, suffering, and rejoicing. Also that the soul of every man will eventually be reunited to his body, after which the permanent state of that man begins, but that even before this resurrection takes place, the soul is in a conscious state of enjoyment or misery. We believe that the condition of the soul after death is fixed according to the deeds done in the body, except where the salvation of Christ intervenes. Upon his own merits we believe that no man can stand before God in judgment and be justified, and that therefore all who have not laid hold upon the salvation provided in Jesus Christ can, in view of their sins, expect nothing but to suffer a well-deserved retribution of mysterious but ter- rible import. We believe, finally, that when once this permanent state of conscious suffering is entered upon, there remains no hope that it will cease or change, be- cause the moral foulness that brought the soul to that condition no longer can be cleansed away. This is a terrible thing to believe, and no man would believe it if he could help it. Yet it has been the faith of the Church from the beginning, and is held today, with in- considerable exceptions, by all who bear the Christian name. Moreover, this belief, terrible as it is, comes to us straight from Jesus Christ Himself. He, more than any OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 49 one else, has drawn aside the veil of the future, and has shown us things from which the mind of man recoils in horror. The following words are His: “So shall it be at the end of the world; the angels shall come forth and sever the wicked from among the just, and shall cast them into the fur- naee of fire; there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth’. (Matthew 13: 49, 50.) “Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul, but fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell’. (Mat- thew 10: 28.) “Then shall He say to them on the left hand: Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels”. (Mat.- thew 25: 41.) ‘‘And these shall go away into everlasting pun- ishment, but the righteous into life eternal’. (Matthew 25: 46.) “He that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation”. (Mark 3: 29.) “But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth’. (Matthew 8:12.) “Tf thine eye offend thee, pluck it out; it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye than, having two eyes, to be cast into hell fire, where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched”. (Mark 9:47, 48.) “The rich man also died, and was buried, and in hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torments”. (Luke 16: 22, 23.) These are only a few of the sayings of Jesus that might be quoted. From the lips of no one else whose words are recorded in the Bible have such warnings proceeded. The apostles show continually by their manner of speech that 50 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES they write under the burden of the knowledge that judg- ment is impending for all who persist in sin, but they seem to shrink from putting what they dread distinctly into words. It would be well if their discretion had been fol- lowed by those who came after them. Much ingenuity has been expended upon these words of Christ to make them mean something less than they seem to say, but in vain. That the form is that of parables is clear, but the essence of the teaching is also clear. “The outer darkness”, “The fire that is not quenched”, “The worm that dieth not”, etc., are symbols, not literal real- ities, but they are symbols of spiritual realities that are more terrible than their symbols, not less so. We are dumb in the presence of such things as these; we know not what to say, but we do know this, that the churches will have to turn their backs upon Jesus Christ and shut their ears to His voice before they can cease to warn men to flee from the wrath to come. OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 51 XIII. THE JUDGMENT DAY. “Rejoice, o young men, in thy youth, and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and . walk in the ways of thine heart and in the sight of thine eyes: but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment”. (Ec- clesiastes 11: 9.) “For God shall bring every work into judg- ment, with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil’. (Ecclesiastes 12:14.) ‘Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” (Genesis 18: 25.) “But I say unto you, that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give an account there- of in the day of judgment’. (Matthew 12: 36.) “Because He hath appointed a day, in the which He will judge the world in righteousness, by that man whom He hath ordained’. (Acts Mol) ‘And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God, and the books were opened; and an- other book was opened, which is the book of life, and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works”. (Revelation 20: 12.) “It is appointed unto men once to die, but after that the judgment’. (Hebrews 9: 27.) O IT IS WRITTEN; so it must needs be. The moral sense of mankind demands a judgment-day; all the - oppression, and tears, and wickedness that have cursed the earth since the beginning of time, cry out for it. Un- less there is a judgment-day conscience isa lie. If there is a God there must be a judgment-day, for if there were a God and no judgment-day, there might as well be no God 52 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES at all. If the time ever comes when the generality of man- kind persuade themselves that there is no God and no judgment-day, the moral cement that binds men together in families and nations will give way, and red ruin will mark the end. If there is no God and no judgment-day, what better are we than brutish beasts? In that case the best thing in the world is to eat three square meals a day, to have a jolly good time while it lasts, and to let suicide crown a wasted life. “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die”. “Be not deceived, God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap”. Our moral instincts are the most certain things we know, and the judgment-day is but the future reality of which we already carry about in our own hearts the guarantee. The reader will perceive that we are not much influ- enced by the talk of some to the effect that it is unworthy to appeal to fear of the judgment and of hell. If these things are not realities to him let no man appeal to them; but we who do believe in them are not ashamed to say that the fear of them has been a power in our hearts, and we wish we could make it so in the hearts of all. What is there so unworthy about fear that we may not appeal to it or be influenced by it? Fear is the apprehension of coming disaster, leading to a resolute attempt to escape it. The ox, the fool, the idiot have no fear, because they have not brains enough to be afraid. We sometimes hear it said of a man as if it were a compliment: “He does not know what fear is”. Hap- pily it is not true, but if it were, the man would be a most undesirable citizen. We have need of fear and we appeal to it in every relation of life; in the restraint of crime, in the training of children, in traffic regulations, in medicine OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH Do and hygiene. For fear of smallpox we vaccinate, for fear of yellow fever we exterminate mosquitoes, for fear of fire we have firemen, fire fighting apparatus, and fire in- surance, for fear of burglars we lock our doors at night, for fear of invasion we have armies and navies, for fear of accident every automobile driver is keenly on the alert —and shall religion be the only department of life where fear is out of place? Men say to us with some contempt: “Do you suppose the fear of hell ever drove any man to heaven? Would you have men lead the Christian life in cringing fear, as slaves work under the lash’? No, and there is no danger that they will. No man will ever lead the Christian life or enter the gates of heaven simply because he is afraid of hell. Before he ever gets that far, other and higher motives must do their work on him. But for all that, we know that the fear of the judg- ment-day and of what lies beyond it has sobered many a man,has checked him in a life of sin and has caused him to cry out: “What must I do to be saved”? Fear is not the final motive, it is only the beginning, but it is a good begin- ning! Presently it passes away in the sense of acceptance with God, of delight in His ways, and of boundless grati- tude for His salvation. Then comes to pass what is written: “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear, because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love’. (1 John 4:18.) Fear is but the primary grade in God’s school, yet it is a good place to start; for most men the only place they ever do start. So, unashamed and soberly, we ask our readers who never yet have given these matters earnest thought, to take up, in the quiet of their own hearts, the great ques- tion whether they have not cause to fear the judgment- day; whether they are ready to meet their God. Pa o4 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES XIV. DELIVERANCE FROM SIN. ~ “Thou shalt call His name ‘Jesus’, for He shall save His people from their sins’. HESE WORDS were spoken by an angel to Joseph be- fore the birth of Christ. The word “Jesus” means “Saviour”, and He bears it because He saves men from sin, not merely from the consequences of sin—hell and the judgment—but from sin itself. Sin is a very great thing, and has many aspects. One of these is the legal one. Sin is the transgression of the law of God, and the violation of law involves judgment and penalty. We think of this aspect when we discuss hell and the judgment. Another aspect of it is as something within the man himself that lies back of this violation of the law, a cor- ruption of his nature, a power for evil resident within him that has power over him. You may call it a disease: then it is like an incurable, filthy, loathsome disease of the blood that appears in various parts of the body to cause rottenness of the bones and tissues. You may think of it as a tyrant within him, holding him in cruel bondage from which he fain would escape but cannot; like the drug habit that enslaves a man without destroying his perception of what is going to happen, so that the unhappy victim goes on open-eyed to perdition. Is there such a thing as this in man? Alas, there is! In every man? In every one. The writer was once in an asylum for lepers and saw OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 5D there among the patients some in whom he could perceive no trace of the disease. So he asked the director why these men were there. “Because they are lepers’, was the reply. “But one cannot see iton them”. “No, because they are in the first stages, but they are lepers like the rest, a leper is a leper, though not all are loathsome in appearance”. So it is with sin. There are those in whom it appears openly, so that men turn away their faces in disgust, and there are others fair to look upon, but the disease of sin is there. The expression, “moral leper’, is often used of a certain kind of sin. It is not in that sense, but in the sense of sin in general that we wish we could burn into every person who reads these words the deep conviction that he is a moral leper, suffering spiritually from the terrible and loathsome disease which we call sin, for which there is no cure except in Jesus Christ. He has come to save men from sin. If you think of sin as an enslaving power, these words of the apostle Paul will fit: “T am carnal, sold under sin. For that which I do I allow not; for what I would, that I do not; but what I hate, that do I... For to will is present with me, but how to perform that which is good I find not; for the good which I would I do not, but the evil which I would not, that Ido. Oh wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Romans 7:14, 15,.19; 24.) Immediately he answers his own question with the joy- ful outcry: “I thank God, through Jesus Christ, our Lord”. In another place he says: “I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me and the life that I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me”. (Galatians 2: 20.) Paul had experience 56 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES ’ of the fact that Jesus Christ delivers men from sin, not merely from its guilt and penalty, but from its power. If this experience of Paul’s were not “repeatable” to- day it would mean but little to us, but it is being repeated all the time. Through faith in Christ to this very day drunkards become sober, lustful people chaste, quick- tempered people patient, dishonest people honest, selfish people unselfish, hard, cold, loveless people full of com- passion and sympathy. Every sort of evil is being over- come in men’s hearts and lives. This is taking place wherever the Gospel is faithfully preached, and any one desiring proof can find numerous instances of it in every community. If testimony can prove anything it estab- lishes this, that Jesus Christ redeems men from the power of sin. We wish to add our own testimony. We do not believe in what is called “sinless perfection” in this life, and make no claim to have attained such a state, but we do praise God that we are no longer under the bondage of sin, that Christ has given us the power to hate sin and to gain the victory over it. This experience is an important part of salvation; nay, more, it is salvation. Without it deliverance from hell and the judgment (supposing such a thing to be possible) would be but a small and doubtful blessing. Jf a man thinks he is a Christian, and has not to any degree experi- enced this deliverance; if he is as lustful, selfish, covetous, insincere, hard, unloving, as little able to control his tem- per or his tongue, as he was.before, then he is deceiving himself. He may have accepted a system of religion, he has not accepted Christ. This power of Jesus Christ to save men from the bond- OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 57 age of sin is the supreme evidence of Christianity. When Jesus was upon earth, upon one occasion a man sick of the palsy was brought to Him. Jesus said to him: “Son, be of good cheer, thy sins are forgiven thee”, but nothing happened. The man lay there apparently as helpless as before. Then some of the bystanders murmured, saying: “Who can forgive sins but God alone”? Therefore Jesus went on to say to the sick man: “Arise, take up thy bed and walk’. The man did so, and the doubters had no more to say. That Christ could bestow upon him the abil- ity to walk was sufficient proof that He could forgive his sins. So it is now, so it must be always. We trust in Christ to save us in the judgment day, but that faith would amount to very little if He were not now saying us from the bondage of sin. 58 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES XV. THE PHARISEE AND THE PUBLICAN. ‘“‘And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others. Two men went up into the temple to pray, the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself: ‘God, I thank Thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess’. ‘‘And the publican, standing afar off, could not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast saying: ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner’. “T tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other’. (Luke 18:10-14). XCEPT for the temple and the local color, this story would fit Grand Rapids as well as Jerusalem. These types are found everywhere, and between them they in- clude all mankind. The Pharisee represents people who are pretty well satisfied with themselves. They are not worrying about their sins; why should they? They live uprightly, obey the laws, pay their debts and give gener- ously to charity. What more is wanted? If anything, the Almighty is under obligations to them for being as decent as they are. If there is a hell it is for other people, if there is a judgment-day, “What judgment shall they fear, doing no wrong”? They take pleasure in comparing themselves with professing Christians of their acquaint- ance, to the disadavantage of the latter. ‘They differ, to be sure, from the Pharisee in the parable in that they do ..not thank God that they are better than “this Christian”, they thank themselves; but for the rest their attitude is much the same. OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH a9 We bring no railing accusation against the Pharisee. The one in the parable was very likely, like many of his modern counterparts, a very estimable and highly re- spectable gentleman, charming in social intercourse, generous and modest in all human relations. Only, he was blind as a bat to his own spiritual condition and ignorant of his true standing before God. With people like this the gospel falls on deaf ears. They are willing to support the City Mission and the Sal- vation Army, for they can see that religion is a good thing for the down-and-outers, the drunks, the fallen women, and the dwellers in the slums; but for themselves they feel no more need of it than a healthy man feels the need of medicine. By a very curious perversion of thought many people associate the idea of a “Pharisee” with being a professing Christian. No doubt there are Pharisees in the churches, but they do not belong there. When a man makes con- fession of faith and becomes a full communicant member | of the church—any church—he takes the position of the Publican, not of the Pharisee. He begins by publicly confessing himself a sinner and in need of God’s mercy for salvation. If the angel Gabriel should wish to join one of our churches he could not do it—he is too good. He could not be a Roman Catholic because he could not go to confession, and he could not be a Protestant because he could not answer the questions put publicly to every can- didate for admission. No man is so vile as to be unwel- come in the church if only he will confess his sins and for- sake them; but no angel or self-satisfied Pharisee need apply. If any such get in it is by fraud or error. The Pharisees are therefore mostly to be found outside the church, not inside. Nor does the Christian answer 60 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES back that he is glad he is not “like this Pharisee”. If he is a true Christian he is too deeply impressed with his own lost and sinful condition to compare himself with other men. He takes as his own the words of Paul: “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief’. He seeks the salvation of Christ because he knows he is too vile to save himself, just as a sick man seeks a doctor. Herein is fulfilled that saying of Jesus: “They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick. I came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance’”’. Evidently, however, Jesus had not the least idea of conceding the Pharisee’s claim to righteousness. He said: “I tell you this man (the Publican) went down to his house justified rather than the other”. They were both sick with the same disease, tarred with the same brush; the only difference was that the Publican knew it, and the Pharisee didn’t. Jesus repeatedly made it clear that He had no sort of confidence in human goodness. To a man who saluted Him as “Good Master”, Jesus said (knowing that the man had no real understanding of who He was), “Why callest thou Me good? There is none good save one, that is God”. To His disciples—who were pretty decent men—He said, “If ye, then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children”, etc. When discussing certain men who had met with calamity, He said: “Think ye that these men were sinners above all Galileans? I tell you nay, but unless ye repent ye shall all likewise perish’. That is to say, all men richly deserve to meet with punishment, and most certainly will meet it some time, somewhere, unless they repent. OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 61 This difference between the Pharisee and the Publican explains why it is so difficult to get men to believe the gospel. Christianity is the story of how God, in His in- finite mercy, humbled Himself to become man, and dwelt among us in the person of Jesus Christ for our redemp- tion. To the Pharisee this is incredible, for he sees no emergency requiring it. To the Publican, on the other hand, it is a great message, for in this alone does he find ground of hope. Are you a Pharisee or a Publican? 62 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES XVI. EVERLASTING LIFE. “Ror God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish but have eternal life’’. HERE is there any guarantee of a future life? It is here, in this whole story of how God sent His Son into the world to save men. If this gospel story is true, if God, in the person of His Son, once came to earth to save sinful men, then, of course, He is pledged to save to the uttermost those whom Jesus Christ has redeemed. If this whole gospel story is not true—well, then it is a differ- ent matter. Christ came into the world to save men from sin; from the penalty of sin, the judgment which a holy God is bound by every consideration of honor and duty to bring upon it, and from the sin itself, from the corruption and bondage of it. Now, where salvation from these is found, eternal life follows as a matter of course. Did you ever stop to think why God made the world? Have you thought He made it as a kind of toy to amuse Himself with? Surely there must have been a higher reason than that. Since God is love, what motive would be worthy of Him but to be loved? Being love, God’s great passion is to have some one love Him. Now love is a thing that cannot arise unless there is some one who can love, and who does love, not as something forced, but freely. If God had a longing to be loved, the only way open to Him to secure it was to create a being capable OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 63 of loving Him and then to lavish His own love upon him until that creature, perceiving how God loved him and how altogether lovable God is, began to love Him in return. That seems to have been, so far as we can reverently trace it, about the way God came to make this world. Of course, in all this we are using human forms of speech, but we can not help that. God was, so to speak, hungry to be loved, and so He made the world. Having made the world, He filled it with all good and beautiful things, and finally He made man, that in this home he might be taught to love his Creator. By the beauty and blessings of nature, and by such fellowship as - was suited to his moral and spiritual condition, God set Himself to woo man to love Him; and if this had suc- ceeded, without the intervention of sin, the lot of man would have been glorious and happy beyond anything we can now conceive. Man, however, turned away from God and sought an object of love in the creation rather than in his Creator.~~ That set the whole thing upside down. What had been made to help God’s wooing had become His rival—as it remains in the hearts of most men to this very day. Hence there came death into the world; man became justly liable to the penalty of the broken law, and the entire divine program of creation was threatened with utter failure. This was the tragic situation that caused God to “give” His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not “perish”, but have eternal life. They have eternal life, because that is what they were intended from the first to have, and because the evil that prevented them from everlasting fellowship with God has been taken away. 64 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES Much has been written from the standpoint of philoso- phy about the immortality of the soul, and we would not undervalue the arguments that have so often helped to sustain faith; but to us the supreme argument is the rela- - tion of the saved man to the eternal God. If there is no living and eternal God, then we are not much impressed with arguments for survival, and see but little that is de- sirable in immortality; but if there is an eternal Father, and we are His, then nothing but everlasting life is conceivable. This is the clinching argument Christ used with the Sadducees. “Now that the dead are raised, even Moses showed at the bush, when he calleth the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto him’.— (Luke 20: 37, 38.) Saved men are men with whom God has re-established friendly relations, men who have learned to give Him what He prizes most, their love and trust. Hoping to get this very thing He made the world, and when sin seemed likely to frustrate this great purpose, it was to get this very thing—men who would love and trust Him—that He sent His Son into the world. Having now obtained them, at the cost not only of creation, but also of redemption, is it con- ceivable that He will let them go? Death can enter any home no matter how carefully guarded, and snatch a babe from the arms of a loving father, but shall there be also infant mortality among the children of God? When an almighty God has at last found men to love and trust Him, the very kind of men for whom He laid the foundations of the earth in the ages long ago, there would OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 65 have to be something stronger than the Almighty and more lasting than the Eternal ever to deprive Him of them. The everlasting life of God’s children is a corollary of the eternity of God Himself. Hence we have such jubilant utterances as this: “T give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who hath given them unto Me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand’’. (John 10: 28, 29.) “For I am persuaded, that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things pres- ent, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord’. (Romans 8: 38, 39.) 66 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES XVII. GOD LOVES THE WORLD. 66 OD so loved the world”—that is the greatest asser- tion that ever fell from human lips, the most dar- ing, the broadest in its sweep, the deepest in its meaning. It probably means more than that God loved all the people in the world. The Greek word used here is Cos- mos, which we have adopted into the English language as indicating the totality of all created things. Perhaps it is used here in this broad sense. If so, it would seem that the fate of God’s universe in some way hung in the balance on account of human sin, and that to save the cosmos from utter ruin, God sent His Son to grapple with that problem; but if this be thought to be too mystical a speculation, we shall not press the point. It certainly means at least this, that God loves all men, and out of love to them sent them a Saviour. It may mean more than that; it can not mean less. No sentence was ever penned based upon a loftier con- ception of the value of every human soul. This is one of the paradoxes of the gospel. On the one hand it humbles man into the dust. Christ says of men—all men—that they are evil, utterly unworthy, justly liable to the judg- ment of eternal fire; and yet, on the other hand, the same gospel exalts man to the skies, for if God loves him and thinks it worth His while to come from heaven to save him, by what measure shall we estimate man’s value? Surely, God would not do that to save a clod, dust that for a moment is, and then returns to dust. And now think of it, let your mind dwell on it, that this OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 67 means you and me and every man, woman, and child now in the world, or that ever has been in the world or ever will be. It is no wonder that men have been staggered by it, and instead of accepting it as it stands, have sought to attach some limitation, such as that the “world” must be understood here to mean the world of the elect, or of those of whom God foreknew that they would accept the mes- sage of salvation; but the passage will not admit of such treatment without landing us in absurdities. Let us try, for a moment, to substitute such an expression for that used in the text. Then we have the following: “God so loved those whom He foreknew (the elect) that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever (of the elect) believeth on Him should not perish, but have eternal life’’. This leaves us with some of the elect who do not be- lieve and who do perish, which will never do in the world! No, indeed, there is no discount on this glorious passage, “God so loved the world’—all men in it, and loves it still, for God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Do you believe that? Dare you believe it? It is indeed a gracious message. It is like music to the soul, “that gentlier on the spirit lies, than tired eyelids upon tired eyes”. But it is not so very easy to believe. It seems incredible, on the one hand, because the world is so very unlovely, and, on the other hand, because if God loves it, then why is it such a world? The fallen and sinful world is so unlovable, even in our eyes, that it seems impossible a holy God should love it. If one remembers how little we see of its wickedness, and that God sees every secret thing, even the thoughts and intents of the heart, the case grows worse and worse. Think of all the pride, malice, envy, lust, meanness, lying, 68 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES slander, oppression, murder, hatred, filthiness of con- versation, thought and conduct; and of all the other vile and wicked things in the world, known and unknown, open and hidden; and then set yourself to grasp the idea that in spite of all this a holy God loves this cesspool of iniquity we call “the world”. Can we believe it? We can not unless we catch the meaning of the great words of God, spoken by the mouth of the prophet Isaiah: | “Let the wicked forsake his way and the un- righteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord and He will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon; for (get the force of that ‘for’) My thoughts are not your thoughts neither are your ways My ways, saith the Lord, for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts”.— (Isaiah 55: 7—9.) On that ground we must take our stand if we are to dare to believe John 3: 16. But if it is so, the second difficulty confronts us. If this is indeed a world that God loves, then why is it such a world? How comes it that an Almighty God let things get into such a mess? Doesn’t it look as if either He had no power, or did not care? This is, indeed, a very dark mystery, and we can not wholly solve it; but it is a partial answer to say that om- nipotence is the ability to do anything that can be accom- plished by power, but that the highest things in man lie outside the range of power. Who can by power, however great, teach a child to read? That must be done by patient instruction. Who can by power draw a round triangle, which involves a contradiction? Who can by power in- duce a love of virtue, though he may restrain somewhat OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 69 the practice of vice? Especially, who can by any act of power produce in a single heart any love for Him? That can be done only by loving and being lovable, and if that does not succeed, even omnipotence is helpless; for this — lies outside the sphere where power can operate. If we think this through carefully we begin to see that God could not merely by any one great act of power change this world from a wicked world to a good one, but had to go to work through a patient, long-continued process of winning men. That God cares, cares infinitely much, is seen in the sending of His Son. Whosoever believes that to be a fact can never again doubt the love of God, no matter how dark things seem. The question is, can we accept it or not? Well, if not, what then? Where shall we turn for any kind of hope for this old world if we let this go? Much is still obscure—we admit it. God has not yet revealed all mysteries. What then? Shall we refuse to receive the light He gives because He does not at once give all? Shall we cavil at the dawn because it is not noon-day? Come, let us risk the great adventure! Let us believe it and take to our hearts the joy of it. “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish but have eternal life’’. 70 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES ~ XVIII. CHRIST AS TEACHER. “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us’. HAT DID HE COME TO DO? Among other things, to teach; and the more the teaching of Jesus Christ is studied, the more clearly will it be seen that He taught exactly as such a being, so come from heaven to teach us, ought to have taught. The two great outstanding characteristics of His teach- ing, as noted by His contemporaries, were graciousness and authority. When He visited His old home at Naz- areth, and preached in the synagogue, His hearers “won- dered at the gracious words which proceeded out of His mouth”; and the world has not done wondering yet. This sracious kindness of His speech is felt by the reader throughout the gospels. To be sure, there are stern warn- ings, too, and His final denunciation of His enemies, in the twenty-third chapter of Matthew, is terrific; but with these few exceptions a winsome graciousness pervades His speech. The second characteristic is that of authority. “And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at His doctrine, for He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes”. (Matt. 7: 28, 29.) This must not be understood as casting any reflection upon the teaching of the scribes. They taught, essentially, in the same manner as our own learned men teach, by quoting other scholars, by reason- ing out the problems before them, and by expressing their opinions, often tentatively and hesitatingly. OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 71 This is the way Jesus did not teach. He is unique in that He never expresses an opinion, saying: “I think so and so”, or, “As far as I can see, it must be so”. Nor does He undertake to reason anything out, seeking to establish His assertions by such a process of proof that the hearer may judge for himself as to whether they are true or not. He speaks as one having full and original knowledge, whose mere assertion is in itself sufficient proof. Neither does He ever refer to the opinions or reasonings of others. There had been eminent scholars before His time among the Jews, great rabbis, held in honor for piety and learn- ing, and their opinions were quoted with reverence wherever religion was discussed in the days of Jesus, but not one single rabbi is quoted or referred to in all His teachings! The Scriptures, to be sure, are quoted, be- ~ cause they were reckoned to be divine, but even here, only for illustration, or to meet His hearers upon their own ground, never as necessary for His own information and guidance. Still another feature of this “speaking with authority’ is that there is no subject connected with the religious and moral life of man which He hesitates to dis- cuss; and never, no matter what the problem proposed, does He wait to think it over. He is always ready with the supremely appropriate reply. Nowhere is this more clearly seen than in that very remarkable debate between Him- self and the chief priests, the very keenest minds of His day, as recorded in the twenty-second chapter of Matthew. Every question is answered instantly, with quiet confi- dence and with supreme wisdom. Then, again, it is re- corded that they were “astonished at His doctrine”. Finally, the confession, “I don’t know”, which must be so often used by every human teacher, finds no place upon His lips, except in one case, in a very special connection, with respect to the day and hour of the final judgment. 72 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES Now, if the teaching so uttered amounted to nothing— contained absurdities and nonsense, all this would mean only insufferable conceit; but two thousands years have passed away, and still the judgment stands: “Never man spake like this Man”. On this point Professor George Romanes, the eminent scientist, associated with Charles Darwin, says, in his Thoughts on Religion, page 167: “One of the strongest pieces of objective evidence in favor of Christianity is not sufficiently enforced by apolo- gists. Indeed, I am not aware that I have ever seen it men- tioned. It is the absence from the biography of Christ of any doctrines which the subsequent growth of human knowledge—whether in natural science, ethics, political economy, or elsewhere—has had to discount. “This negative argument is really almost as strong as the positive one from which Christ did teach. For when we consider what a large number of sayings are recorded. of—or at least attributed to Him—it becomes most re- markable that in literal truth there is no reason why any of His words should ever pass away, in the sense of be- coming obsolete .... “Contrast Jesus in this respect with other thinkers of like antiquity . . . . Even Plato is nowhere in this respect as compared with Christ. Read the dialogues, and see how enormous is the contrast with the gospels in respect of errors of all kinds—reaching even to absurdity in re- spect of reason, and to sayings shocking to the moral sense. Yet this is confessedly the highest level of human reason on the lines of spirituality, when unaided by alleged revelation”. We appeal to our friends who are not yet Christians to think these things through. How comes there to lie before us in the gospels such a record of such a teacher? You OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 73 need not (for the purposes of the present argument) be- lieve these documents to be inspired, but you can not help seeing that here is a portrait drawn from life. There can be no question that there actually was, in the days of the Emperor Tiberius, in Palestine, a young Jew who spoke in this way; a teacher utterly and unapproachably unique, among all who ever have arisen to instruct the sons of men. He said of Himself, and the Christian church be- lieves it to be true, that He was God incarnate, come for a season into human life to redeem mankind. What are you going to do with Him? If He was not what He claimed to be, what explanation do you give yourself of these facts? If He was, can you any longer turn away from Him and refuse to listen to His teachings? 74 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES REX. SINS OF THE HEART. ~~ HE SERMON ON THE MOUNT, recorded in chapters five to seven of the Gospel of Matthew, is pre-emi- nent among the discourses of Christ. Indeed, there are not a few who look upon it and speak of it as the most important part of His teaching, and even propose to unite upon this platform Jews, Mohammedans, and Christians, as if this alone were sufficient. Such a grotesque misunderstanding of the Sermon on the Mount requires no refutation, and would not even deserve mention, if it were not, in one form or another, so common among superficial people. Nevertheless, it is true that this is a supremely valuable portion of the record, and therefore it is from this sermon that we wish to take a thought today. “Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment; but I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judg- ment; and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council, but whoso- ever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire’. (Matt. 5:21, 22.) “Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery; but I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery with her already in his heart”. (Matt. 5:27, 28.) In these passages two representative sins are selected, those of murder and adultery, and the teaching is that the OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 75D sin lies not merely in the outward act, but in the state of mind that leads to it and is expressed by it; insomuch that he who cherishes the desire or purpose to commit these sins is already adjudged guilty of them in the sight of God. This does not mean that the random thought of such things, instantly repressed and vigilantly guarded against, is sin. We can not honestly consider ourselves in any way responsible for all the thoughts that arise within us. The reference is to those thoughts and purposes of evil to which we lend the hospitality of our hearts. As Luther quaintly put it: “We can not help it if foul birds fly over our heads, but we can keep them from making nests in our hair’. Murder and adultery are counted among the foulest sins, and have always been so held, in all ages and in all lands. To think that we ourselves might be guilty of them strikes many of us at first as absurd. It may be so, that from some hearts even the seeds of these particular of- fenses, so far as conscious thought is concerned, are ab- sent. They are offered, after all, as illustrations to estab- lish the general truth that moral standing is to be meas- ured by the state of the heart, not by the outward act; and even if in some men these particular evils are not found, the teaching loses but little of its force, for other sins are there. Yet it is wortth our while to ask whether it is really true that there is no murder in our hearts. We have not committed homicide, and we have not the slightest desire or intention to do so. Be it so, yet what is it that restrains us? Isit brotherly love for our fellow man, or respect for his rights, or a recognition of the sinfulness of the act in the sight of God? Or is it only that there is no special reason why we should murder any one, and our refined 76 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES sensibilities recoil from the grewsome details, the gaping wound, the spattered brains? Is it that we fear the law or have too much respect for our good name? Honestly, if we had very much to gain, and nothing at all to lose, would the life of our fellow-man be safe in our hands? Suppose—it is an absurd supposition, but it will serve —that you had on the wall of your room a push button, so made that if you touched it you would gain a million dol- lars, and simultaneously a Chinaman, somewhere in the interior of that country, whom you do not know, have never seen and never would see, would die a painless death, without any possibility that the act would ever be brought home to you; then are you quite sure that the life of that Chinaman would be safe? With all respect to you, I would not insure it! Yet, if it would not, then it is not the crime of murder in itself that is abhorrent to you, but only the accompaniments and consequences of that crime. If we must confess that this is the state of our hearts, does not the sin of murder lie within us, albeit, for the time, like a chained or sleeping tiger? So it is with the sin of adultery, too. Not the physical act only, or chiefly, Jesus teaches us, is what God forbids as uncleanness in the relations between men and women; but all such things as lead up to it, all immodesty of be-. havior or of thought. Under the same condemnation fall also all suggestions of such things in literature, art, the theatre, dress or social intercourse; and if this is so, God help us, in these days! The reasonableness of thus bringing the inward life and the seeds of sin to the bar of the moral judgment, is not open to dispute, once our attention has been called to it. Our consciences instantly approve it; for we know that OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 77 the inward life is a man’s real life, of which the conduct is only a manifestation—and how limited a manifestation! Much toil and effort are spent to make men outwardly decent and tolerable. Education, in the home, the school, and the church, is directed largely toward teaching people to refrain from saying things they would like to say, and doing things they wish to do. Our criminal laws are for the same purpose, and not less so the conventions of society. Decency is preserved by constant make-believe, and we call ourselves virtuous and fortunate if by such methods we attain a partial success. Now what are such people as this to do when presently they shall stand in judgment before a holy God, before Whom all the thoughts and intents of the heart are naked and open? Shall we then still be able to cover our sins and boast of our goodness? If not, then it is better, while there is yet time, to exchange the attitude of the Pharisee for that of the Publican, and to cry out: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner’’. 78 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES XX. THE BLESSEDNESS OF SORROW. “Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted’. (Matthew 5: 4.) HIS is also from the Sermon on the Mount. As the passage concerning sins of the heart showed us the teaching of Christ in its aspect of authority, so this pas- sage may be offered as an illustration of its grace. Strange words these are to utter in such a world as this! Very differently does the world speak: “Blessed are they that laugh, that have health and wealth and youth and joy; and therefore know no sorrow. Blessed are they that never mourn”. Very differently also speaks Buddhism: “Blessed are they that neither mourn nor laugh, for sorrow and joy alike are vanity”. Necessary words, however, they are, too; for sorrow is a fact, and no religion can lay claim to having arrived at a solution of the essential problems of human life that has no answer to the questions why sorrow is here, what it should do for us, and how we are to meet it. Christ alone dares to call sorrow a blessing, and to offer comfort. Yet He does not mean to say that sorrow is in itself a blessing, regardless of what causes it and what results from it; for then His words would be: “Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall never cease to mourn.” In saying, “For they shall be comforted”, He foretells the end of sorrow in comfort so complete that it shall more than compensate for the sorrow that preceded it. Neither do these words mean that all sorrow, without distinction, is blessed. Christ speaks elsewhere of the OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 79 outer darkness, where shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, and He does not suggest that this is blessed sorrow. There is also the sorrow of which the apostle Paul speaks and which he calls, “the sorrow of this world which worketh death”. What kind of sorrow, then, is blessed sorrow, what is the comfort we are to expect, and how may we become partakers of this comfort? Mourning for sin is blessed sorrow, and is the first thing indicated here. The preceding verse gives us the order of thought. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”. To be poor in spirit is to be spiritually poor—to be conscious that within our- selves there is nothing spiritually valuable or desirable. We have no knowledge, or holiness, or love, or righteous- ness, or goodness, or virtue, or anything else that can count as of some value in the sight of God, or in the spir- itual realm, in that real and eternal world toward which we are hastening day by day. We are spiritually poverty- stricken, morally and spiritually bankrupt. It is not blessed to be in that condition, but since we all are there, it is blessed to know it. That knowledge is the first step heaVenward; yet that knowledge will surely fill the soul with sorrow, and so we proceed at first upon our way weeping. It is this sorrow that is primarily and chiefly meant when Jesus says: “Blessed are they that mourn”, and it is the comfort of reconciliation with God which He has first of all in mind when He says: “They shall be comforted”. Yet it does not stop there. No sor- row at all is blessed to the heart that is not reconciled with God, or is not led by such sorrow to seek reconciliation; but any and every kind of mourning may be blessed after we are so reconciled, or if it leads us to seek reconciliation. 80 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES It matters not what the cause of trouble may be: dis- appointment, bereavement, sickness, failure, poverty, busi- ness losses, the bitterness of being misunderstood, ma- ligned, persecuted, or, severest of all trials, the wayward- ness of son or daughter—any and every kind of trouble without exception may be to us the source of precious spiritual gains and may be wiped out in perfect comfort if only we will take our mourning to Jesus Christ. To the Christian, more than to any one else, “sweet are the uses of adversity”. THEY SHALL BE COMFORTED. This is Christ’s guarantee. He does not mean to say that the comfort will come of itself, flowing automatically from the sorrow; that would not be true. He means that He is able and willing to make it so, if only men will trust themselves to Him. No one but Jesus Christ has ever dared to make such an offer to a suffering world. Has He made good? Two thousand years have elapsed, many have taken Him at His word, and there has been time enough to test it. What is the testimony? With one con- sent Christians of all ages, of all lands, and of every walk in life agree that He has made good on this offer. They testify that into their sorrowing hearts has come the balm | of His comfort, and that out of their sorrow has come in- estimable gain. Get into contact with some experienced Christian man or woman who has known much sorrow, and note the sweetness of character, the maturity of un- derstanding, the sympathetic insight, the assured calm that pervades the life of such a one. Yet this is but the beginning. The fulness of the comfort waits until the time of the end, when all things shall be made perfect; for it is written that then “God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 81 crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away” (Revelation 21: 4). Sorrow is so permanent and important an element in human life that, among other tests, it is fair to judge sys- tems of religion and philosophy by their competence to deal with it. The highest point in Greek philosophy was reached by the Stoics, who counseled resignation, since the evils of the world are inevitable, and the philosopher should be calm and stern and strong enough to remain un- moved by them. Buddhism has a different solution: it declares that both sorrow and joy spring from “error”, that is, from the delusion that the world is real. Let but the mind rise to true enlightenment, so that it recognizes the unreality of all things, and it will sorrow no more, neither will it know joy any more. When God, “for us men and for our salvation”, be- came incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ, He could not ignore this problem of sorrow. He met it in Geth- semane and on Calvary; He purchased for us the solution and He has the right to offer it to us in these precious words: “Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted’’. 82 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES XXI. REST FOR THE SOUL. “Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest’. (Mat- thew 11: 28.) HIS IS not only a sinful and sorrowing world; it is a weary one. Mark Twain was right when he described the ordinary state of human life in the following words: “A myriad of men are born; they labor and sweat and struggle for bread .... the burden of pain, care, misery grows heavier year by year”. It is precisely because it is such a world that God was made flesh and dwelt among us, and such a world it must remain except to those who have accepted His invitation and entered into His rest. Life loads us with many and heavy burdens. There is the burden of making a living: a heavy burden, indeed, to many among us, to the toiler who works early and late, but carries home a pay envelope that can only with the utmost economy be made to cover food, shelter, and cloth- ing. There is the burden of household drudgery which knows no holiday year in year out. There is the burden of anxiety because the income leaves no margin for sick- ness and old age—no one likes to face the prospect of the poorhouse at the end of the weary way. There is, for the more prosperous, the burden of responsibility that goes with the better-paid positions in industry, commerce, or the professional life. There are the burdens of sickness, bereavement, infirmity, and over all the fear of death, seldom spoken of but always present. There is the burden of maintaining one’s place in society, and there is the OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 83 pleasure-seeker’s burden, not the lightest of those that break the backs of men—for nothing can become a more intolerable boredom than the unceasing search for amuse- ment. There is the burden of the skeleton in the closet, the thing that is never forgotten, and yet must never be mentioned. There is the growing sense of the futility of life, one is always on the go and never getting any- where—what is the good of it all? There is the burden of sin and guilt, not resting in conscious weight upon many, but adding to the load of all. Though men do not perceive that their chief trouble is alienation from God, this does not hinder its being so. To all of these, no matter what the burden is, Christ offers rest. The words admit of no qualification: “Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest”. Notice especially that He does not say: “Believe My teaching and ye shall have rest for your souls’. Believing His teaching is a very important thing, and is certainly included in this “coming” to Him, but it is not all or even the chief part of that coming. The chief thing is to place one’s self in His hands, as a patient places himself in the hands of the physician, henceforth pur- posing to regulate his diet and habits as instructed, and to take such medicine as is given him. It is a personal relation and involves the right of the physician in impor- tant respects to govern the life of his patient. Let a man come in this manner to Christ and he shall have rest. Christ gives rest, first of all, by establishing a new rela- tion between the soul and God. One aspect of this is that the sense of the forgiveness of sins fills the heart with “the peace that passeth understanding”. Another is that one ceases to worry over temporal things; the “taking thought” for the things of the morrow, about what we shall eat and what we shall drink, and wherewithal we shall be clothed, 84 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES retires into the background of life, where it belongs. An- other aspect still is that a new freedom of approach to God in prayer is experienced. One learns “to lay one’s burdens at His feet and bear a song away”. Still another way in which Christ gives rest is by providing strength to bear the burden. What was a staggering load, because we were so weak, becomes an easy task because we have ex- perienced an inflow of power. Christ gives rest by remoy- ing the sense of futility, of walking in a treadmill, that is so unutterably wearisome. To the Christian, life takes on a breadth and richness of meaning that places it in strik- ing contrast to the life of one who has no Christian faith. No matter how humble his individual task may be, he feels himself to be a co-worker with God. Christ gives rest also by giving hope. The present may be poor and mean, the Christian knows that he is a child of God, and he reckons that “the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed”. He walks always with uplifted head, knowing that the best is yet to be. Christ gives rest, finally, by His personal presence in the heart, sustaining, comforting, cheering us with the sweetness of His fellowship. We realize, as we write these lines, that what we say must seem to many readers mystical and foolish, yet noth- ing is better attested by experience, and no end of wit- nesses could be produced. The explanation is clumsy and unsatisfying, we know that. You are welcome to criticize or reject the explanation, if you will only accept the testi- mony, and come and taste for yourself, and see that the Lord is good. We are like people who have traveled abroad and are but poor hands to describe what they have seen, and yet: “We speak what we do know, and testify what we have seen”. OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 85 At least, you can see this, can you not; that if Chris- tianity is true, if God has really come into human life, then those who have believed it and have received Him, must have experiences that others cannot yet understand? Also this, that if such a saying of Christ as we have placed at the head of this article had not been found true in experi- ence, it would long ago have been buried beyond recovery under the derisive laughter of mankind; for what can we think of a man who stood up and said: “Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest’? To offer Himself as the burden-bearer for the whole world, and to promise rest to all without distinction who will come to Him—what is this but either insanity or deity? We can understand men who utterly reject and condemn Christ better than we can those who profess to admire Him and yet do not believe that He was God manifest in the flesh. 86 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES XXII. MIRACLES AND SCIENCE. NE OF the most important subjects in connection with the record of the New Testament is that of miracles. When this subject is mentioned, many a man says some- thing like this: “What’s the use of talking about miracles? In this scientific age everybody that has any sense knows that there are no such things. Miracles don’t happen”. Is that really so? Let us see. To begin with, what are miracles? They are events that were due to the direct power of God, because they never could have been brought to pass by natural forces only, working according to natural law. Natural forces, to be sure, may have been present, but it belongs to the essential idea of a miracle that they would not have been able of themselves to bring about the alleged event. Now what does the scientist say about it? He says, when he hears the event alleged to have taken place (for instance, the raising of the dead) that it is impossible; meaning impossible under natural law. Very well, the believer in miracles says that, too, so they agree perfectly; where is the conflict? The impossi- bility that the event as alleged should take place by nat- ural forces only, working under natural law, is quite as strongly insisted upon by the believer as by the scientist. If you can show the former that an event he believes to have been miraculous was produced, or could very well have been produced, naturally, he at once loses all interest in it, for what makes it valuable to him is not the event itself (for instance, what do we care whether a man named OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 87 Lazarus rose from the dead or not) but the manifest pres- ence of God in it. But you must be careful here. As already stated, the miraculous character of the event is not destroyed if there is a natural element in it, but only if the natural element explains the event completely. The divine element in a miracle is similar to the human element in ordinary events. For instance, take a potato field. No one doubts that there are natural forces at work here: seed, soil, sun- shine, rain, etc. These are quite adequate to the produc- tion of any single potato plant, but they do not explain the field as a whole. For that you need the personality of the farmer, his knowledge of the natural forces involved, his desire and purpose to raise potatoes, etc., etc., and when the crop is gathered you do not hesitate to say that he raised it, although you know perfectly well that of the sum total of forces that went to produce the potatoes, his thought and activity were only a very small part. Very small, to be sure, yet absolutely essential and highly significant. Nature by itself can produce potatoes, but never in a thousand ages a potato field. Strictly speaking, from the standpoint of natural law, the field is a miracle; for it could not have been produced except by free personality, and free personality is not under natural law. Men say, as if they were giving a complete account of the universe, “we know that the law of cause and effect governs all things”. This is not true. Mere cause and effect can not explain a boy throwing a stone or a carpenter driving a nail. These are personal acts, not natural acts. We live in a world of natural causation, plus personal causation, and these two are different, the one from the other. As Lord Kelvin, one of the world’s most famous scientists, said in an address in April, 1903: “Every action of free 88 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES will is a miracle to physical, chemical, and mathematical science”. Now to believe in the possibility of miracles it is only necessary to extend this familiar idea of personal causa- tion to God. If there is no God, then, of course, there are no miracles, but if there is one, why should not He be able to do something that natural law by itself could never accomplish, as well as we, and on a far grander scale? The man who believes in a Creator has no excuse for re- jecting miracles as impossible. St. Paul saw that long ago when he said: “Why should it be thought incredible with you that God should raise the dead”? (Acts 26: 8.) “But”, say some, “miracles are a violation or suspen- sion of natural law, which can not be”. That is a mistake. No law of nature is suspended or violated when personal causation is added to natural causation. By the law of gravitation a book held suspended in the air has an at- traction towards the earth that would cause it to fall if not held. It doesn’t fall because I hold it, but in so doing, do I at all violate or suspend the law? Not in the least. The law of gravitation is in full working order on that book all the time, but there is also another force present, the force of personal causation, and therefore a different result is reached. So it isin miracles. The new and un- usual cause, God’s will acting directly, results in a new and unusual event without in any way violating or suspending existing laws. The credibility of miracles is therefore not a scientific question. It is a question of the existence of God; and if a man believes that God exists, then it is a question whether the alleged miracle is of such a kind, performed by such a person, under such circumstances, and with such a pur- pose, that we may reasonably believe God would exercise His power in such a manner. OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 89 Prof. George Romanes states the case from the stand- point of pure reason as follows: “The antecedent improbability against a miracle being wrought by a man, without a moral object, is apt to be confused with that of its being done by God, with an ade- quate moral object. The former is immeasurably great; the latter is only equal to that of the theory of Theism, that is, nil’. Read that again. Here is one of the world’s greatest scientists telling us that there is nothing improbable about the idea that God should work a miracle, for a good reason. Put that alongside of Lord Kelvin’s remark, quoted above, and let us have done with foolish and ignor- ant talk about modern science having made it impossible to believe in miracles. 90 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES XXIII. THE MIRACLES OF JESUS. HE GOSPEL RECORDS contain numerous stories of miracles wrought by Jesus Christ. They do not pro- fess to give them all; indeed, they expressly say that He wrought ever so many more, and incidental references here and there confirm this assertion. For instance, in John 3:2, Nicodemus says that the miracles have con- vinced him that Jesus is a teacher sent from God, and the same miracles are said to have gained Jesus an unexpected welcome in Galilee some months later (John 4: 43-45), yet not a single one of the miracles referred to is on record. Those narrated are apparently offered as samples, or told because they introduce certain discourses. The miracles exhibit in the realm of action the same characteristic of “authority” that His teaching bears in the realm of thought. Jesus moves in this world as its Master, rebuking the winds, stilling the waves, walking on the sea, multiplying loaves, healing diseases, raising the dead; and doing it all with a certain calm and apparently effortless majesty. We could not have imagined in that way ourselves, but now that the record les before us, we can see that He taught just as the Word made flesh ought to have taught; and that His miracles, too, with their impression of infinite reserve power, are wrought just as God manifest in the flesh might worthily and with dignity work them. With this agrees the striking circumstance that never in a single instance were they wrought for His personal safety, comfort, or convenience. He was hungry, but re- fused to turn stones into bread; yet, when others were OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 91 hungry, He multiplied loaves to feed them. He was thirsty, and begged a drink from a woman at a well, but He used no miraculous power to refresh Himself. He was often weary with long marches, but He never transported Himself from place to place by miraculous power. Once when He wished to ride He borrowed an ass. In all His miracles His concern was for others, not for Himself. Neither is He represented as working His miracles to bring conviction to doubters. It is true, He does refer to them as proving His divine commission, but that is after they have taken place. The occasion, in each case, was some human need that appealed to His sympathies. The only exception to this, we think, is the cursing of the fig- tree, and that was done for purposes of instruction. Jesus _was at the furthest possible remove from putting His pow- ers on exhibition to satisfy the curiosity or awaken the faith of a crowd that had no ear for His instruction. Often He strictly forbade those whom He had healed to say any- thing about it. Once, when His miracles had become the chief attraction, He abruptly left the district. When on trial for His life He was sent to Herod Antipas, and might easily have won the favor of that monarch by working a miracle or two, but He absolutely refused. When the Scribes and Pharisees demanded a theatrical “sign from heaven”, he turned away from them in disgust and indignation. Finally, the same documents that give us such a picture of Jesus and His unlimited miraculous powers, tell the story of His arrest, trial, condemnation, and execution, without a single reference to such a thing. He went to His death, apparently, as helpless to resist as you or I would be. Such is the story as it lies before us in the four gos- 92 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES pels, a story with which many of us have become so fa- miliar that the very familiarity keeps us from seeing what an extraordinary tale it is; for in very truth there is noth- ing like it anywhere else. Stories of marvels, to be sure, there are, a plenty; but such a collection of stories center- ing in a historical person, happening all within the space of three or four years, of such variety, meaning, and ma- jesty, so in touch with every aspect of human life, so utterly without selfish character or purpose, so united with the profoundest teachings, with the miracle-worker so helpless to avert His own fate: No, nothing even remotely resembling this is found. If you think you can find some- thing comparable elsewhere, let us have it. Now the existence of such a record is' a fact. Let us start with that. When did it originate? That we know, too. The gospels were written between 70 and 80 A. D., or thereabouts, about 50 years after the time when these events are alleged to have occurred. When the common elements of the first three gospels are compared, however, it is plain that the story, either in written or in oral form, or both, existed earlier; thus bringing us to within a few years of the death of Christ. Now it is a fair question: “How are you going to account for the existence of this story, or this collection of stories, at that time”? One way to do so is, of course, to believe that the story is true. That is our way. Then everything is simple. People saw Jesus do these things and remembered them, or took notes on them, or wrote letters to others about them. This material eventually found its way into our four gospels, either because the writers were themselves eye-witnesses. (Matthew and John) or because they were closely associated with eye- witnesses (Mark) or because they took the trouble to investigate (Luke). OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 93 If we adopt this view, the whole thing fits together perfectly. The miracles recorded are such works, and were performed in such a way, as agrees with the funda- mental idea of the Christian religion, that in the person of Jesus Christ God came down into this world to redeem mankind from sin. We have here the things required for a credible miracle, that God should do it, and for an ade- quate moral cause. Then, also, we can explain the rise of the Christian religion, the organization of the Christian church, and all the subsequent development. On this theory that the miracles actually took place as alleged— everything is intelligible, clear and credible. ! 94 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES | XXIV. ALTERNATIVE EXPLANATIONS OF THE MIRACLES. T HAS GIVEN intelligent opponents of the Christian religion no end of trouble to find some alternative ex- planation of the way in which the narratives of the miracles of Jesus Christ arose. The narratives are there, and have to be accounted for some way. We say, “intelligent opponents”, for the unintelligent ones don’t bother to think up any explanation. All they think it necessary to say is: “Of course, that’s all non- sense. Those stories can’t be true. Miracles are contrary to science, they never happen”, or words to that effect. When assertion does duty for argument, reasoning is at an end. The attempt to find some alternative explanation is per- fectly legitimate. In fact, it may be said to be a duty not only for the unbeliever but for the believer as well. A gen- uine miracle is like the burning bush that Moses saw; in its presence we stand on holy ground. Its value consists in this, that it brings us into the very presence of God, and He manifests to us His glory. To see Him in every little thing that at first passes our comprehension, without ever looking for a natural explanation, is the way to debase faith into superstition. It cheapens the idea of God, and is one way of taking His name in vain. It is right, there- fore, that we should consider whether the gospel accounts of His miracles could have arisen in some other way than by their being true accounts of what really happened. One explanation attempted is that these events, while substantially true, are natural events misunderstood. The rationalists of Germany, in the eighteenth century, took OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 95 this line, and expended much ingenuity in finding natural explanations. These have been laughed out of court long ago, and are by this time forgotten, except by scholars. A more promising attempt, along the same line, is that made by some at the present time who explain the casting out of devils as the healing of nervous diseases by suggestion; and find parallels for some of the other miracles in psycho- therapy, or various form of faith healing. There is no doubt, on the one hand, that remarkable cures are caused in this way at the present time, nor, on the other, that the explanation would fit some of the cures recorded in the gospels pretty well. It is conceivable, for instance, that the paralytic borne of four, and let down through the roof (Mark 2: 1-12) was suffering from what is known as false paralysis. The same may be suggested in connection with the infirm man at the Pool of Bethesda, concerning the nature of whose disease we have no information. (John 5: 2-9.) Such an explanation, however, applies to so few of the recorded miracles that it is not of much importance as a solution of the problem. It is impossible in such cases as the cure of leprosy, of the man born blind, of the raising of Lazarus, the stilling of the tempest, the miracles wrought at a distance, etc., etc. Nor do the phenomena, when closely examined, agree with what takes places in psycho-therapy. Peter’s wife’s mother, sick of a high fever, was cured at the touch of Christ’s hands, and imme- diately rose and ministered to Him. Where was the period of convalescence, so necessary in all cases of healing, whether by psycho-therapy or otherwise? If natural explanations do not satisfy, is it not possible that the stories are legends, products of pious imagina- tion, that sought to glorify Christ? This theory can be put 96 ° THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES to a very fair test, since beyond doubt there are legendary stories of that kind extant with regard to Christ, outside the four gospels. They are also extant with*tegard to other heroes, so that there is abundant material for comparison. When we do so compare them, the difference at once proves that the gospel stories cannot have had a legendary origin. Such tales, for one thing, cluster especially around the childhood of the hero, but the Bible contains not a single instance of any miracle wrought by Christ during His infancy or early manhood. Compare this with the story of how Hercules strangled two great serpents with his chubby little hands, while a baby lying in his cradle; or with the story of the new-born Buddha, how he imme- diately stood sheer upright on his feet, walked northward with a seven-paced stride and bellowed out: “I am the chief of the world!” The lack of such stories in connec- tion with the infancy of Jesus was so painfully felt by the early Christians, that they undertook to supply them. The tales they told may be read in any public library in the so- called “Apocryphal Gospels”. They tell of the most won- derful miracles performed by Jesus in His childhood, and to compare these silly stories with the record of His mir- acles in the canonical gospels, is one of the most satisfac- tory ways of determining the truth of the latter. No intel- ligent man can possibly read the two, side by side, and imagine that they had a similar origin. Another thing worth considering is that if these mir- acles were the product of the pious imagination of the early Christians, the later writings must have contained more such stories, and must have laid more emphasis on them than the earlier; but that is not the case. It it gener- ally agreed that Mark is in all probability the earliest, and John the latest, but the former has far more miracle stories than the latter. OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 97 Again, if the stories had been legends, fiction, or in any way owed their origin to the imagination of people at that time, there must have been references to magic in them, and the stories themselves must have run along lines par- allel with the doing of magicians. That is the case with the “Apocryphal Gospels’, which represent Jesus as trans- forming a mule into a man, and speak of a devil issuing from a boy’s side in the form of a dog. Such forms of thought permeated the imagination of that day, and it was impossible for even very intelligent men to get away from them. Josephus, for example, was a very able, intelligent, and scholarly writer contemporary with the four evangel- ists, and in his Antiquities of the Jews he tells of himself having seen an exorcist draw a devil out of a man through his nose, with a magic ring upon which the name of King Solomon was written. Now turn to the four gospels and find the slightest trace of magic, if you can. How do you explain it? An insuperable objection to the theory of fiction, in any form, is the connection of the miracle stories with the rest of the narrative and with the entire course of history. Some people have thought they could disentangle them, accepting the general, non-miraculous narrative of the gos- pels, but leaving out the miracles. The attempt is vain. The miracles are so interwoven with the rest that after you have taken them out, there is nothing left; but you absolutely must preserve the history, for Christianity is a fact, and must be accounted for. It is interesting to know that the earliest opponents of the Christian religion did not deny the reality of Christ’s miracles. The Jews were bitterly opposed, but the earliest Jewish references to them do not deny that they took place. They admit their historicity, but explain them as 98 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES the devil’s work. Celsus, the first Greek writer against Christianity, also admits that they took place, but ascribes them to magic. These explanations will find no support- ers at the present day. In fact, there simply isn’t any satisfactory way of ex- plaining the existence of such a record except by accept- ing it as true. OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 99 XXV. THE IMPORTANCE OF THE MIRACLES. HERE ARE not a few people nowadays who take an attitude of lofty unconcern about the reality of Christ’s miracles. They say: “What difference does it make whether He really wrought them or not? We are interested in the permanent elements of His teaching, and these remain the same, whether He worked miracles or didn’t. The miracles may have been a help to faith in bygone generations, but they are rather a hindrance now. Even if they are given up, we still have the golden rule and the sermon on the mount, and that is enough for us”. Well, it is not enough for the Christian church or for the Christian religion. In the first place, to give up the miracles would seri- ously discredit our sources of information. Outside of a few scattered references, all we know about Jesus is in the New Testament. If we do not accept the miracles as true, we impeach the veracity or competence of the wit- nesses to such an extent that no reliance is to be placed on their other statements about Him. How can we believe that they accurately report what He said if they were so far wrong about what He did? The attitude described above, therefore, which is willing to throw overboard the miracles, but desires to retain the teachings of Jesus, is without logical validity. A second consideration, and a very serious one for Christians of this kind (for, of course, it is only Christians that take such a stand), is that in such a case we have a Jesus who preached but did not practice what He preached. According to the historic Christian view Jesus was full of 100 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES compassion and spent His time unweariedly in comforting and helping mankind. Finally, in the same spirit, He gave Himself voluntarily to the bitter and shameful death of the cross that He might save the world. So His disciples thought and spoke of Him as one who was “mighty in deeds” as well as in words, one who “went about doing good’. In line with His example, so understood, His fol- lowers engage in all manner of loving ministrations to their fellow-men, in the same spirit, though without the same miraculous power. He had compassion on lepers, they have gathered them in hospitals and asylums from that day to this, the only kind of people anywhere who have cared for such outcasts. He “healed all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people”, and charity hospitals, under Christian auspices, dot the world. All this is consistent, natural, and inevitable, if you believe the record. But now let us, if we call ourselves Christians, have the courage honestly to face the facts. If you take out of the gospel story the miracles and the atoning death of a Divine Redeemer, what did this man Jesus do that you should think so highly of Him? Can you find any special indication that He concerned Himself about the welfare of His fellow-men? To be sure, He preached beautifully, but what did He do? Is there so much as a record that He shared a crust of bread with a beggar? Did He raise funds for poor relief, or declaim against war, or try to free the slaves, or promote common- school education, or organize the working classes, or reform the prison system, or do any other one single thing that would lead to social betterment, except to preach? And is not preaching with- out practice educationally one of the least effective and ethically one of the most contemptible things in existence? It may seem odd, or even irreverent, for a Christian to OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 101 say such things, but it is as well to know where we stand. Remove the miracles and the deity of Christ from the record, and instead of the majestic figure that has domin- ated the centuries, walking among suffering men with di- vine power and compassion, you have a little shriveled-up contemptible Jesus, who indeed preached admirably, but did not practice what He preached. In the third place, the miracles are necessary as an at- testation of His mission. They are not the highest attes- tation, that is conceded. Higher than these stands His teaching, and higher still His resurrection. Nevertheless, the miracles were an indispensable attestation in that age, and no one is entitled to say that they have been any- thing less than indispensable to faith in any succeeding age. They are performing that function today. Said a Japanese physician to the writer: “When I read the gos- pels I could not help believing that Jesus was a divine Saviour, for no one but God come down to earth could do the things He is recorded as doing. That this should all be fiction is unthinkable”. That a limited number of our in- tellectuals at present consider the miracles rather a hind- rance than a help to faith, does not seriously affect the case, in considering a religion intended for all the world and for all time. Finally, the miracles are indispensable as part of the revelation Jesus came to bring. The very heart of historic Christianity, as we have striven to make clear in these discussions, is the Incarnation, the good news that God for us men and for our salvation once visited this earth and walked among us in the person of Jesus Christ. To assert this would be comparatively easy, and very unconvincing. The gospels do something far greater than that. In a series of artlessly told but very effective anecdotes they 102 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES portray such a being before us by relating just how He acted and what He said. Now suppose the account contained no miracles, but otherwise remained pretty much as it stands, what kind of a being would be portrayed before us? It would be one said to be God incarnate, who tarried for a while in a suf- fering and sorrowing world, but did nothing to help; who said to the paralytic: “Thy sins be forgiven thee”, but could not prove it by telling him to get up and walk; who was asserted to have made the world, but was Himself at the mercy of wind and wave; who could sit down beside a sorrowing mother and weep with her, but could not re- store her son to her arms. What kind of a God made flesh would that be? Don’t you see that the whole conception would go to pieces? And if that conception is lost, then Christianity is gone. OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 108 XXVI. THE DEATH OF CHRIST. REAT as are the teachings of Jesus, and remarkable as is the record of His miracles, it is a striking fact that the earliest literature of the Christian church is with- out reference to either. The epistles were written before the gospels and show that within a generation after the death of Christ, Christian churches had been established in the distant regions of Asia Minor, Greece, and Rome. Yet all of these epistles contain not a single direct quota- tion from the teachings of Jesus, and make no mention of any miracle wrought by Him! If the argument from si- ~ Jence, which in other connections (notable that of the Vir- gin Birth) is put forward by some as so important, has any real force, then this silence of the epistles ought to be good proof that Jesus taught nothing and wrought no miracle. The real reason is very different. It is that between the earthly life of Christ and the writing of the epistles, there had happened something of such overwhelming im- portance that the church could at first think of almost nothing else. That supreme event was the death and resurrection of Christ, the two together being considered as one complex transaction. This story is familiar to most of us, yet its place in Christian thought is so fundamental that we may be permitted to state the facts again, as laying the basis for further discussion. From the very beginning of His ministry, antagonism against Jesus had arisen in the breasts of the religious and political leaders of the Jewish people. The priestly caste were offended by His first public act, the cleansing of the 104 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES temple. The Pharisees were shocked at His disregard of the ancient regulations in regard to the Sabbath, to fast- ing, and to the ceremonious washing of hands before meals. The company He kept was against Him—He even ate with publicans and sinners. Yet with all this He was put forward as the long-expected Messiah, very guardedly at first, to be sure, but the leaders understood, even if most of the people did not. Indeed, His claims went far beyond those usually expected of the Messiah. He ascribed to Himself the right to forgive sins, and spoke as if all sin which men commit is committed against Him, which iden- tified Him with God. Many of His other expressions, such as that men must love Him more than father or mother, that He would like to have gathered all the people of Jeru- salem under His protection, as a hen does her chicks, that He would come on the clouds of heaven to judge the world, and that He existed before Abraham, involved the stupendous claim of deity, and were so understood; for we *find the Jews saying: “For a good work we stone Thee not, but for blasphemy, and because that Thou, being a man, makest Thyself God” (John 10: 33). The opposition, on these and other grounds, eventually grew so strong that the life of Jesus was in danger. While He was preaching in Perea, east of the Jordan, He received a message calling Him to Bethany, and when He was ready to go, Thomas said: “Let us go also, that we may die with Him”. From that time on until His death, Jesus was an outlaw, and appears to have been in hiding. “Now the chief priests and the Pharisees had given command- ment that if any man knew where He was he should show it, that they might take Him” (John 11: 57). Nevertheless, when the feast of the Passover came, Jesus went as usual to the capital, in the most open man- ner, although taking certain precautions against arrest, to OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 105 which we shall have occasion to refer later. Once there, He bade defiance to His enemies in the courts of the temple, in the presence of the people, in that terrific de- nunciation which we find recorded in the twenty-third chapter of Matthew. Two days later, betrayed by one of His own followers and intimate friends, He was arrested at night in a garden just outside the city and was hurried before Annas, a former high priest, who was still the head of the high priestly family and the political “boss” of the Jewish na- tion, although at the time without official position. After a kind of “third degree” examination there He was tried, at dawn, before the Sanhedrin, which was a sort of com- bination of senate and supreme court. The high priest, Caiaphas, presided. It proved difficult to convict Him of any definite crime until the presiding officer of the court conceived the bright idea of making the prisoner incrimi- nate Himself. “And the high priest said unto Him: I adjure Thee by the living God, that Thou tell us whether Thou art the Christ, the Son of God. Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto you, henceforth ye shall see the Son of Man sit- ting at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven. “Then the high priest rent his garments, say- ing: He hath spoken blasphemy; what further need have we of witnesses? Behold, now ye have heard the blasphemy: what think ye? They an- swered and said: He is worthy of death”. (Mat- _ thew 26: 63-66.) So this was the crime and this the sentence. He was condemned to death as guilty of blasphemy, because He had declared under oath that He was the Son of God. The issue on which He was condemned is essentially the same issue that underlies the whole Christian religion, and that 106 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES to this day divides men into opposing camps with regard to Jesus Christ: was He a man merely in the ordinary hu- man significance of that word, or was He the God-man, the eternal Son of God manifest in the flesh? Because the Roman law forbade the infliction of the death penalty except under sentence from a Roman court, the prisoner was taken before Pilate, who, recognizing that no crime under Roman law had been proved against Him, was most reluctant to accede to the request of the Jewish authorities, and would have refused if he had dared; but when they threatened to accuse him of dis- loyalty to Czsar if he declined to pass sentence of death, he yielded and Jesus was crucified. So far as the externals of the story go there was noth- ing very remarkable about the crucifixion of Christ except the crime charged against Him, as above. That a religious reformer should come into conflict with the representa- tives of the old order, that they should desire His removal, and that an unscrupulous judge should be bribed or frightened into passing sentence of death, are things which belong, alas, to the commonplaces of history. When the record is more carefully examined, how- ever, there is seen to be another element in it, which, hardly noticeable to the superficial reader, becomes more and more significant the more the narrative is studied, until it is seen to furnish the key to the most extraordinary transaction that ever took place. It shall be our endeavor to unfold this unusual element in the next chapter. OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 107 XXVIII. CHRIST’S DEATH VOLUNTARY. HE EXTRAORDINARY ELEMENT in the narrative of Christ’s death, to which reference was made at the close of the previous chapter, is that he is represented as dying a voluntary death; voluntary, moreover, not merely in the sense that He was willing to die for a great cause, if need be, but that He was determined to die, that He directed His movements to that end, and that He Himself decided the time and place of the tragedy; in short, that Jesus Christ deliberately and of set purpose compassed His own death, carrying out therein a pre-arranged program by the will of God. Our readers will agree that these are extraordinary things to assert, and it certainly does not look so upon the surface of the transaction. There it looks as if the death of Jesus was brought about by the malice of the chief priests, the bigotry of the Pharisees, the treachery of Judas, and the weakness of Pontius Pilate, all wickedly working together to destroy a helpless and innocent man. Yet it is easily shown that the former view is both explic- itly asserted in the record, and implicitly contained therein. It is asserted, both by Christ Himself and by the Apostles, His authorized representatives, in passages like the following: “I am the good shepherd . . . I lay down My life for the sheep”. (John 10:15.) “The Son of Man came .... to give His life as aransom for many”. (Mark 10: 45.) 108 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES “There doth the Father love Me, because I lay down My life, that I may take it again. No one taketh it from Me, but I lay it down of My- self. I have power (or ‘the right’) to lay it down and I have power to take it again”. (John 10: 17, 18.) “Christ gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God’’. (Ephesians 5: 2.) “This He did once for all, when He offered up Himself”. (Hebrews 7: 27.) That this happened, not by chance, nor yet primarily because of the plots of His enemies (although their re- sponsibility is not denied), but above all by the will of God, as part of the redemptive plan, was emphatically de- clared by the apostle Peter in a public address delivered in Jerusalem within two months of the crucifixion, when he said: “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, being delivered up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye, by the hand of lawless men did crucify and slay’. (Acts 2: 238.) The same sentiment is expressed in a prayer recorded in Acts 4: 27, 28: “O Lord, .... both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together, to do whatsoever Thy hand and Thy counsel foreordained to come to pass.” In these and other passages it is emphatically asserted that Jesus did not need to die, that He was no passive vic- tim dragged against His will to a cruel death, but that He voluntarily gave Himself in accordance with a divine plan. Do the facts on record sustain any such view of the matter? They do, abundantly, as the attentive reader OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 109 can not help but feel. One of the characteristic and strik- ing things about the gospels is the frequent recurrence of the phrases: “His hour had not yet come’, “Mine hour is not yet come’, and the like, showing that everything was moving according to program, a program that included His death eventually, but His death when the appointed hour had struck, not prematurely or at any arbitrary time. This is especially clear as one studies the narrative of that last tragic journey to Jerusalem. How uncalled-for it was, humanly speaking, yet how resolutely and stead- fastly undertaken! Jesus was in the prime of life—it was not yet time to die. He had labored publicly for only three years and, though He had some hundreds of adherents, there was still much to do. There were great communities of Jews in Alexandria, Antioch, and elsewhere ready to welcome Him, and besides that there was the great Gentile world to be evangelized. Why was it necessary for Him to go to Jerusalem, to certain death, at that time? There was no necessity at all, if you leave out the atoning pur- pose for which He came into the world. If you think of Him in merely human terms, He might far better have re- mained alive and continued His work. Yet we read that “Het set His face steadfastly to go up to Jerusalem” (Luke 9: 51). To think that He did so in the hope the nation might yet accept Him is flatly to contradict the record, which says that on repeated occasions He confided to His dis- ciples what was going to happen. Yet He went, and reso- lutely. We read this remarkable comment on His manner on that last tramp: “They were in the way going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was going before them (was striding on ahead) and they were amazed, and they that followed were afraid” (Mark 10: 32). On this journey, and during His first few days in Jeru- 110 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES salem, Jesus took the most careful precautions against premature arrest. He started from Ephraim, a town about 18 miles north of Jerusalem, and instead of going directly to the capital, He went northwards through Samaria and Galilee (Luke 7:11); no doubt to join the caravan of pil- grims going to the Passover feast. The secret of the situa- tion is that the Jewish authorities had no army, and only a very small police force. They could arrest an individual offender if they found him alone, but could not take a man from the midst of his friends. Hence the repeated comment, “They feared the people”. Traveling with this caravan of Galilean pilgrims, Jesus spent the night at Jericho, at the house of a prominent public official. The next day, still under protection of this caravan, He traveled toward Jerusalem, but took care not to enter the city and lodge there. He made His home at Bethany, where the townspeople entertained Him at a public supper in honor of the raising of Lazarus. So long as He remained there the chief priests could not seize Him. On Sunday He entered the capital, but by pre- arrangement a great crowd of His admirers came to meet and escort Him into the city. Every night thereafter He retired to Bethany, not appearing again until the temple courts were crowded with Galilean pilgrims. Under such circumstances the authorities were help- less. Nor had they, indeed, any intention of doing any- thing during the feast, for we read in Matthew 26: 5, that the following decision was reached by them two days be- fore the Passover, that is, on Tuesday of Passion Week: “They took counsel together that they might take Jesus with subtilty and kill Him, but they said: Not during the feast, lest a tumult arise among the people”. On the same day, however, Jesus announced to His dis- ciples that after two days He would be crucified. The OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 111 event shows that it was He, and not they, who was in con- trol of the situation. Here we have the victim of a murder deciding the time when it is to take place, and choosing the very time when the murderers had decided not to do it! What a strange story if true, and stranger still if not true! What writer of fiction ever dared to conceive so bold a plot? Having decided to die within two days, Jesus calmly took measures accordingly. He delivered His final broad- side against His enemies on Tuesday of that week, and a terrific denunciation it is—read it in the twenty-third chapter of Matthew. Exasperated beyond endurance, the chief priests were ready to welcome the proposal of Judas, and he was watching for a chance to catch Jesus off His guard. That never came, but he did get an opportunity to betray Him, and he got it when Jesus was ready, not be- fore. Determined to celebrate the Passover on Thursday night within the city, and aware of the treachery of Judas, Jesus gave him no inkling of the place, but in the morning of that day sent His most trusty followers, Peter and John, to make the necessary preparations, giving them a secret signal by which they should find the house: They were to follow a man with a pitcher of water. Judas, therefore, had no means of knowing where it was to be until he was led to it in company with the rest of the apostles. Once all together safely in the upper room, nothing would have been easier than for Jesus to have said to the eleven faithful apostles: “Judas is plotting to betray Me; do not let him leave the room”; but instead of that He in- dicates to Judas in some private way that He is fully aware of his intentions, and then makes the amazing move of practically telling him to go and call the police. “Jesus, therefore, saith unto him, ‘What thou doest, do quickly’. Judas arose and went out into the night”. 112 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES Then follow the farewell discourses, the institution of the memorial supper, the walk to Gethsemane, and the agony there. The shadow of the cross is over all of it, but not for one moment does Jesus lower the high tone of transaction by acting as if events had gotten beyond His control. To Peter, when that hasty disciple had drawn the sword, He says, ““Thinkest thou that I cannot beseech My Father, and He shall even now send Me more than twelve legions of angels?” When the men drew near to arrest Him, at a word from Him they fell to the ground, emphasizing their impotence to touch Him except with His consent. The next day, before Pilate, His attitude is the same. Making no effort to influence the governor in His own favor, He tells him plainly that He would have no power over Him except by God’s consent. This story of Good Friday, and of the evening that pre- ceeded it, is so familiar to most of us that we fail to see what an extraordinary situation is presented in the records. The last discourses, the foot-washing, the insti- tution of the Lord’s Supper, the warning to Peter, and the agony at Gethsemane all fit appropriately into the record, because we know what ts going to happen the next day, but if we try to divest ourselves of that knowledge, how passing strange it allis! We can understand farewells in the prospect of death, when disease or old age has almost claimed its victim, or when the hour for execution is fixed; but here was no sickness, no old age, no sentence of death. Jesus might easily have remained in Jerusalem in safety, and have joined the Galilean pilgrims on their homeward way. Then why all this solemn leavetaking, and this care- fully planned delivery of Himself into the hands of His foes as soon as the precise moment had come? How was it, humanly speaking, that He knew the end would come within twenty-four hours? OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 113 To the man who tries to explain Jesus Christ in merely human terms, this problem, like so many others in con- _nection with Him, remains insoluble. Is he to say that no such transaction ever took place, that the narrative is leg- endary, mythical, or what not? Then how does fiction come to take a form so contrary to human experience, so utterly diverse from all other fiction ever written? On the other hand, if he admits that the narrative is true, but still holds: that Jesus was merely an ordinary human being, and His death like that of a martyr, then how are we to explain the facts as set forth above? ) From only one viewpoint is this record intelligible, consistent, and deeply significant, and that is the historic Christian conception of Jesus as the Divine Redeemer, who came to die an atoning death, and who therefore of set purpose so directed and controlled all events, that He brought about His own death, offering Himself a sacrifice, officiating as both priest and victim, giving Himself to the bitter and shameful death of the cross as a propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. 114 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES XXVIII. THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. IRTH AND DEATH are the two events that open and close the life-story of every man. The biographer may discuss a man’s ancestry, or the political conditions of his day; and he may have much to say about the influence exerted by his hero on succeeding generations; but the life-story as such begins with his birth and ends with his death. Fiction in this respect perforce follows life. No writer is so bold as to include in his novel what his hero did before he was born, or what he said and did after he was dead and buried. This is true of every man whose life-story is told in history or fiction, with one exception. That exception is Jesus Christ. Both in the epistles and in the gospels it is asserted that Jesus Christ existed as a conscious, living person be- fore His birth, and that He walked and talked with men after His death. As to His pre-existence we have passages like the following: “Before Abraham was, I am”. (John 8:58.) “What if ye should see the Son of Man as- cending where He was before’’? (John 6: 62.) “Though He was rich, for your sakes He be- came poor”. (2 Corinthians 8: 9.) “Who, existing in the form of God. emptied Himself . . being made in the like- ness of men”’. (Philippians 2:6.) whe ; E 1 These assertions concerning the pre-existence of Jesus Christ are, in the nature of the case, not subject to exam- ination or capable of proof by historical methods. A man OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 115 will believe them or disbelieve them according to his gen- eral view of the Christian revelation. Far otherwise is it with the assertions made with re- gard to His activities after death. Some of these also, to be sure, such as sitting at the right hand of God, making intercession for us, sending the Holy Spirit, etc., are out- side the sphere where direct examination and proof are possible; but Christ’s resurrection, with its record of His having been seen by His disciples, talking with them, walking the streets in their company, sitting at table with them, eating fish and honey with them, etc., les entirely within the sphere of observable and provable facts. These allegations may be examined by the standard historical methods. If true, there must be witnesses to testify to them, and the credibility of their testimony is open to discussion. It is a common mistake, not seldom made by Chris- tians as well as by those who are not Christians, to think that the resurrection of Christ is believed by the Christian church on the basis of the inspiration of the Bible; putting belief in inspiration first, and belief in the resurrection later, as aresult of it. The fact is just the reverse. Belief in the inspiration of the New Testament, as we shall show later, follows the belief in the resurrection of Christ, and rests upon it. This is the historical order, for belief in the resurrection of Christ existed for nearly a genera- tion before the first New Testament documents were writ- ten, and two generations before these books were com- pleted; while general acceptance of them as inspired came a full hundred years after the faith in the resurrection be- gan. Because it is the historical order, it is also the log- ical order. In defending the truth of the resurrection we cannot assume inspiration, and shall not do so in this dis- cussion. After the resurrection has been shown to be true 116 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES we have logically a good case for inspiration, not before. With all this it remains true that many an individual Christian, so far as his own faith is concerned, reverses the historical and logical process, accepting inspiration first and the resurrection upon the basis of that; but this is not true of the Christian church as such. _ The following is what the Christian church believes about the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We believe that He was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and that He died, in exactly the same sense as we say of any other man that he dies. We do not mean that His soul ceased to exist, because we do not mean that of any man when we say, “He is dead”. We confess that we do not know exactly what death is, but whatever it means to the ordinary human being, that is what it means when we say that Jesus died. He was really and truly dead, and if the usual course of nature had been followed, his body would have been subject to decay in the ordinary manner. We believe, however, that this did not take place. We believe that on the third day the body returned to life, left the tomb, and was seen, at various intervals, by credible and sober witnesses, at various hours of the day and night, but usually in broad daylight, for about six weeks. During these six weeks we believe that He visited His friends, walked, talked, ate and drank with them, and offered Himself to be handled by them. In these inter- views it was evident that His body had undergone a change, resulting in new capacities and qualities, and yet the scars it bore identified it as the same body that had died upon the cross and had been laid in the tomb. We believe the resurrection of Jesus Christ, so under- stood, to be an event that is not only true but provable, in exactly the same sense in which any other historical event OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 117 is provable. We do not claim demonstration beyond the possibility of doubt. That is attained only in mathematics and the physical sciences; but we do claim to prove it “be- yond a reasonable doubt”; that is to say, we believe we can offer such proof as is constantly accepted in our courts of law and by students of history. Not only do we hold the resurrection of Christ to be provable, but we confidently rest the Christian case upon it. To believe what Christianity teaches without some sort of proof would be little better than superstition. We ad- mit that reasoned proof of the chief doctrines, separately considered, can not be produced; but we offer historical proof of the central facts: the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. If the proof suffices to show that these things are worthy of belief, it is easy to see that belief in the doctrines must follow. If the proof of the. historical basis of Christianity is not sound, we have no case. In the question before us, therefore, we come to grips with the very core of the Christian problem. 118 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES XXIX. THE RESURRECTION AND THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH. OTHING RECORDED in the New Testament is with- out value and importance, but the things there writ- ten are not all equally important. Some things are merely placed on record, or alluded to in passing, without any emphasis being placed upon them, and without their hay- ing, so far as we can see, any very vital relation to the general system of Christian thought. Very different is it with the resurrection of Christ. The more one studies the New Testament the clearer does it become that this one fact dominated the whole situation in the formative period of the Christian religion; that without it there would have been no Christian church, and that the early preachers of the faith put this into the foreground upon all occasions as the one great fact upon which they based everything they had to say. Let the reader take his Bible and go over the New Testament, with a red or blue pencil in hand, marking all the pas- sages where he finds a reference to the resurrection of Christ. He will be amazed to see how many and impor- tant are the places where it is found, and how constantly the point of the argument is made to rest upon this fact. The first thing he will notice, if he makes such a study, is that all four gospels relate the story of the resurrec- tion at length. This is unusual. Prior to the record of Passion Week, only one event is told by all four evan- gelists. This is the feeding of the five thousand. The Vir- gin Birth is related only in two gospels, those of Matthew and Luke; the Ascension likewise by only two, Mark and Luke. OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 119 If he goes on to the book of Acts he will find brief re- ports of eighteen or nineteen speeches delivered by the apostles, and in thirteen of these the resurrection is em- phasized. In the very first chapter he will find a report of a conversation between the risen Christ and His apostles, as well as the emphatic statement that He showed Him- self alive for forty days, by many proofs. Near the close of the same chapter he will find it laid down as the indis- pensable qualification of an apostle that he should be able to bear personal testimony to the resurrection, for this was the chief thing an apostle was appointed to do. “One of these must become a witness with us of His resurrection” (Acts 1: 22). This is confirmed by what St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9:1: “Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?” Also by Acts 4:38: “With great power gave the apostles their witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus’. A very interesting thing shown by the book of Acts is that this question of the*resurrection was the one great outstanding question at issue between the Christians and | their opponents. The very first arrest of the apostles is thus described: “The Sadducees came upon them, being sore troubled that they taught the people, and proclaimed in Jesus the resurrection from the dead” (Acts 4:2). St. Paul, before the Sanhedrin, stated the issue as follows: _ “Brethren, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees, touching the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question” (Acts 23:6). The Roman governor Porcius Festus had heard the Jews and St. Paul disputing back and forth in his presence, and to King Agrippa he summed up the essence of the controversy in the following words: “They had certain questions ... . of one Jesus, who was dead, whom Paul affirmed to be alive”. That was exactly what Paul was always doing, wherever he went, affirm- 120 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES ing this Jesus to be alive. He did the same thing in Athens, for the Athenians said: “He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods, because he preached Jesus and the resur- rection” (Acts 17: 18). When we turn to the epistles, whether those of Paul or the other epistles, we find the resurrection in the fore- ground constantly. All kinds of things are proven by in- sisting upon the certainty of it. Whatever might be doubted within the Christian church, this never. The ancient philosopher said: ‘Give me a place where I may stand to rest my lever, and I will move the world”. The early Christians had found it. They took their stand on the resurrection of Christ and they moved the world. Their conception of Christ was governed by the fact of His resurrection: “Who was declared to be the Son of God with power, by the resurrection from the dead’. (Romans 1:4.) Upon this fact rests the doctrine of justi- fication by faith: “He was delivered up for our trespasses and was raised for our justification” (Romans 4: 25). Christian ethics rests upon the same foundation: “That, © like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:4). The Christian hope of immortality is built upon the resurrection of Christ: “For if we believe that Christ died and rose again, even so them also that are asleep in Jesus will God bring with Him” (Thess. 4: 14). The same thing proves the certainty of the final judg- ment: “God hath appointed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He hath or- dained, whereof He hath given assurance unto all men, in that He hath raised Him from the dead” (Acts 17: 31). . e : +i The epistle to the Hebrews is by some thought to have been written by St. Paul; others are sure that he did not OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 121 write it. Whoever wrote it had the same faith about the resurrection of Christ, for we read in chapter 13, verse 20: “Now the God of Peace, who brought again from the dead the great Shepherd of the sheep with the blood of an eter- nal covenant, even our Lord Jesus’’, etc. The fact was quite as fundamental to St. Peter’s view of Christianity as to St. Paul’s, for he says: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, according to His great mercy, begat us again unto a living hope by the resurrec- tion of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1: 3). Finally, the book of Revelation closes the Christian revelation with a magnificent series of visions, but it starts with this well- attested fact: “J am the first and the last and the Living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive forever more” (Revelation 1:18). Two things emerge with perfect clearness from any study of this kind (and we have merely touched the sur- face of the subject in this discussion), and these two things are: First, that the apostles and early Christians believed the resurrection of Jesus Christ to be a fact. They not only believed it, they staked everything upon it, including their own lives. Upon their faith in it our faith is founded. Second, that any one who cherishes a religious belief that does not include the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, holds something that is not the historic Chris- tian faith, whatever else it may be. 122 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES XXX. THE EVIDENCE OF THE RESURRECTION. ¥ HE STORY of the resurrection of Jesus, as we find it in the Bible, is so extraordinary and the conse- quences that follow from it, if true, are so tremendous, that very good evidence is required to prove it. This we cheerfully admit. Indeed, we Christians do not need to have this pointed out to us by others; we have too much at stake to overlook it. We have no wish to be deceived, or to deceive ourselves. St. Paul said long ago, with refer- ence to this very question, “If in this life we have nothing but a mere hope in Christ, we are of all men to be pitied most!” (Moffatt’s translation.) This has long been clearly recognized, and no other point in the history of Christ has received so much study as this. Much discussion has taken place, and many books have been written on the resurrection of Christ, with the result that the truth of it has been firmly established. Dr. Arnold, a famous historian, scholar, and educator, said of it more than a generation ago: “I have been used for many years to study the history of other times, and to examine and weigh the evidence of those who have written about them; and I know of no fact in the history of man- kind which is proved by better and fuller evi- dence of every sort, to the understanding of a fair inquirer, than the great sign which God has given us, that Christ died and rose again from the dead”. OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 123 Another great English scholar, Canon Westcott, says: “There is no single historic incident better or more variously supported than the resurrection of Christ’. Dr. Alfred Edersheim, a converted Jew, and perhaps the greatest of recent scholars on the life and times of Jesus, says of the resurrection: "It may unhesttatingly be pronounced the best established fact in history’. Dr. James Orr, of Glasgow, after a full examination of the most recent arguments against it, concludes by saying: “The resurrection of Jesus stands fast as a fact, unaffected by the boastful waves of scep- ticism that ceaselessly through the ages beat themselves against it’’. These statements represent, we believe, the conclusion reached by all careful students who are not prevented, by a prior rejection of the miraculous, from fairly examining the evidence. Those who reject it base their conclusions, so far as we have found, in every case, not upon the insuf- ficiency of evidence, but upon a fixed resolution not to accept any evidence, no matter how strong, for such a thing as the resurrection. Upon men who take such a stand as that, proof makes as little impression as water upon a duck’s back. In these brief articles it is, of course, impossible to do more than to present the barest outline of an argument to which volumes have been devoted. To readers who wish to study the matter further we recommend the following books, some or all of which are likely to be found in well- equipped public libraries: 124 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES C. H. Morrison: The Proofs of Christ’s Resurrection — from a Lawyer’s Standpoint. | Canon Westcott: The Gospel of the Resurrection. James Orr: The Resurrection of Jesus. George Hanson: The Resurrection and the Life. J.M. Shaw: The Resurrection of Christ. In our own brief study let us start, as usual, with the ~ documents. We have already shown what an important » place the resurrection has in them. No one can read the — gospels and epistles without seeing that the early Chris- tians believed the resurrection of Christ to be a fact, in- — deed, the great fact upon which everything else rested. © Where had they gotten that faith? From the apostles, — for these were the men officially designated to testify to this event. No one could qualify as an apostle unless he © had seen the risen Redeemer. They were, however, not — the only witnesses, merely the officially designated ones. © The record names several women, and the two disciples — who went to Emmaus, as having seen the risen Christ. Itis implied in Acts 1: 22 that such men were rather numerous, ~ and this is confirmed by what St. Paul tells us in 1 Corin-— thians 15: 6, that Christ, after His resurrection, was seen — by more than five hundred brethren at once. The testi- mony of these witnesses has not been preserved, but in the | first years it must have been a powerful support to the — statements of the apostles. Under these circumstances is it conceivable that the story was made out of whole cloth; in other words, that those who testified to the resurrection were deliberately lying? This is the first question to be considered: Was the whole thing a fraud? The conditions existing seem to make that impossible. OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 125 There was no incentive to a fraud of that kind. Why should they try to make people believe that Christ had returned to life, if they knew He hadn’t? They gained no money by it—on the contrary. the early Christians gave away what they had. They gained no official position or popularity by it—on the contrary, they risked their lives, and all but one of the apostles died a martyr’s death. It would have been a fraud not very difficult to expose. Murder cases are constantly showing how difficult it is to dispose of a human body without detection. The Jewish authorities knew where Jesus had been buried, and they could either have produced Him or have proved what had become of Him. In the famous Matteotti murder case, now on trial in Italy, the body was found and identified about two months after death, which had occurred in the beginning of summer, June 10. Fifty days after the death of Jesus it was that Peter proclaimed His resurrection openly in the temple and charged the high priests with the murder. To find and identify the body should not have been difficult at that time. The theory of fraud involves the most obvious impossi- bilities. It means that the twelve apostles and scores of other persons, to the number of at least five hundred in all, must have conspired to tell a lie, with the idea of mak- ing other people believe in a Christ in whom they no longer believed themselves, and they would all have to tell a straight story under the cross-examination of the Jewish lawyers, well-versed in all the ways of false wit nesses. No one who has some experience in lying will believe it can be done. More yet, they would have to keep this up all their lives, all of them, with never a hint of the conspiracy leaking out; they would have to sacri- fice their lives (as they did) in support of the story; and when they came to die they would have to keep up the de- 126 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES ception still, with the expectation (being devout Jews) of soon meeting in judgment a God of whom it is written: “Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord”. The more you think of it the more absurd it seems. This is admitted, even by the greatest antagonists of the Christian faith. Perhaps the most eminent of them all was David Friedrich Strauss, a German rationalist, but even he says: “There is no occasion to doubt that the apostle Paul heard this from Peter, James, and perhaps from others concerned, and that all of these, even the five hundred, were firmly convinced that they had seen Jesus who had been dead and was alive again”. So say they all. We know of no respectable scholar anywhere who does not admit the sincere belief of the apostles in their own testimony. This is a great admission, and we shall make full use of it in the rest of our discussion. OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 127 XXXII. THE EVIDENCE OF THE RESURRECTION. II. T IS ADMITTED on every hand that the apostles and other early Christians, in testifying that they had seen Jesus alive after His death, were sincere; they were stating what they believed to be true. If any one is still inclined to doubt it, we can suggest no better course than for him to read and re-read the record. The shining sincerity of the narratives and speeches will not fail to convince him that the apostles were no crooks, but honest men. “Very well, but that is no proof that what they said was true. Many people tell of having seen ghosts; they are entirely sincere about it, too! Others go to spiritualistic seances and see their dead relatives, even hold conversa- tions with them. They believe it, no question about that; but the rest of us don’t accept it, and testimony of that kind would not be considered worth anything in court. Then, there are other visions and hallucinations of all kinds on record. Why may not something of that kind have happened to make the apostles think they had seen Jesus?” This is, in general, what is meant by the “Vision Theory”. It looks plausible at first, but only at first; there is really nothing in it. Certainly there are ghost stories, plenty of them, but this very fact should be enough to show us that the resurrection narrative has nothing in common with them, for over against these numerous tales of ghosts and apparitions there ts one resurrection story in the whole history of the world, and one only. To be sure, there are nature myths, in some religions, in which 128 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES the seasons are represented as death and resurrection, but nature myths of this kind are not history, and they can- not be fairly brought into comparison with history. There is no historical character of whose existence we have as- surance and of whose life we possess some details, of whom it has ever been told and believed that he rose from the dead, except Jesus Christ only. ~ Moreover, a ghost story has no relation at all to the resurrection of the body, and never suggests such a thing. Many people have believed that they had seen ghosts, but did you ever hear of a case where, on the strength of such a vision, they opened the grave to see whether the body was still there? The same is true of spiritualistic seances. That a man thinks he has seen his child or his mother at the seance, by means of the medium, gives him no impulse to go to the family cemetery to find out whether the body of the dear departed is still there. No one thinks of doing such things, because, in popular thought everywhere, the seeing of a man’s ghost is quite consistent with his body lying quietly in the grave. In the resurrection story, on the other hand, the empty grave is an essential element. Both Peter and Paul, in their preaching, emphasized the point that the body experienced no decay, but returned to life before decay had set in. (Acts 2: 29-31; 13: 36, 37.) In the gospel story the ghost story possibility is men- tioned, to be ruled out. Read Luke 24: 36-48. Here it is recorded that Jesus, to convince His disciples, showed them His hands and feet, and ate fish in their presence. Ever hear of a ghost doing that? Possibly this is one of the experiences referred to by Peter in his speech at.Casa- rea: “We did eat and drink with Him after He rose from the dead”. The empty grave and the eating and drinking with Him are parts of the primitive apostolic testimony, concerning which all are agreed that it was sin- OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 129 cere. If so, you can’t think anything else than that it was the truth. No one can make a mistake about things like that. “But are there not other visions and hallucinations in which people think they see things that are not really there?” Certainly there are. The man who has delirium tremens is terribly sincere in his belief that he sees snakes, but there are no snakes. It is a hallucination. So there have been wonderful visions in all ages, some of them re- corded in the Bible, some in secular history. For some of these stories we have the greatest respect, as, for instance, for the visions of the Virgin Mary which Joan of Arc saw. We do not doubt her sincerity, but we do not admit that it was objectively real. This also was a hallucination. “Well, what is the difference? If the possibility of such hallucinations is conceded, may not the resurrection appearances have been of such a nature—real enough to the men who saw the visions, but not objectively a fact?” No, that is impossible. The conditions under which such hallucinations occur are well known, and they were not present in the resurrection stories. They take place under conditions of disease, as in delirium caused by fever; or in insanity; or in times of great excitement and intense expectation. They occur also to one person at a time, never to a group simultaneously. They occur more read- ily at night, or under conditions of dim vision, than during the daytime, more readily in a confined space than in the open. There is never anything left to prove their reality after they are over, they occur at any time, and it cannot be foretold when they will recur. In all of these particulars, the conditions of hallucina- tion were not present in the resurrection stories. The number and nature of the witnesses excludes the explana- 130 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES tion of nervous disease. The apostles were of the ordi- nary working class, twelve in number, accustomed to out- of-door life, the very class among whom hallucinations are least likely to occur. Associated with them in this ex- perience were five hundred others. The required condition of intense expectancy was not present. When the women went to the grave they carried spices, to anoint a dead body, not with the idea of meeting a risen Lord. Three days had elapsed since the excitement of the crucifixion, and the reaction of complete discouragement had set in. Jesus appeared to the disciples once or twice at night, but on several occasions in broad daylight, as they were walk- ing along the road, or as they were fishing in the lake. He did this from time to time for forty days, and then, after a formal leave-taking on the hillside, He ascended to heaven, and the appearances ceased. Finally, there is al- ways the fact of the empty grave, to prove that what they saw was real. All of this is utterly and irreconcilably at variance with the way visions and hallucinations are experienced. In this connection the significance of St. Paul’s state- ment that above five hundred brethren saw the Lord at one time, must not be overlooked. Strauss mentions this as one of the things not to be doubted, that they were sincere in thinking they had so seen Christ. Paul includes this statement in a letter to a church where he had bitter enemies, who would have delighted to have exposed him as a fraud or irresponsible if they could have done so. Now, these five hundred must have been notified of the time and place of the rendezvous; and, as the adherents of Jesus were scattered throughout the towns and villages of Galilee, this task must have occupied the apostles for a great part of the forty days. Then, at the appointed time, Christ met them. You don’t have hallucinations in such a way! OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 131 The fact is, that the things the apostles say about their experiences with the risen Christ are such things as no sane persons could honestly say if they were not true. If they had given such testimony in court, under oath, and if the thing were afterwards disproved, they would have been justly liable to prosecution for perjury. We cannot believe that they were dishonest; even our opponents agree to this. Likewise, we find no reason to think they were the victims of any hallucination. The only thing left is to believe that it was true; that Christ did indeed rise from the dead. 132 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES XXXII. INDIRECT EVIDENCE OF THE RESURRECTION. E HAVE, so far, considered only the direct testimony of the apostles, and have shown reasons for believ- ing that it is neither fraudulent or due to anything like hallucination; but in addition to this testimony there are certain broader considerations to which attention must be directed. These larger considerations, although their bearing upon the credibility of the narrative is indirect, yet tend very greatly to strengthen it, and to explain the unshakable faith of the Christian church. The first and most important of these larger considera- © tions is that the resurrection fits in so well with the gen- eral portrait of Jesus Christ drawn for us in the gospels and epistles. There is an admirable suitability, a supreme congruity, about it that carries conviction. We have from time to time, in these discussions, in various connections, emphasized the fact that the New Testament documents set before us the conception of the pre-existent Word of God, who for us men and for our salvation became man and remained with us for a time. This incarnation of God, for the purpose of saving a lost world, is the very heart of the Christian religion. In the gospels and epistles such a being is portrayed before us. The manner in which He was born, the way He taught, the miracles He wrought, His compassion for sinful and sorrowing humanity, His wrath against hypocrisy, His sinless character, His tran- scendent claims, so calmly and quietly put forward, are all in beautiful harmony with the conception of such a divine Redeemer. So is also the description of His death, as be- ing not overwhelmed by the plots and cruelty of His ene- OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 133 mies, but as giving Himself voluntarily to die for men. To crown it all comes this resurrection story, a superb climax to such a life and such a personality. We feel at once that if the central conception of an incarnate God is true, this must needs be so. Peter expresses our sentiments exactly when he says: “It was not possible that HE should be holden of death”. Now if we could think for a moment that this whole story was fiction, we should be lost in admiration of the genius who could imagine such a plot; but if there is any- thing certain it is that this is not fiction; it is what it pur- ports to be, a story from life. This being so, the congruity of all its parts, and especially the supreme suitability of such a finish to such a life, very powerfully help to incline us to an acceptance of the resurrection. We might find it © difficult, no matter on what testimony, to believe that an ordinary man rose from the dead—we need not find it so difficult to believe it of Jesus Christ. The resurrection testimony is the keystone of the Christian arch, but the keystone is never the whole arch. The right and left columns are kept in place by it, but they also support it. Each part leans upon and supports the other parts. So it is with the resurrection of Christ. The direct testimony is indispensable, but the credibility of the event has also other supports. The character of Jesus Christ, as we have seen, is the right column of the arch; what is the left? It is the rise of the Christian church. Leave out the resurrection, and this is an utterly inexplicable fact. Other religions, to be sure, as well as philosophical systems, have arisen without resurrections, but that is because they aimed at nothing more than to expound the teachings of their founders. They did not call men to faith in these 134 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES founders as redeemers, able to save to the uttermost all that put their trust in them. Hence a dead founder was good enough. The rise of the Christian religion, and of the Christian church as the trustee of that religion, pre- sents a very different problem to the historian. Here it is no question of perpetuating and expounding the teachings of the founder—those teachings are never quoted or re- ferred to in the extant documents for a whole generation! Here it is a question from the start of winning men to trust in a living Lord, Who once was dead. That such a body as the Christian church, with such a message, arose in the days of Tiberius, emperor of Rome, is beyond ques- tion, and the problem is: How is this to be explained? Without the resurrection, this is inexplicable—with the resurrection everything is clear. All this powerfully sup- ports the direct testimony to the effect that Jesus rose from the dead. As some one has well said: “The supreme proof of the resurrection of Christ is the resurrection of Christianity”. The weekly Lord’s Day is another witness to the same fact. For ages the day of rest and worship had been the seventh day of the week. This was in commemoration of the creation of the world, and rested on the highest pos- sible sanction, the direct command of God from Sinai. Yet, within the first century this day is dropped by the Christian church, and the first day of the week is substi- tuted, all without division, objection, or controversy! This can be explained upon no other ground than the sponta- neous desire of the early Christians to remember week by week an event so great that for them it threw into the shade even the creation of the world. Thus this change OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 135 of day remains among us, a reliable witness to some out- standing event in the early church, and it powerfully buttresses the other historical proofs. The Easter festival is a similar proof. We now cele- brate Christmas as well, and in most churches more is made of this than of Easter, which is a sad commentary on the decline of faith. Any one can join in celebrating the birth of Jesus, for that need not mean more than a recognition of Him as one of the greaf men of history; but no one but a Christian can really celebrate Easter. The early church thought so much of this festival that the first great controversy in the church, in sub-apostolic days, was about the right time and manner of celebrating it. Itis on record that it was discussed between Polycarp and the Bishop of Rome in 155 A. D., when the former visited the Imperial City. Finally, one of the reasons why men believe the resur- rection of Christ, will always be its supreme fitness to meet our human need of light upon the problem of life and death. By this it is that life and immortality have been brought to light. To those who cling to the conviction that human life must be worth something, that there must be somewhere permanent meaning and value in it, the resur- rection of Jesus Christ is like the dawning of the day. It is congruous to the deepest and highest things in man, and as long as these things appeal to us, the credibility of the resurrection will draw from this congruity no small measure of support. Take all these things together, and you will see that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is no isolated occurrence. To 136 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES get the full force of the evidence in its favor, you must think of it in connection with the gradually unfolding plan of redemption revealed even in the Old Testament, with the prophecies of the coming Messiah, with the character and acts of Jesus, with the outburst of spiritual energy in the first century, with the rise and institutions of the Christian church, with the magnificent stream of moral uplift that flows from it down the ages, and with the pro- foundest needs of the human race. The narrative of an event that fits them all and throws light upon them all is no idle or superstitious tale: is ts the supremely credible record of the greatest event in human history. OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 137 XXXII. THE RESURRECTON AND REVEALED RELIGION. R. FRANZ DELITZSCH, the distinguished German Hebrew scholar, in the preface to his commentary on Genesis, after speaking of the immense labor bestowed upon it, says: “Nevertheless the praise of full and com- plete scholarship will still be withheld from it. For the spirit of this commentary remains unaltered .... J be- lieve in the Easter announcement and accept its de- ductions”’. What in the world has the Easter announcement got to do with a scholarly study of the book of Genesis? _ Everything, for he who believes the resurrection of Christ to be a fact must accept its deductions, which means that he must and will accept Christianity as a revealed reli- gion. He who does that can not hold the same views of the Old Testament as he who does not. To the man who accepts it, the resurrection of Christ fully establishes the truth of the central proposition of the Christian religion, that God was incarnated in Jesus Christ. Christ Himself said that He was the pre-existent Son of God who had come into the world for the redemp- tion of mankind, the long-expected Messiah. When asked for proof of this exalted claim, He appealed to His resur- rection. If one accepts the resurrection narrative as true, it can not be denied that Jesus was what He said He was. He “was declared to be the Son of God with power ..... by the resurrection from the dead” (Romans 1: 4). f From this authentication of Jesus as the divine Re- deemer, the promised Messiah, we can work confidently 138 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES backward to the inspiration of the Old Testament, and forward to that of the New. As to the Old Testament, Christ so frequently and emphatically taught it to be the Word of God that no one who accepts His authority in matters of religion can logically reject its inspiration. He said: “Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law till all things be accomplished”. (Matthew 5: 18.) “The scriptures can not be broken”. (John 10: 35.) “Do ye not therefore err, because ye know not the scriptures’? (Mark 12: 24.) “Ye search the scriptures, because ye think that in these ye have eternal life, and these are they which bear witness of Me’. (John 6: 39.) These are but a few of His utterances along this line. His whole attitude toward the Old Testament and His frequent quotation of it as authority shows how He looked upon it. Now the question: “Did Jesus rise from the dead?” is decisive with regard to the reliability of such teaching. The man who believes that the resurrection story is not true can have no other idea of Jesus than that He was at best a misguided enthusiast, mistaken about Himself, and therefore probably mistaken about the Old Testament. To such a man, the problems of the Old Testament must be settled upon ordinary historical principles, without any admixture of divine revelation or divine intervention. This produces a certain kind of scholarship, which offers its interpretation of the facts of Hebrew history and re- ligion. The solutions it offers are in many respects very unsatisfactory, for the said interpretation leaves great OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 139 ‘ gaps that can not be filled up, and grave questions that can not be answered; yet these solutions are accepted by many, because they are the only ones that can be reached by this method. The man, on the contrary, who accepts the resurrection of Jesus as a well-established fact, must regard the utter- ances of a teacher so attested as true, and with this as his fixed point of departure, he also engages in historical study, seeking to interpret the course of the history. He, too, offers a solution of the problems involved, and it is a very different solution from that reached by the other man. His solutions often fail to satisfy, for important and baffling questions remain; and yet, since these solutions are demanded by his method, he must be content with them, so long as he is not ready to throw his method over- board. This he can not do so long as he remains a disciple of Christ, and to reject the authority of the Master is im- possible so long as he believes the resurrection to be a fact. This is the secret of the never-ending dispute between conservative Christian scholars and others on the prob- lems of the Old Testament. The widely diverging conclu- sions reached are due not to a difference of scholarship or of scientific methods, but to the difference in the point of departure. One side “believes the Easter message and accepts its deductions”; the other does not. Much the same process leads to the acceptance of the New Testament as inspired. We have taken the New Testament documents, so far, in these discussions merely as books written in good faith by men who had an oppor- tunity to know the facts, and therefore as reliable in the same manner as ordinary human writings. On that basis we found reason to accept the resurrection of Christ. If we do this, as already pointed out, then we must accept Jesus as the divine Redeemer and authoritative Teacher. If so, we must accept the apostles also, not merely as credible witnesses of observed facts, but as organs of reve- | lation, inspired interpreters of the said facts; for Christ authorized and appointed them to act as such. Pointing to specific passages is almost superfluous, for it seems © clear that no one can believe that God was incarnated for the purpose of saving mankind, and then neglected to leave behind authoritative teachers of these things. Yet, to place the matter beyond dispute, we invite the reader to consider such texts as the following: 140 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES Li i | “T have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit, when He, the Spirit of truth is come, He shall guide you into all truth’. (John 16:12, 138.) “Verily I say unto you, what things soever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and what things soever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven’’. (Matthew 18:18.) “He that heareth you heareth Me, and he that rejecteth you rejecteth Me”. (Luke 10: 16.) 8, ta sed a meee he TEU re ps eee Se eM Restate meben Des6Sk This authority of the apostles was accepted without question in the early church. We read that “of the rest durst no man join himself unto them’, so unique was the position of an apostle. In strict accord with this is the claim of the apostle to be such inspired teachers. St. Paul says: “The gospel which was preached by me is not after man, for neither did I receive it from man, nor wasI — taught it, but it came to me through revelation of Jesus — Christ (Galatians 1:12). St. John says practically the © same thing when he insists that “We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he who is not of God heareth us not, by this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of © error’. . OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 141 zs Now in regard to every claim of this kind on the part of » the apostles the decisive thing is our faith in the resur- rection of Christ. .You can not dissociate that central ~ event from the rest of history. Accept it and you are - bound to accept the apostles as authorized founders of the Christian church and teachers of the Christian revela- tion. Reject it and you must make what explanation you can of the whole course of events—and a difficult task indeed you will find it to be. In any case, we do not see what firm ground you will then have for accepting the - Christian religion as a revelation from God. 142 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES : XXXIV. THE MYSTERY OF THE ATONING DEATH. EK BELIEVE the Easter message and accept its de- ductions, the chief of which is that Jesus Christ is the Divine Redeemer. Since He appointed the apostles as His authorized spokesmen, and guaranteed the truth of their teaching, a further deduction is that what they teach is a divine revelation, and ought to be accepted as such. From this point on we propose to inquire into their teach- ings as to the way of reconciliation between ourselves, as sinful men, and God, the holy and righteous ruler, whose laws we have broken. On a point like this we need a revelation. The opinion of no man is worth a row of pins. To have a fair opinion one would need to be in possession of all the data and would have to be able to reason with correctness upon them. No man either has the one or can do the other. The apostles, considered apart from their office as organs of revelation, were no better off in this respect than the rest of us. We are debtors before the moral law, spirit- ually bankrupt. For an adjustment of the debtor’s obliga- tions it is of no importance what he thinks or what his fellow-debtors think; the only thing that counts is what the creditor thinks—what terms he is willing to grant. The apostles were set in the church by the risen Christ to tell us what God thinks on such subjects, and therefore we accept their teaching as inspired and authoritative. We do our best to understand what they teach and to re- late it to our other knowledge; and if we can do this we are glad. If we can not we believe it anyway. If we can find evidence elsewhere that confirms it, well and good; OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 143 but if we cannot we accept the apostolic teaching without evidence, because their authority is evidence enough for us. On many things they teach, and these the most impor- tant, we have no other evidence, and expect we never shall have, because they transcend the capacity of the human mind. We know that by taking this position we are setting ourselves down, in the minds of some, as hopelessly be- hind the times. If we only had the “modern” point of view we could not be so foolish. This doesn’t trouble us much. We fail to see anything so very “modern” about the rejection of apostolic authority, inasmuch as there were plenty of people who did that in the first century. The things which the apostles teach that came to them, not by study, neither through their own reasoning powers, but that “came to them through revelation of Jesus Christ” (Gal. 1: 22), are sometimes called “mysteries”, and it is in this sense that we use the word in the title of this article. The death and resurrection of Jesus are not mysteries in this sense, but things that lay in the realm of out- wardly observable facts and are proved in the same man- ner as other historical events. Their significance, how- ever, is a mystery, for without an inspired exposition it is safe to say that there could not have arisen such an inter- pretation of them as the Christian Church has held from the beginning—the interpretation that has made the cross, that emblem of death and shame, the symbol of salvation. The New Testament teaches us that Christ died for us in order that through His death we might obtain the for- giveness of sins and everlasting life. “The Son of Man came... . to give His life, aransom for many’”’. (Matthew 20: 28.) 144 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES “This is My body, which is given for you”’. (Luke 22: 19.) “This is My blood, which is shed... . for the remission of sins’. (Matthew 26: 28.) ‘He was delivered for our offences and was raised again for our justification”. (Rom. 5: 25.) “Whom God set forth to be a propitiation, through faith, in His blood .... that He Him- self might be just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus’. (Rom. 3: 25, 26.) ‘Who His ownself bare our sins, in His own body, on the tree”. (1 Peter 2: 24.) ‘‘He is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world’) (1 John'2* 2.) “Him who knew no sin He made to be sin on our behalf’’. (2 Corinthians 5: 21.) Such passages might be indefinitely multiplied, as every Bible reader knows. This is the great theme of the New Testament, outside the gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. St. Paul repudiates the idea that anything else is worth discussing in comparison with this. “For I de- termined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ and Him crucified’. (1 Cor. 2: 2). When he wishes to sum up in the briefest possible manner the essence of the gospel, as he and the other apostles preached it, he says: “I delivered unto you first of all that which also I received, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He hath been raised on the third day” (1 Cor. 15: 3). In the same chap- ter he says: “Tf Christ hath not been raised your faith is vain, ye are yet in your sins. Then also they that have fallen asleep in Christ have perished”. OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 145 Canon Westcott, in his great work, The Gospel of the Resurrection, calls particular attention to this verse, pointing out that the persons addressed were already re- pentant and believing Christians. The subjective attitude of repentance and faith avails nothing, without the great objective transaction of Good Friday and Easter. The teaching of the New Testament, then, is this, that the death of Jesus on the cross, which in its outward his- torical aspect is nothing more than a judicial murder, is in its inner aspect a supremely important transaction in the spiritual world. It is the taking upon Himself by the eternal Son of God of the responsibility which sinful men had incurred before the tribunal of a holy God. By bear- ing this responsibility He made it possible for a just God to forgive the sins of all who repent and believe without - losing his own self-respect as the moral ruler of the uni- verse. It is not that Christ’s death made God willing to forgive—He was more than willing all-the time. Neither is it that the cross makes men willing to be reconciled to God. However willing both parties might be, there re- mained yet an insuperable obstacle to be overcome, in the eternal fitness of things, by which sin and penalty are rivted together. This obstacle could not be overcome in any way but by Christ’s taking upon Himself the respon- sibility for-human sin. This doctrine of the atoning death is a mystery, and has always been received as such by the Christian church. It is inexcusable to say that the theologians have invented the doctrine of the atonement—the New Testament is full of it. It is scarcely more excusable to speak of it as a “Pauline” doctrine—it was held by the whole church. 146 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES Perhaps the most profoundly inexcusable thing to say is that it is the “view” or “opinion” of Paul and other apostles. It would have no value for us if that were so. We do not care a snap of our fingers for the opinions of St. Paul, or of any other man on such a point. This doctrine is so strange, in some respects so repellant, and yet, if true, of such transcendent majesty and glory, that it is not worthy of the least confidence so long as we regard it as originating in the reasonings of a human mind. Revela- tion, and revelation alone, can entitle it to our acceptance. OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 147 XXXV. THE OFFENSE OF THE CROSS. E HAVE called the doctrine of atonement through the death of Christ a strange thing, and so itis. To say that the judicial murder of some one nearly two thou- sand years ago opened the way to the forgiveness of sins committed today—what can be stranger than that? We have called it likewise a repellant doctrine. We might have used a stronger word and called it repulsive, for so it is to many people. “The idea”, they exclaim, “to imagine that a good and loving Heavenly Father should have to have some one killed before He can forgive! What a crude and savage conception of God! He is not a re- vengeful, blood-thirsty deity. He is like the father in the parable of the Prodigal Son, always on tip-toe to welcome the returning sinner. Away with the blood atonement! We can not abide it!” So it is now, so it was of old. ‘‘We preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling-block, and unto Gentiles foolishness; but unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God; because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men’. (1 Corinthians 1: 23, 24.) This doctrine of the crucified Christ, so offensive to the Jews and so foolish to the Gentiles of the first century, has lost none of its offensiveness to the spiritual counter- parts of the former, or of its absurdity to those of the lat- ter, in the twentieth century. Yet it abides among us, and is today the standard Christian doctrine, as it was then. 148 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES How do you account for such vitality in a doctrine appar- ently so offensive and so foolish? It is because, as St. Paul says: “The foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men”. Call it foolishness if you will, it is still wiser than any human philosophy. Call it absurd if you dare, but be honest enough to admit that this absurdity has done more for the moral regeneration of mankind than all other systems of philosophy and religion combined. It is undeniable that there is some element of great strength in the doctrine of the cross, or it would have lost its hold on men by this time. Wherein does it lie? It lies first in the evidence of the resurrection of Christ, whereby it becomes necessary to find some adequate reason for the whole transaction, then in the evidence whereby the apostles are accredited as organs of revelation, and finally in the way this doctrine satisfies the conscience. One of the profoundest, most permanenf, and most compelling convictions of the human soul is what we call the “moral consciousness”, the perception of right and wrong. Inseparable from this is the persuasion that he who does wrong will suffer for it. He “deserves” to suffer and somewhere, somehow, he will get his deserts. - This conviction is not the result of experience, for ex- perience appears to contradict it; and yet the conviction remains. Neither is it the result of systematic thinking, for it is quite as strong in races and individuals who have no philosophy as in those that do; indeed, systematic thinking, like experience, is more likely to weaken than to strengthen it. Yet how impressive are the universality and strength of this conviction! Mythology, poetry, phi- losophy and religion alike are full of it. It is the origin of the “Kharma” doctrine, the heart of Buddhism, as well OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 149 as of the atonement, the heart of Christianity. All the various conceptions of hell and judgment, advanced and crude, are built upon it. It underlies all criminal law, in all countries, whether in ancient or modern times. Wherever this conviction of the oughtness of penalty is strong and vivid among men, criminal law will be well enforced; where it grows dim, lawlessness will be ram- pant. The increase of crime among us is due in no small measure to the prevalence of the doctrine that criminal law is merely a means to safeguard life and property. It is that, of course, but if this is all it is, then it is no more than a scheme whereby the majority of the people in any community combine to secure their own comfort, as against a few who would disturb it. Law becomes then not upholding the right, but a move in a game played be- tween the “haves” and the “have nots”, in which numbers and organization are on the side of the “haves”, with skill and courage on the side of the “have nots”. There is no moral majesty about that! That isn’t the way criminal law came into existence, and in proportion as this concep- tion takes the place of the older idea of punishing crime because of its intrinsic ill desert, in that proportion the majesty of the law will be brought low and its power weakened among us. The oughtness of penalty is the vital breath of the law. In the Holy Scriptures, this moral necessity of penalty is based upon the character of God. Because God is God, therefore right is right, immutably, and therefore sin must and will be punished, inexorably. He is a just and holy God, and therefore He will by no means clear the guilty. This is not contrary to the doctrine of the love of God. Indeed, the more you emphasize the teaching that God is love, the more you are driven to see that if He punishes sin 150 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES at all then He does it under the pressure of a tremendous moral necessity. He is a loving God, and therefore He would not do it if He did not have to do it. Unless you are ready to say there is no penalty for sin, therefore, the more you take to heart the teaching that God is love, the more clearly you must see that there is an intrinsic and inexorable oughtness of penalty. Hence arises the problem how God can ever forgive sin; for if the sinner is forgiven, he is not punished, as the law demands that he shall be. It is no answer to this to say that the sinner has repented. What is there about re- pentance that cancels the oughtness of penalty? That rests not upon anything that took place after the commis- sion of the sin, like his continued impenitence, but upon the fact itself of his wrong-doing. The oughtness of pen- alty is intrinsic in the sin itself, since we live under a moral order. It is not added thereto by other circum- stances, and therefore no other circumstance, not even his repentance, can alter it. Was his repentance needed to calm down God’s resentment and make Him willing to forgive? Not atall. Being the God of Love, He was more than willing, even eager all the time, to stay His hand, but the compelling moral necessity of penalty inherent in His holy nature would not permit Him to do so. How, then, can repentance make any difference? Sin demands pun- ishment, absolutely, and that demand can not be ig- nored without wrenching the moral order from its base in the nature of an immutable and holy God. This is the problem of forgiveness, not inaptly styled by old Dr. Thomas Chalmers, “a problem fit for a God”. (We take this from The Fact of Christ, by F. Carnegie Simpson, which is the most satisfying discussion of the atonement we have seen.) This problem is one that earnest men in non-Christian countries perceive. Thor- OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 151 oughgoing Buddhists reject absolutely the notion that for- giveness is possible. Nothing in heaven or upon earth, they say, can stay the operation of “Kharma”, the dread law of retribution. A thoughtful Japanese, who had heard of forgiveness, but had not yet been instructed in the doc- trine of the atonement, wrote to a missionary: “Forgive- ness of sins seems too simple, almost trifling and un- moral”. He was right. Without the cross of Christ, for- giveness would be trifling with the moral order. If the problem was one fit for a God, the solution is one worthy of God. In the person of Jesus Christ, His only-begotten and eternal Son, God Himself became incar- nate, and took upon Himself the responsibility of the broken law; bearing our sins in His own body on the tree. “He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we. are healed’’. Thus the majesty of the law is maintained, the moral order is vindicated, and yet God is free to forgive, because Jesus Christ has become our surety. One question, how- ever remains, and that a serious one, which we shall dis- cuss in our next chapter. 152 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES XXXVI. THE MYSTERY OF THE MYSTIC UNION. OU SAY that Christ bore the penalty of sin, but how is it possible for a just God to accept a substitute? This is not what the law demands, that some one shall suf- fer. The soul that sinneth, IT shall die, not some other soul for it!” The answer to this objection lies in the “mystery”, that is, the revealed truth of the mystic union between Christ and the believer. They are no longer two, but one. They coalesce in such a manner that no judgment can be pro- nounced upon the one that does not include the other. Is the believer a sinner? Then Christ is also in some sense a sinner, not personally, but by virtue of this union. Has Christ satisfied the broken law? Then those united with Him have satisfied it, too. We speak of Christ as our substitute, and of the atonement as a vicarious atonement, and in a general sense this is true; but in a stricter sense what takes place is not substitution but union. fer us illustrate that by the case of a merchant who is about to go bankrupt: liabilities, one hundred thousand dollars; assets, nothing. If some great capitalist, like John D. Rockefeller, or Henry Ford, should come along and wish to help him, he might do it by paying his debts; but, after that, in what position is the poor man? He has no debts, but also he has nothing else! His rich friend might in addition to paying his debts, give him new capi- tal to start business again. That would be better, but if the cause of failure was his own business incapacity, he is likely to go bankrupt again. But now suppose that one of these men, not only great capitalists but splendid business OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH _ 153 men, as they are, should go into an unlimited partnership with the bankrupt on condition that the rich friend shall be manager of the firm, then what is the position? A cer- tain amount of capital is invested, but in addition to that, it being an unlimited liability firm, every cent the great capitalist has stands back of the business. The position of the new firm, which takes over all the obligations of the old one, is then as follows: “Liabilities, one hundred thousand dollars; assets and reserves, a hundred million!” With such a partnership, under such direction, is not every requirement met? Now, in one sense, we can say that his rich friend has paid the debts of the bankrupt. Certainly they are gone, so far as he is concerned. He is now a member of an entirely solvent firm and has no personal debts. Yet, in a stricter sense, there has been no payment by any one not truly responsible. So it is between Christ and the believer. There is a new firm, “CHRIST AND SINNER’, and the members of this firm stand before the judgment seat of God, not as two separate individuals, but as one firm, with Jesus Christ as the responsible head. Hence God has no choice but to lay upon Him the iniquity of the sinner whom He has taken into union with Himself. He has taken upon Him- self the responsibility, and He must discharge it. Does not this relieve the difficulty felt in the matter of substitution of the one for the other? “Not very much”, you say, “for who ever heard of such a partnership in moral issues? Financial illustrations carry very little weight when the thing under discussion is not financial but moral. Guilt is quite another thing from business debts”. Quite so. Our illustration does not cover the whole case, we know that; but it does cover this point, that where 154 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES union takes place, we have the effect of substitution with- out an irresponsible putting of one party in the place of another. There are various sorts of union, and all of them are necessary to illustrate various phases of the mystic union between Christ and the believer, which is the most mysterious of them all. The illustration of grafting, as employed_in. gardening, is moré like the.union_in_ question, in that it is in the sphere of a communicated life-force. Here is a twig cut off from the tree on which it originally grew. It will wither and die unless another life is substituted for _its own, which is rapidly passing away. So the gardener grafts it upon another stem, and lo, it grows into organic oneness with it, so that it-has new life for the old which it lost. The effect of substitution has been obtained by a vital process, for the life of the tree was not carried over me- chanically, but flowed into the twig by a living union between it and the tree. So the believer is said to~be engrafted into Christ by true faith. There is also the union of true marriage, used as an illustration of the mystic union by the Apostle Paul. A man and a woman at first live their two lives as entirely distinct people. The man is not responsible for the woman. If he does anything for her it is by way of voluntary kind- ness; but if he receives her into relation with himself as his wife, then the situation is altered. There has been a union, and now he is in many very important respects re- sponsible. His marriage itself is his voluntary act, but if because of his love to her he enters into this union, after that, he is properly held to be responsible for her in cer- tain things. Something like these various kinds of union, yet deeper and more mysterious far than any of them, is the mystic OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 155» union of which we speak, which underlies the atonement. We cannot understand it perfectly, but this at least we can clearly see, that if there is a union between Christ and the believer of such a nature that in the sight of God and His holy law they are no longer two, but one, then all objec- tion based on mere substitution falls away. That there really is such a union is taught in passages like the following: “T have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me’. (Gala- tians 2: 20.) “The two shall become one flesh. This mys- tery is great, but I speak in regard of Christ and of the church”. (Ephesians 5: 31, 32.) “Know ye not that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of an harlot?” (1 Corinthians 6: 15.) This mystic union with Christ covers the believer’s sin, for which Christ paid the penalty on the cross, but it goes much further than that; it covers also everything else that the believer has, is, or will be, to all eternity. For Christ not only died, He also rose, and is not again subject to death. The union, therefore, which makes the death of Christ an atonement for my sin joins me also indissolubly to His risen life. “Tf we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, we shall be also in the like- ness of His resurrection”. (Romans 6: 5.) “We thus judge, that one died for all, there- fore all died; and He died for all, that they that live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto Him who for their sakes died and rose again’’. (2 Corinthians 5:15.) This is a point many critics of the atonement forget, 156 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES and we fear that many Christians forget it, too. Some > people sing: “Jesus Paid it All”, and then undertake to go and live their own lives according to their own notions. It can’t be done. Your union with Christ by faith does not cover your guilt for purposes of atonement unless it covers YOU, with all you are and have, for all purposes whatsoever. It is an unlimited lability partnership, on your side as well as on His. Happily, this mystic union not only imposes upon us new obligations, it provides us with new strength to meet them. It is a vital relation, that is, one in which a new power and principle of moral life flows from Christ into us. The man united to Christ by true faith does not re- main the same. There is not only an alteration in his status before the law; there is also a transformation in his inmost being, whereby he becomes like Christ. Not all at once, to be sure, but most certainly. Whatever faults or failures there may still be in him, for a time, Christ is bound eventually to become dominant in his life. If that does not take place it is a sure sign that he is not a Chris- tian at all. “If any man have not the spirit of Christ, he is none of His”. How incomprehensible all this must seem to some of our readers, to all who have not themselves experienced conversion! We cannot explain it very clearly. We ac- cept it on apostolic authority to begin with, but we can also say that experience confirms it. Nothing but a real reconciliation with God will explain the phenomenon that the sense of guilt passes away after conversion, while at the same time the conscience grows more sensitive. Noth- ing but a real and vital union with Christ will account for the transformation constantly witnessed in the lives of men and women who yield themselves to Him. OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 157 XXXVITI. THE MYSTERY OF SAVING FAITH. “What must I do to be saved?” “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved’’. ERE WE HAVE the most important question in the world, and the answer to it. We must do something to be saved, that’s sure. We know in our own hearts that the Bible is right when it says we are sinful men, and therefore lost. To be lost we need do nothing at all: we are lost already, and shall certainly be lost forever if we meet God in this way. Something must be done, but what? “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved”. Isthat all? Yes, absolutely all. There is nothing else to it. What is it to believe on the Lord Jesus? It is to trust Him, to intrust yourself to Him for salvation. You can not save yourself, but He can save you, and He will do it, if you will let Him do it. He will save you from the power and defilement of sin in this life, and from the wrath of God in the life that is to come. This is the mystery of salvation by faith. It is a “mys- tery”, that is to say, a truth that comes to us through ac- credited organs of revelation, Jesus Christ and His apostles. It could not come to us in any other way. The question is how a sinful man’s relation to a holy God may be set right. On that point reasoning or guesswork on man’s part is worth nothing. We must know what God thinks about it, and this we can not know without a reve- lation. 158 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES Back of this offer of salvation to every one that be- lieves stands the great work of Christ, wrought in His incarnation, His suffering, His resurrection, and His con- tinued life in glory. All this was required to make such an offer possible. This great transaction has been accom- plished, once for all, and the question now is, how you and I are to get into touch with it. This is what faith does. It makes available for the individual the work of Jesus Christ upon the cross. We are not to think that since we are saved by faith, therefore faith is something meritorious, an act whereby — we, in some sense, earn the right of salvation. Oh dear, no! Faith is like the act of the beggar in stretching out his hand to receive my gift. He does not earn anything by that, not a cent; it is merely the acceptance of a free, un- earned alms. Faith is like the touch of the trolley upon the live wire than runs above the track. There is no power in the touch to run the car, but by reason of the touch power flows into the machinery. So there is no power in faith to save; the power is in Christ and His atoning work, but we cannot receive it without the touch of faith. Saving faith is not the same as believing the Bible, or the creeds, or the doctrine of the deity of Jesus Christ, or even the same as believing that Christ on the cross has atoned for our sins, or believing any other doctrine what- soever. Belief in right doctrine is important, exceedingly important, but it is not saving faith. You may believe every word of the Bible from cover to cover, and every article in the creed; you may be the most orthodox per- son that ever lived; and yet, with all your orthodoxy, you may go to the devil, whose orthodoxy, at least in one point, is guaranteed by the highest authority. OF- THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 159 “Thou believest that there is one God: thou doest well; the devils also believe, and tremble’’. (James 2:19.) Faith in Christ is to trust Him, to intrust yourself to Him, as a man intrusts his money to a bank, or himself to asurgeon. A man has ten thousand dollars in cash, and realizes that it is not safe to have that much ready money on his person, or in the house. He inquires about banks, and is satisfied that a certain bank is sound. He believes, without a doubt, that money deposited in that bank is safe. What now? Is his money safe? Nota bit of it. All his confidence that this bank is trustworthy has not the slight- est effect upon the safety of his cash. He heartily believes that the bank is trustworthy, but he has not yet trusted it. Do you see the difference? He trusts the bank only when he entrusts his money to it, and then only has he any claim upon the bank. To do that, he must let the money go out of his own hands. He must perform an act of trust, in order to secure the safety that he can not secure by his own power. So it is between us and Christ. To believe that He is the divine Redeemer, that He came into the world to save men, that He died for our sins upon the cross, and rose again from the dead—all that is simply like believing a certain bank to be trustworthy. It is good so far as it goes, but it is not yet saving faith, because it does not involve an act of trust, or a letting go of trust in your- self. If all that is present with me, and nothing more, then I have believed something about Jesus, but I have not yet believed on Jesus. The same thing may be illustrated by the relation be- tween a patient and the doctor. I may believe ever so strongly that Dr. Blank is a fine surgeon; if I have appen- 160 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES dicitis this will not save me. At most it will only incline me to put myself promptly into his hands for an operation. Only if I thus entrust myself to him do I get the benefit of his skill. Such is the relation between doctrinal faith and saving faith. The former is an intellectual process ex- ceedingly useful as a preparation for the latter, but in itself entirely without effect to the saving of the soul. Saving faith is not an intellectual process at all, but an act of the will,whereby a person lets go of himself and puts himself into the hands of Jesus Christ for salvation. It is as definite an act as that of the bride at the altar, who is asked: “Dost thou take this man to be thy wedded hus- band?” and replies: “I do”. So the spiritual marriage that unites the soul to Jesus Christ is accomplished when God says: “Dost thou take Jesus Christ to be thy Savior?” and I reply with all my heart: “I do”. But in order to be saved, is it not necessary to be bap- tized, to make confession of faith, to join the church, to partake of the Holy Communion, to pray, to read the Bible, to abstain from various kinds of sin, and other things like that?” No. These are not conditions of sal-’ vation. These things mark the Christian. He does them after he is saved, because he is saved, but not in order to be saved. They have nothing to do with that. One thing, and one only, is necessary to: salvation: “‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved’’. “But at least, in addition to faith, it requires repen- tance, does it not?” Of course, faith in Christ implies sorrow for sin and a turning away from it, just as calling in a doctor involves a desire to get well, and an admission that you are sick. Christ presents Himself for your ac- ceptance as the physician of your soul, and in no other OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 161 capacity. If you trust Him, it is for salvation from sin that you entrust yourself to Him. This is no addition to faith, it is involved in faith. We have tried to make clear what faith is. The ques- tion is left with every reader, “Are you believing on Jesus Christ? If not, why not?’ If you, do not accept Him by faith, then, so far as you are concerned, He might as well never have come down from heaven and died upon the cross. Then Easter Day means no joy to you; you are yet in your sins. Why not believe on Him now? “Behold, now is the accepted time; behold now is the day of salvation’. 162 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES XXXVI. THE LORDSHIP OF JESUS. FTER JESUS CHRIST has saved a man He owns him. This fact was repeatedly emphasized by Christ and His apostles. He Himself claimed supreme authority over His followers in a way no other teacher has ever dared to do. “He that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he that loveth son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me’”’. (Matthew 10: 37.) “Why call ye Me Lord, Lord, and do not the things that I say’? (Luke 6: 46.) “Ye are My friends, if ye do the things that I command you”. (John 15:14.) “Without Me ye can do nothing’’. (John 15:5.) “Ye call Me teacher, and Lord, and ye say well, for soI am”. (John 13:13.) The apostles put the same thought forward on every opportunity. St. Paul, once the proud Pharisee, repeat- edly begins his epistles by calling himself the “servant”, more properly the“bondservant”,the slave, of Jesus Christ. James, who was the brother of Jesus after the flesh, makes no point of that relation, but likewise claims the title of “slave” to his brother. So does St. Peter in his Second Epistle. What is involved in this title is plainly, not to say bluntly, told the Corinthians: OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 163 “Ye are not your own, for ye were bought with a price’. (1 Corinthians 6:19.) “He that is called, being free, is Christ’s bond- servant. Ye were bought with a price’’. (1 Cor- inthians 7: 23.) To the elders of Ephesus St. Paul said: “Feed the church of the Lord, which He pur- chased with His own blood’. (Acts 20: 28.) This is one of the most characteristic things about the Christian religion; another point in which it differs from all other systems of religion and philosophy as far as the east is from the west. The founders of other systems are teachers, Jesus is Teacher and Lord. Great teachers, like Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, or Plato, were content to expound the principles of their philosophy: they never assumed the slightest relation of lordship—not to say ownership—over those who became their disciples. Mo- hammed, to be sure, claimed the obedience of all the faithful during his life, but even he relaxed his claims at death. Jesus Christ asserts His absolute ownership of all who call themselves Christians to the end of time. Every one who looks to Him for salvation must reckon with this fact—it is to be feared that many Christians forget it. Ownership of the person involves ownership of prop- erty. A slave cannot possess property. As he belongs to his master, so does everything he earns or appears to pos- sess. The property of every Christian belongs to Jesus Christ without reserve, not one-tenth of it, but all of it. He is trustee for it and is under obligation to use it to the best of his knowledge and ability, as Christ would 164 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES have him use it. The use of a suitable portion of his in- come for the support of himself and his family is legiti- mate, because that is a duty assigned him by his Lord. This is not diverting any portion of it from the Lord’s use. So with other calls made necessary by the state of society, or one’s position in it. Judgment as to details lies with the individual Christian, who may obtain the guidance of the Lord through prayer; but the fundamental principle is the absolute ownership of the redeemed man by the Redeemer. As with property, so with other things, great and small. For the Christian the choice of a husband or wife, of a profession, or residence in this city or in that, the books, he reads, the amusements he patronizes, the food he eats, the beverage he drinks, the political principles he espouses. the manner in which he conducts his business, the wages he pays his employees, the service he renders his em- ployer, the friends with whom he associates, the education and training of his children, and anything else in the realm of personal conduct—everything is to be decided with the thought uppermost in his mind that he belongs to Christ. The question for him is not, as it is sometimes put: “What would Jesus do?” but, “What would Jesus have me do?” The reply to that question, when discov- ered to the satisfaction of the Christian, should be decisive as to his conduct. There are Christians who live in this way—not so many as there should be—and to them be- longs the fulness of blessing in the Christian life. It is not easy to accept this Lordship of Jesus in one’s life. “No man can say: ‘Jesus is Lord’, but by the Holy OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 165 Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:3). But where it is accepted, it brings the assurance that we shall never be separated from Him. He has said: “Where I am ye shall be also”, and through His holy apostle Paul He has assured us that: “Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor prin- cipalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord’. (Romans 8: 38.) 166 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES XXXIX. THE MYSTERY OF THE NEW BIRTH. N THESE DISCUSSIONS we have, on the one hand, spoken of what Christ has done for us, in coming into the world and dying for our sins; and, on the other hand, of what we ourselves do, in accepting Him by faith. There is still a third element in Christian experience which must not be overlooked, and that is what God does in us. Be- coming a Christian has not only its active side, in which, by an act of the will, we entrust ourselves to the Saviour, but also its passive side, in which we are wrought upon by God, to enable and incline us to that faith. As verbs may be conjugated not only in the Active Voice, but also in the Passive Voice, so there is what we may call the Passive Voice in Christian experience. Most distinctly is this aspect of the matter brought to our attention by the words of our Lord to Nicodemus: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a man be born again, he can not see the kingdom of heaven”. Nicodemus was not a careless, irreligious man, or a man of openly wicked life. He was a Pharisee, a ruler of the Jews, and for the most part such men were deeply religious, earnest, decent men, as human standards go. We have no cause to think otherwise of Nicodemus. Yet Christ says to him that he must be born again. That is to say: “Nicodemus, before you can even see the kingdom of heaven, that is, before you can get any true conception of it, a great change must take place in you. You are not fit, as you are at present, either to understand it or to have any part in it.” Many other passages in the New Testament emphasize this same teaching, that men by nature are not fit for the OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 167 kingdom of heaven, that before they can come into fel- lowship with God there must come a fundamental change in them; and it is important to notice that the illustrations used are those in which the one to be altered is passive, not active. St. Paul says: “You hath he quickened (raised from the dead) who were dead in trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1). Surely nothing is so passive as a dead man. Whatever change takes place in him to restore him to life, must come from outside. St. John uses the same figure when he says: “By this we know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren” (I John 3:13). St. Peter uses the imagery of the Master when he says: “He hath begotten us again (caused us to be born again) unto a living hope”. I Peter | Ware 4 ie What is it to be born again? Is it to live a good life? By no means. To live a good life is to walk in the ways of God, but a child must be born before it can walk. Is it faith? No, faith is like the act of the baby, as it raises its tiny arms and clasps them in loving trust about the mother’s neck, but it must first be born, before it can do that. Is it repentance? Not that, either. Repentance is like the baby’s cry, but it must be born and be a living child before it can so much as cry. Being born again is so closely associated with these things that it can not be separated from them in fact, and yet in its essential nature it is different; it is passive, while these things are active. It is the origin of life, and these things are manifestations of it. Itis what God does in us and for us, a great creative act by which He gives life to a dead soul, a divine be- getting, whereby the person so born again becomes a child of God. Without such a change, no amount of educating, teach- ing, or reforming will bring a man to God. Before this 168 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES change takes place, he is what St. Paul calls a “natural man’, and it is true that “the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” The necessity and pos- sibility of such a change as this are among the things “spiritually discerned”, and therefore they are promptly denied by most men. Nicodemus said at once: “How can a man be born again when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” Nico- demus was accustomed to the use of symbolic language, and can not so grossly have misunderstood Jesus as to have meant this literally. He, too, was speaking sym- bolically, and meant to say: “How can there be such a change in a man when he is full grown, after his habits of thought are fixed and his character formed?’ Almost every professor of psychology today would agree with Nicodemus in denying the possibility of such a change. To this Jesus replied that the process was incompre- hensible but the fact certain. ‘Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it will, and thou hearest the voice thereof, but knowest not whence it cometh or whither it goeth. So is every one that is born of the Spirit”. In other words, you can not tell when, where, or how the new birth comes into the soul, but if it has happened to you, you can tell quite plainly that you are born again; and in the lives of certain other people you can see things that give you very good reason for thinking the same of them. Experience sides with Jesus in this matter, as against Nicodemus and the professor of psychology. The number of people in whom such a change has clearly, strikingly, and sometimes suddenly appeared, often in mature years, is so great that a dispassionate examination of the facts will leave no doubt. Harold Begbie’s book: ““Twice-born OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 169 Men”, is well known, and very much worth reading in this connection. Any experienced minister or missionary can add cases that have come within his own observation. Often, in such cases, habits of many years standing, which the person concerned had vainly attempted to conquer in his own strength, suddenly lose their hold on the man; his tastes undergo a complete alteration, and other outward signs occur to demonstrate the reality of the inward change. How can a man tell whether or not he is born again? By many proofs, of which we can name only a few. To begin with, the soul knows its own states. Just as you know within yourself quite clearly whether you love your father or mother, your brother or sister, so you know whether you love the Lord Jesus Christ and have given yourself to Him. “Know ye not as to your own selves, that Jesus Christ is in you?” (II Cor. 13:5). If you do know that you love and trust Him, then you know that God has renewed your heart, for Jesus said: “No man can come unto me, except the Father that sent me draw him.” If you have come to Him, therefore, you know that it is God who has moved you to do so. Further, as every mental state results in appropriate conduct, so it is here. Various things are laid down in the Bible as characteristics of the children of God. If a man thinks that he loves the Lord, and yet these things are not characteristics of his life, then he is deceiving him- self. Those who are born again love other Christians, and delight in their company. “By this we know that we have passed from death unto life, if we love the brethren”. (I John 3:14). They accept the teaching of the apostle: “We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he who is not of God heareth us not”. (I John 4:6). They do not continue in any sinful course of conduct, which 170 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES they know and recognize to be so. “Whosoever is be- gotten of God doeth no sin, because his seed abideth in him; and he can not sin, because he is begotten of God”. This does not mean, of course, that no occasional sins are found in him, sins of omission, ignorance, sudden pas- sion, and the like; but that he will not deliberately con- tinue in any known sin. Finally, he that is born again has the fruits of the Spirit: “love, joy, peace, long-suffering, — kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control”. (Galatians 5: 22). We do not intend to say that all of these things are equally present in all those who have experienced the new birth, or completely and perfectly present in any; but we do assert that, to a greater or less degree, they must cer- tainly follow such a change. Where present in the heart of any one, and related to faith in Jesus Christ, they furnish a well grounded assurance that he isi born again. It may be that the new birth took place in early child- hood, gradually becoming manifest, under the gracious influences of a Christian home; it may be that it took place suddenly, when the hand of God arrested the man in a course of open wickedness; it matters not when, where, or how the wind began to blow, we know that it blows. So it matters not whether we can trace the time and circumstances of God’s gracious work in us; if only we are assured that we are His, then we know that we are born again. If we are born again, we are children of God; “and if children, then heirs, heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ”. (Romans 8:17). OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 171 XL. THE MYSTERY OF DIVINE SELECTION. HE CONSCIOUSNESS of having been personally se- lected by God to know and love Him finds frequent expression in the apostolic literature. This was one of the distinctive phenomena of early Christianity, and has been since that time, we may add, characteristic of all periods of deep religious life. We read such things as this: “Knowing, brethren, beloved of God, your election”. (I Thess. 1:4). “Peter, an apostle of Christ, to the elect . . . . according to the foreknowledge of God the Father”. (I Peter 1:1). “Even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world”. (Ephesians 1: 4). This same feeling of having been chosen from the mass of mankind to be particularly favored with the love and kindness of God, is common among men converted from heathenism. Many a time we have heard such men —entirely without any instruction in the doctrine of elec- tion — pour out their hearts to God in some such way as this: “O God, we thank thee that we have been chosen from among our country-men to be among the first to know and love thee”. It is the Christian consciousness, not any form of dogmatic thinking, that speaks in such a way. This Christian consciousness of having been the ob- ject of personal and selective love, is the origin of such expressions as we have quoted from the New Testament. So far from being primarily a speculative or philosophical doctrine, it comes red hot from the heart of the saved sinner. Love is the life of election, and it is in this light that it must always be studied. What is known theologi- 172 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES cally as the “doctrine of election”, is merely the human attempt to apprehend and state this fact of both consci- ousness and revelation. If discussed without the warm consciousness of God’s seeking and drawing love that lies at the heart of it, it is apt to become a mere lifeless dogma. The following hymn is a beautiful statement of this feeling that wells up so naturally and sweetly in the heart of a child of God. It is No. 212 in the hymnal, entitled: “Hymns for the Living Age’, published by the “Century Company”, New York. I sought the Lord, and afterwards I knew He moved my soul to seek Him, seeking me. It was not I that found, O Saviour true, Nay, I was found of Thee. Thou didst reach out thy hand and mine enfold, I walked, and sank not, on the storm-vexed sea. ’Twas not so much that I on Thee took hold, As Thou, dear Lord, on me. I seek, I walk, I love, but oh the whole Of love is but my answer, Lord, to Thee. For Thou was long beforehand with my soul, Always, Thou lovedst me. This divine selection is but one aspect of the fact that God deals with men, not in the mass, but individually. The great preacher, Horace Bushnell, somewhere says that omniscience excludes generalizations, these being but a method whereby we cover our ignorance. For in- stance, because we can not know any and every tree in the world by itself, therefore we form the general notion, “a tree’, without regard to any particular tree, and use that word, made necessary by the limitations of our knowledge. But God is not so. He knows every tree as well as any other tree, and has no need of generalizations. So God deals also with each man by himself, just as he OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 173 is, separately and apart from all others, without any occa- sion to lump him with a billion others in a vague mass of human life. We can scarcely be said to have made a start in the knowledge of God until we have shifted our thoughts of Him from the plural to the singular, and have learned to say from the heart: “God loves me, He cares for me, He leads me, He has saved me’”’. This selective and individual care of God is not denied by any Christian, so far as the ordinary affairs of life are concerned. We all believe that God selects one man to be rich, another to be poor, one to be well, another to be sick, according to His own good pleasure, and that He thus presides over our individual destinies. This is “election according to the fore-knowledge of God”, in earthly things. Shall there then be no such individual care in heavenly things? If there is “natural selection”, shall there be no “divine selection’? In all this, God, as is so well said by the Canons of Dort, “does not treat men as senseless stones and blocks, nor takes away the will and its properties, nor does vio- lence thereto, but spiritually quickens, heals, corrects, and at the same time sweetly and powerfully bends it”. Yet, is it not one of the essential qualities of the will to be free? How can it then be bent by the will of another, without losing its own essential quality? This seems a difficult question, from the standpoint of cold logic, but the answer is an open secret to every true lover. A young man falls in love with a maiden, and proceeds to make love to her. At first she cares little for him, but he con- tinues to woo her ardently, until there comes a change. Gradually an answering love springs up in her heart. His love has kindled hers, and presently she says: “He loved me so much that I could not help loving him too”. What is this? She could not help it? Is not the heart free in loving? If love is forced, can you call it love? Cer- 174 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES tainly her love was her own voluntary act; yet she was sincere also when she said she could not help it, for she was conscious that her will had been “sweetly and power- fully bent’, by his love. Now it lies in the essence of such personal love that it is selective. The one beloved feels herself singled out to receive this love. So God chooses men to love Him, and makes love to them until He wins them; but in all of this He acts in accordance with the laws of love, as certainly as He governs natural things according to the laws of physics and chemistry. Hence it is inevitable that He should arouse in the heart this same consciousness of having been selected, or singled out, for this is inseparable from the consciousness of being the object of personal af- fection. Hence arises the doctrine of election. Now, to be sure, no sooner do we try to think this matter through from the intellectual side than we find ourselves in great difficulty. If we seek to relate this consciousness of divine selection to the other things we know about God and ourselves, a host of unanswerable questions confront us.. “If God chooses some, why not all? Does God not love all men? Why does He choose one, and not another? If God must first draw men, be- fore they can come to Christ, then are not some men free from blame in rejecting Christ, seeing God has not drawn them”? It would be easy to lose our way among such problems. There is much that we do not know, but this need not sur- prise us. In every department of thought, our ignorance is always much greater than our knowledge, yet the im- portant thing to remember is, that we must live by our knowledge, not by our ignorance. In this matter of di- vine selection, we know, from the Christian conscious- ness on the one hand, and from the revelation of God on the other, that there is a personal, selective love of God OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 175 for us that precedes our love for Him; and that there is a passive side to Christian experience, out of which springs the active side, as a flower from the soil in which it is rooted. We know also that we are free and responsible beings, rejecting Christ, if we reject Him, because we have no love for holiness; and accepting Him, if we accept Him, of our own free will, without being in any way forced to do so. We know these latter facts from the same sources as the former, namely, from our own consciences and from the word of God. Let us then live by what we know, and be content to acknowledge our ignorance of that which God has not revealed to us. It is equally vain and foolish, on the one hand, to deny election because we can not harmonize it with the teaching that God loves all men, and, on the other, to reject the love of God for all be- cause we can not make it agree with election. Both are revealed, precious, and necessary truths. 176 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES XLI. THE MYSTERY OF THE HOLY TRINITY. HE DOCTRINE of the Holy Trinity has been taught & and held by the Christian church from very early times, being usually expressed in the formula that God is one in essence but subsists in three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This is one of the chief mysteries, both as being derived from revelation and as being most difficult of comprehension. No one is able fully to explain even the terms used, for what do we mean by “essence” and “person”, as applied to the unity and dis- tinction we intend to assert in the divine being? We surely do not mean that there are three entirely separate divine beings, for then we should have three Gods: and we do not mean merely three modes of manifestation, for we think of such relations existing between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as could not be conceived to exist between forms or manifestations of the same thing. We hold the doctrine of the Trinity as a revealed mys- tery, and yet neither the term itself nor any statement of the doctrine, as such, is to be found in the Holy Scriptures. To be sure, in the ordinary English Bible occurs the fol- lowing text: “For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one”. (I John 5:7). The best manu- scripts, however, do not contain these words, and they are therefore rightly omitted by the Revised Version. The doctrine of the Trinity, therefore, as such, is not a revealed doctrine, but the facts that are therein con- fessed are revealed facts. The doctrine, as formulated, is an induction made by the early church from these facts. OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 177 It was accepted at the beginning, and is still accepted, as all inductions are, because this statement, imperfect as it is, is better in accordance with the known facts than any other which we can frame. What are these facts? First, that there is but one God, the almighty creator of heaven and earth, and of all things therein, both visible and invisible. i Second, that Jesus Christ is God manifest in the flesh. He is called God, He assumes the position and prerog- atives of God, the works and nature of God are attributed to Him, and in every way His deity is emphasized in the New Testament writings. Third, that while Jesus Christ is God, He also speaks of himself as subordinate to the Father, as one with Him and yet distinct from Him, as sent by Him and returning to Him. Jesus prayed to the Father, using the words “T” and “Thou”. This is the distinction of persons. Fourth, that the Holy Spirit also is spoken of as God. In Acts 5:3 Peter tells Ananias that he has lied to the Holy Spirit, and immediately thereafter, that he has lied to God. Similarly, in many places, the Holy Spirit is identified with God, in His nature, work, and authority. Fifth, that the Holy Spirit is clearly distinguished from the other persons in the Trinity, as being sent by them, poured out by them, interceding with them, etc. The early church, having these facts before it, coming from undoubted historical evidence and accredited or- gans of revelation, sought a form of words that would combine them into the clearest possible conception of the divine nature. The formula of the Holy Trinity is the result. God is confessed to be one in essence and three in persons. Much ridicule has been heaped upon this doctrine, as teaching that one is equal to three, but this is an inex- 178 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES cusable misrepresentation. If the teaching were that God is one in a certain sense, and at the same time three in the same sense, it would truly be absurd, for one is not equal to three. The teaching is that God is one in a cer- tain sense, and three in another sense. There is no ab- surdity about that, even if we are not able to state clearly in what sense He is one, and in what sense three. That a thing may be one in one sense, and at the same time be three in another sense, is easily illustrated by the case of steam, water, and ice. Are these three, or one? Clearly they are different things, each having qualities that do not belong to the others, but it is also clear that, in an- other sense, they are one and the same thing. This is not offered as an illustration of the Holy Trinity, but merely of the fact that it is not absurd or contradictory to speak of a thing or a being as both three and one at the same time, three in one sense and one in another sense. Illustrations of such a thing as the Trinity carry us but a little way, yet they are not wholly useless. The best is probably that of the sun, with its light and heat. It is evident that there is a distinction between these three. The sun itself sends out light and heat, and is other than the things it sends out. The rays of light leave the sun and travel to this earth, carrying heat with them. Presently the sun sets, the rays of light are seen no more, but the heat remains, and is the source of all life. Yet, in another view of the case, the heat, the light, and the body of the sun combine to make the sun as we knowit. They inhere in the sun, and without them the sun would not be the sun at all. The three, while distinct, together form one luminary. If, now, we think of the body of the sun as the Father, of the light sent out by it and revealing it to us, as the Son, and of the life-giving power of warmth which re- mains behind and pervades all things, although itself in- OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 179 visible, as the Holy Spirit, we get perhaps the best illustra- tion that is possible of the unity and distinction in the Holy Trinity. That the formulation of the doctrine, in the historic creeds, is imperfect and unsatisfactory, may be frankly admitted.. That formulation is a human work, and is open to criticism. We speak of the Son as co-eternal with the Father, and yet as begotten by Him. Is this not con- tradictory? If one is begotten by another, does it not seem to follow that the one who begets exists before the one who is begotten by him? Evidently, when using the terms “Father”, “Son”, and “Begotten” in this manner, we are not using them in exactly the ordinary meaning. We are doing the best we can, and using the human expressions that come nearest to a correct statement of the relations that subsist between the divine persons; but they are hu- man words, and the thing to be defined is the divine being, so that we need not be surprised if the human words prove inadequate. If any one can find better expressions, let him do so; if only he remains true to the facts as given in the gospel. That is the trouble with all such attempts hitherto. _ Arianism in the early church, Socinianism in the times of the Reformation, and Russellism today, deny the doctrine of the Trinity, but at the cost of denying the deity of Christ and the deity and personality of the Holy Spirit. In other words, they are not true to the known facts, as found in the New Testament. It is neither scientific nor Christian to deny or ignore the essential facts because we have not succeeded in finding a perfect formula to express them. It is false to say that the doctrine of the Holy Trinity originated in philosophical or metaphysical specu- lation. It had its origin in experience, just as all the other great doctrines of the Christian religion did. It took its 180 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES rise from certain facts, and is an attempt to understand the facts, just as the formulas of science are an attempt to state the meaning of observed facts. This doctrine of the Holy Trinity is not only one of the great standard doctrines of the Christian religion, it is essential to religious life, in a broad sense; although not, perhaps, essential to the religious life of every individual. It seems to many people hopelessly abstruse and very re- mote from any practical interest, and yet it is a fact that religious systems without it are lifeless. Judaism, Moham- medanism, and Unitarianism are examples of what re- ligion becomes when governed by the idea of the unity of God without His trinity. We can not let go of this doctrine without rejecting the New Testament as a divine revela- tion, and without losing our faith in a divine Saviour who atoned for our sins, and in a divine indwelling Spirit who renews and sanctifies us. If we let go these things, we have lost the very heart of the gospel. OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 181 XLII. THE MYSTERY OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH NE OF THE MYSTERIES revealed to us in the New Testament is that the Lord Jesus was born of a virgin, by the operation of the Holy Spirit. The church confesses this truth in the words of the Apostles’ Creed: “I believe in Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary”. This has been from the beginning one of the standard doctrines of the Christian religion, and has been singu- larly free from contradiction or doubt within the church, until within the last fifty years. So much has been said about it recently that it seems desirable to include it in the number of subjects treated in this volume. We have classed it among the “mysteries”, that is, the things we believe, not on ordinary, historical evidence, but on apostolic authority. It is part of the apostolic testi- mony to our Lord, but differs from the ordinary events of His life in that it did not lie within the range of their own personal knowledge. They profess, themselves, to have it by revelation, St. Matthew, through the dream of Joseph, and St. Luke, through the angelic announcement to Mary. It was from the first accepted by the church, and is ac- cepted by us, for two reasons, first, because of our confi- dence in the apostolic witness, and second, because such a manner of birth agrees, far better than any other of which we can think, with the facts of Christ’s personality, char- acter, and work. It is important to remember that the virgin birth has never been accepted except by Christians, and we do not pretend that we can adduce any proof that will be con- 182 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES vincing to others. Christians believe in God, as able to work miracles, and as having worked the supreme mir- acle in the resurrection of Christ. They believe that Jesus was the Christ, the promised Saviour of the world, sent by the Father into the world for our redemption. They believe, also, that the apostles were truthful and com- petent witnesses, and were appointed by Christ to be the official teachers of the church. People who do not be-— lieve as much as this can not be called “Christians”, in the historical meaning of that term, whatever they may call themselves. Now then, if people do believe these things, where lies the difficulty in believing the virgin birth? Is there, perchance, a doubt, upon the basis of the an- cient manuscripts, as to whether this story belongs in the Bible? Not at all. All extant manuscripts have it exactly as it is in our English Bibles. To be sure, one manuscript says, in Matthew 1:16, “Joseph begat Jesus”, but even this manuscript has the rest of the story, both in Matthew and in Luke, in the ordinary form, so that it makes little or no difference. | Did the ancient church seem ignorant of this doctrine, so that we may suppose it to have been invented later? By no means. One of the very earliest of the church fathers was Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, who suffered martyrdom about 110 A.D. We have certain letters from him, in which the virgin birth is repeatedly men- tioned. The Apostles’ Creed embodies the faith of the early church, and in this creed the entire exalted concep- tion of the early church concerning Jesus Christ is ex- pressed in the phrase: “His only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary.” Nothing further was said to confess the faith of the church in His deity, because nothing further seemed required. OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 183 Where, then, lies the difficulty, that the peace and faith of the church should, in recent years, be so greatly disturbed on this issue? Has something new been dis- covered by science, which makes it harder for us than for our fathers to believe such a thing? Notso. Biology has made great progress, and the secrets of the origin of life are far better known today than ever before; but people in the first century knew quite as well as we that in the way of nature a virgin birth was impossible. It is just because they knew that so well that they acclaimed it as supremely credible and appropriate in the case of God incarnating Himself in human form. It is not that science has discovered any special thing which, unknown before, now makes belief in the virgin birth impossible; but because our scientific studies have created an attitude of mind, even among Christians, which seeks at every cost to eliminate any exception to the reign of natural law. However natural this attitude may be, it has no logical validity for any Christian, for, as already pointed out, a Christian must believe in an almighty God who has from time to time manifested Himself by acts of creative power, specifically in the resurrection of Christ. If one believes that, he has no logical standing ground for denying the possibility of the miraculous in the birth of Christ. If he does not believe that, we decline to discuss the virgin birth with him. Two reasons are commonly brought forward as casting doubt upon the credibility of the virgin birth; first, the alleged similarity of this story to stories found in other religions; second, the alleged silence of the New Testa- ment, outside Matthew and Luke, with regard to it. As to the first reason, when we ask what these stories are, we are referred to certain nature myths, and to various tales in ancient authors, smutty stories of gods who took 184 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES the form of men, or, sometimes, worse still, of beasts or serpents, and in this form has intercourse with human women, causing them to have children. How any one possessed of a litthe common sense can offer these tales as parallel to the story of the birth of Jesus, is difficult to understand. They are not virgin birth stories at all, for the supernatural element invariably consists in the alleged incarnation of the god, after which there is nothing but a natural process. Moreover, such stories do not concern historical persons, and there is no pretense that the infor- mation proceeds from contemporary documents, written by well known and responsible men. The Rev. L. M. Sweet, quoted by Canon Box, says: “After a laborious and occasionally wearisome study of the evidence offered and the analogies urged, we are con- vinced that heathenism knows nothing of virgin births.” We can not, of course, take the space here to go into this question in detail, but let us look for a moment at the case of Gautama, the founder of Buddhism. Dr. Wm. Ban- croft Hill says of this story that it is “the one most similar to that of Jesus’, therefore it ought to be a fair sample. Some months ago a former Grand Rapids pastor, explain- ing the reasons that led him to leave the ministry, said that the Buddhist could answer the Christian story of Christ’s birth by one of his own, equally entitled to be- lief, or words to that effect. Let us see. In the first place, the mother of Gautama was a mar- ried woman, always spoken of and referred to as such, in all Buddhist documents. How is there any possibility, then, of a “virgin birth’? Whatis meant is a supernatural birth, which is a different thing. As to that, the nearest approach to any such thing in the very early documents (themselves admittedly composed centuries after the time of Buddha) is a statement to the effect that his mother, OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 185 before his birth was “pure from sexuality”, but two learned editors, Edmunds and Anesaki, untroubled by any orthodox Christian sentiments, tell us in their com- ment on this passage that it has nothing to do with the conception of Buddha, but only with the period between conception and birth. (“Buddhist and Christian Scriptures Compared”, p. 174). This is a typical instance of the way such parallels evaporate when carefully examined. As to the alleged silence of the rest of the New Testa- ment, it is certainly true, and somewhat surprising, that the story is not re-told, or explicitly referred to, in any other place, except the well-known gospel stories. Yet, to argue from this that St. Paul and the other New Testament writ- ers did not know of this story, or did not believe it, is going much too far. It is wholly incredible, for instance, that St. John, when composing his gospel, was ignorant of it, for the gospels of Matthew and Luke are conceded to have been extant at the time, and there is reason to consider him as deliberately supplementing them. Yet St. John also is si- lent. After all, this silence can be duplicated in the preach- ing of any orthodox minister, from the beginning of Janu- ary to the middle of December each year, in spite of the fact that he firmly believes the virgin birth, and that it underlies his whole conception of Christ. He simply has no occasion to refer to it. Why may it not have been so with the apostles? If we are to believe, as some would have it, that St. Paul and the others were silent with reference to the virgin birth because they did not know of this doctrine, or did not be- lieve it, or kept it a profound secret, then we must believe that it was no part of the ordinary Christian faith until af- ter their time. Yet in the immediately sub-apostolic age,— that of Ignatius—it is spoken of as the corner-stone of the Christian faith. How is it possible that the church of that day, professing to take its doctrine from the apostles, gave 186 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES so prominent a place to something they did not teach? It seems utterly incredible, and certainly is far too large a structure to build merely upon their silence in their extant - writings—supposing them to be really silent. But are they? They constantly lay stress upon the fact that Jesus was the “Son of God”, “the only-begotten’’, etc. What did they mean by that? Let us turn to Luke 1: 35. There, in answer to Mary’s question, how she shall conceive without contact with a man, the angel says: “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee, wherefore also the holy thing which is begotten shall be called the Son of God’. This surely looks like a definition of the sense in which the ex- pression “Son of God”, was used in the apostolic church. If the phrase had that meaning at that time, then every pas- sage where the words “Son of God” occurs becomes a wit- ness to the faith of the apostles in the virgin birth. With- out going so far as to insist that this was certainly the case, may it not have been so? If it may be so, then it is not clear that there is any such apostolic silence as is insisted on; and the whole case built upon that alleged silence, weak enough at best, falls to the ground. To sum up the whole matter: the doctrine of the virgin birth has been from the beginning one of the great stand- ard doctrines of the Christian religion, intimately con- nected in the mind of the church, with his deity in fact, inseparable from it. Since that time, not a single thing has been discovered that casts any doubt upon it; science tells us nothing pertaining to the subject that was not well enough known, for all practical purposes, to the ancient Christians. There is not the remotest cause to reject it on the ground of the ancient manuscripts. The view of science and philosophy that Christians must accept, if they are to be Christians at all, justifies no objection to it. The alleged non-Christian parallels, and the alleged silence of the New OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 187 Testament (outside of Matthew and Luke) are alike found, when carefully examined, to be without validity as bearing upon the subject. In short, there remains no reason at all why earnest Christians should be troubled in mind, or should tolerate, within the Christian circle, any denial of this most precious and important doctrine. 188 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES XLII. THE MYSTERY OF THE EXPECTED RETURN. HAT the Lord Jesus Christ will return to this earth at some time in the future,personally and visibly, in the body, is one of the most prominent teachings of the New Testament. From the earliest ages until the present time this belief has been held and confessed by the church. It is in the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds, as well as in that of Athanasius. It is accordingly held by the Greek Catholic Church, the Roman Catholic Church, and by all Protestant churches that seek to be scriptural and evangelical. There is no doctrine more firmly established as part of the his- toric Christian faith. This expectation is intimately connected with the phys- ical resurrection and ascension of our Lord. If one does not believe that Christ rose again and ascended to heaven in the body, of course, he will not believe in the Second Advent, but if he does, he is prepared to join in expecting Him back. As St. Paul says: “Christ, being raised from the dead, dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him”. (Romans 6: 9.) That He will come again was announced to His disciples by angelic messengers immediately upon His departure from them. ‘“‘While they were looking steadfastly into heaven as He went, behold two men stood by them in white apparel, who also said: Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye looking up into heaven? This Jesus, who was received up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye beheld Him going up into heaven’. (Acts 1:11.) This announcement was no surprise to them, if they had remem- bered and understood what Jesus taught them on repeated occasions about His going away and coming again, espe- OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 189 cially in the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth chapters of the Gospel of Matthew. That they did take these promises to heart, is evident from many passages of the New Testa- ment. St. Peter took occasion to say to his hearers in one of his earliest discourses: “Repent ye, therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, that so there may come seasons of refreshing from the presence of the Lord, and that He may send the Christ who hath been appointed for you, even Jesus,whom the heaven must receive until the time of restitution of all things”. St. Paul, speaking to the Athenians, informs them that God “hath appointed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom He hath ordained”, showing that when Christ comes He is coming “to judge the living and the dead”. Not long after this address at Athens, St. Paul wrote the two epistles to the Thessalonians,the chief topic of which is the Lord’s return. In the first of these letters, it is given as one of the marks of the Christian to live in expectation of the Second Coming: for he reminds his readers that they had “turned from idols to serve a living and true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven, even Jesus”. The same expectation is manifest in the epistles to the Corinthians, and in almost all the other letters of St. Paul, as well as in the other New Testament books. When we come to the book of Revelation, we find a large part of the book occu- pied with the Second Advent and the accompanying cir- cumstances. Finally, on the last page of the Bible, as the final promise of the Saviour, we have the words: “Yea, I come quickly”. Thereupon the believing church replies: Amen, come, Lord Jesus’. Since that time we have been waiting, and we are waiting still, with a great longing to see the Lord return. The matter being so clear in the New Testament, and taught with so great emphasis, Christian people who ac- cept the teaching of Christ and His apostles are in no 190 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES doubt about the matter. They accept this mystery in faith, as they do the others, and look eagerly for His appearing, personally, and visibly. That He will judge the world is a part of this general Christian expectation, but there is much difference of view, among sincere and earnest Bible stu- dents, as to what may be expected to take place before and in connection with the Second Advent. Such problems are intimately connected with one’s understanding of the pas- sage in Revelation 20: 5-7. This speaks of a period of a thousand years, at the beginning of which the righteous dead will be raised. They will then reign with Christ upon the earth, which implies a continuance of ordinary human life there. At the close of the thousand years occurs a new outbreak of evil, which is suppressed by divine power, af- ter which the rest of the dead are raised, and the final judg- ment takes place. This passage divides Bible students into three classes: (1) The A-millennarians, or non-millennarians, who inter- pret it symbolically, or, not knowing what to make of it, at least decline to build, on this one passage, a system of be- lief in regard to the details of the Second Coming. (2) The Post-Millennarians, who regard the “reign” of Christ dur- ing the thousand years as meaning the triumph of the gos- pel and His consequent spiritual reign in the hearts of men. They think that such a blessed period will be brought about by the gradual dissemination of the gospel, and that Christ will come in judgment after this millennium. (2) The Pre- millennarians, who believe that Christ will come before the thousand years, and that during this period He will reign over the entire world. They mean this in the ordinary sense, that He will conduct a secular government, levy and c_llect taxes, issue laws, maintain a police force, courts, etc., and do all the things that normally belong to govern- mental functions. All national governments will then be abolished, or, if permitted to continue, will be subordinate OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 191 departments under His control. At the close of the thou- sand years there will be a great rebellion, followed by the resurrection of the wicked and the general judgment. What shall we say to these things? The writer of these discussions must frankly confess that he has not been able to make up his mind. On the one hand, the Post-millennial view, it seems to him, must be ruled out at once. If we make up our minds that Christ is not to come until the close of a period of a thousand years, which period has not yet begun, then all the passages which admonish us to watch for His coming, and for the signs thereof, are utterly mean- ingless to us. On the other hand, it is almost as difficult to accept the Pre-millennial view, at least as ordinarily stated. The passages adduced in favor of it very often seem to mean something else than the Pre-millennarians find in them. Pre-millennarian exposition of the Bible seems in numerous places guilty of ignoring the context and of straining the meaning of texts in order to bring them into harmony with their system. One prominent illustration of this is I Thess. 4: 15-17, which they make the basis of their doctrine of the “Rapture”. By this they mean that some time—any time at all, perhaps today or tomorrow,—sud- denly, the true Christians will disappear, leaving the nom- inal church behind. Then will follow the period of “‘the great tribulation”, during which Anti-Christ will flourish, and at the end of which Christ will appear in glory, fol- lowed by the millennium. This “Rapture” is necessary to their theory, but it is hard to get it out of that passage in I Thessalonians. To do so one must take it that although the Lord descends “with a shout,with the voice of the arch- angel, and with the trump of God”, nevertheless it is a secret affair, inasmuch as only the elect will hear the said trumpet call! It surely seems a strange way to describe a 192 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES secret “Rapture”. One must also split up the Second Com- ing, which appears everywhere to be spoken of as one great event, into two or more “comings”, at different times, and for different purposes. It seems to us much more in harmony with the attitude of the New Testament writers to understand spiritually many Old Testament passages which the Pre-millennarians understand literally. Above all, what they wish us to do seems to be precisely what the apostle Paul warns us not to do: “Now I beseech you, brethren, .... that ye be not troubled ... as that the day of the Lord is just at hand. Let no man beguile you in any wise, for it will not be, ex- cept...” (II Thess. 2:2.) Here he goes on to tell what signs must first appear. Evidently they were to be real signs, signs that any earnest Christian could recognize when they came, for he says in the first epistle: “Ye brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief”. With this agrees what our Lord says: Now from the fig tree learn her parable: when her branch is be- come tender and putteth forth its leaves, ye know that the summer is nigh”. The budding of the fig-tree is a sign that any one can see who pays any attention to it, and after the buds appear there intervene yet some weeks before the summer is upon us. So it is to be at the coming of the Lord. We are not to suppose that He will come today or tomor- row, in the “Rapture” or otherwise, unannounced. There will be signs which earnest believers will generally recog- nize. No such signs have yet appeared. All the alleged signs have been of a very doubtful nature, and mistakes without number have been made in interpreting them. Signs so diffcult to interpret are no signs at all. We have no doubt that when the time does draw nigh the signs will be as unmistakable as the budding of the fig-tree. It is our OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 193 duty to be on the watch for such signs, and in the meantime to be faithful in the Lord’s work, that when He comes we may be found, like good servants, attending to the tasks He has assigned us; showing our faith in His return rather by such faithful labor than by much discussion and specula- tion concerning the time and manner of the event. 194 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES XLIV. THE MYSTERY OF THE LIFE AFTER DEATH T SEEMS TO BE, in a general way, inherent in the nature of man to believe in a life after death. Such a faith has been cherished, with many varying degrees of clearness, by almost all races of whose religious beliefs we have any knowledge. Even systems of religion and philosophy, like Buddhism, that start with a denial of it, are forced even- tually, if they would attain any considerable acceptance among men, to include it. So we find the soul symbolical- ly represented, upon the ancient Egyptian monuments, as leaving the body and appearing before the gods for judg- ment; we find the ancient Greeks and Romans discoursing about the “land of shades” and the “happy isles”; we find ancestor worship testifying to the same faith in the Far East; and we find the American Indians having their doctrine of the “happy hunting grounds”. Man feels him- self other than the clod, and refuses to surrender faith in his own immortality. Nevertheless, all this, while significant so far as it goes, is exceedingly vague. It rarely or never has risen to clear certainty of conviction, or to a glad anticipation of the life to come. Nor has it ever been possible to ad- duce adequate proof, from science or philosophy, that this universal instinct is well founded. There have indeed been master minds who, like Plato, have undertaken to show the reasonableness of immortality, but their argu- ments, though interesting, are inconclusive. All the more impressive is it that an expectation for which reasoned proof is so seriously defective should have, and should retain, so strong a hold on the minds of men. Yet, the OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 195 weakness and vagueness of this expectation, where the gospel is not accepted, are most pathetic. Such was the general condition of mankind up to the beginning of the Christian era. Suddenly there appears, between 30 and 60 A. D., a fundamental change in men’s attitude towards this question. A new religion has arisen, the adherents of which hold the conviction of immor- tality with a hitherto unheard of clearness, strength, and enthusiasm. They declare their hope with jubilant ac- cents, they look forward to the life after death with eager anticipation, declaring that to them to die is gain, and in numerous instances they seal this declaration by accept- ing death as better than denial of their faith. What has happened to produce this change? Has there been some new scientific discovery, some avenue of intercourse opened with the spirits of the dead, or has some philos- opher arisen who has been able at last to satisfy the mind with arguments for survival? Nothing of the kind has occurred. Something has come to pass that is far more convincing than all that. Some one has arisen from the dead, no more to die. The Christian doctrine of immortality, like all the other great Christian doctrines, rests upon the two mighty pillars: first, a fact, an observable and provable objective occurrence; second,a revelation,intimately connected with that fact, in the form of authoritative teaching. For all who believe the alleged resurrection to be a fact, and who accept the alleged organs of revelation as true messengers from God, the question is settled, the problem is solved. Those who do not are no better off, so far as this matter is concerned, than they would have been if Christ had never come. They must either reject the belief in per- sonal immortality altogether, as a baseless superstition, or they must accept it in the vague instinctive way of the pre-Christian and non-Christian world. 196 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES The teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself on this point is exceedingly clear. He said: “Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul. (Matthew 10:28). Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. (Luke 12: 14). Father, into Thy hands I command my spirit.” (Luke 23:46). “The beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried, and in hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torments.” (Luke 16:22 and 23). Any one can see that in these utterances of our Lord it is clearly taught that the soul is something distinct from the body, living on after the death of the latter. That the - two will be united again at the resurrection is also a part of His teaching: “As touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying: I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” (Matthew 22: 82). “The hour cometh, in which all that are in the tombs shall hear His voice, and shall come forth, they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of judgment.” (John 5:28, 29). To His disciples, Jesus spoke those words of immortal comfort which we find in the fourteenth chapter of John’s gospel: “In my Father’s house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you, for I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go to prepare a place for you, I come again, and will receive you unto myself, that where I am ye may be also.” (John 14: 2, 8). The teaching of the apostles coincides in all respects with that of Jesus, besides having the additional element of an appeal to His resurrection. OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 197 ‘“‘Having therefore obtained the help that is from God, I stand unto this day, testifying to both small and great . . . that the Christ must suffer, and how that He first, by the resurrection of the dead should proclaim light both to the people and to the Gentiles.” (Acts 26:22, 23.) “Our Saviour, Jesus Christ, who abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.” (II Timothy 1:10). ‘‘Blessed be God, who begat us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (I Peter 1:3). “If we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them that are asleep in Jesus will God bring with Him.” (I Thess. 4:14). It is clear that the full glory of the life to come will be enjoyed only after the resurrection has re-united soul and body; but it is equally clear that in the mean time the soul has not passed out of existence, nor is it in a state of unconsciousness, but is with the Saviour in glory, if united to Him by a true faith. To the dying thief on the cross, Jesus said: “Verily I say unto thee: To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise.” (Luke 23:43). We are not ignorant that from the days of Theophylact, nearly a thousand years ago, there have been some who would join the adverb “to-day” with the first part of the sen- tence, translating it as follows: “I say unto thee to-day: ‘Thou shalt be with me in Paradise”; but this is, as the very learned Dean Alford bluntly puts it, “something worse than silly”, and is accepted by no Bible translators of any country or age, so far as we have been able to learn. The expression “Verily I say unto you”, is found more than eighty times in the four gospels, and is one of the expressions most characteristic of Jesus. In every case the message so solemnly announced follows imme- diately. No adverb qualifying that formula can be sup- posed to follow. The word to-day is placed, in this case, directly after “Verily I say unto thee,” to make it em- phatic. The Lord wishes to assure the penitent thief that no long wait would be necessary. That very day he would be with the Saviour in Paradise. 198 THE FACTS AND MYSTERIES This also was the expectation and is the teaching of the apostle Paul, for he says to the Philippians: “I am in a strait betwixt the two, having a desire to depart and be with Christ, for it is very far better.” (Philippians 1: 23). To the Corinthians he puts it still more plainly: “We are willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be at home with the Lord.” (II Cor. 5: 8). We have but touched the fringe of the subject in these quotations. The New Testament pulsates everywhere with this great hope, that the present life is but the portal of the much better and enduring life to come, for all those who have been made heirs of the salvation that is in Christ. One of our greatest duties, therefore, if we would truly be Christians, is to bear this hope constantly in mind, and deliberately to train ourselves to look away from earthly things to the heavenly, thinking, living, and speaking like men who are pilgrims and strangers in the world, and are seeking another country, that is, an heavenly. This is not an easy thing to do. It requires deliberate and constant effort. “Set your mind on things that are above, not on the things that are on earth.” To be heavenly minded is not natural to any of us, and it will not come without much prayerful looking forward to our eternal state. 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