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THE FACTS OF FAITH 
 
 . BY 
 CHARLES EDWARD SMITH, D.D. 
 
 Author of "Baptism in Fire," 
 *'The World Lighted" 
 
 " Walk about Zion, and go round about her ! 
 Tell the towers thereof 1 
 Mark ye well her bulwarks I 
 Consider her palaces I 
 That ye may tell it to the generations following." 
 
 Psalms xlviii: 12, 13. 
 
 "The supreme need of the hour is not elastic currency, or sounder 
 banking, or better protection against panics, or bigger navies, or 
 more equitable tariffs, but a revival of faith, a return to a morality 
 which recognizes a basis in rdigion." „, ^, ^ 
 
 Wall Street Journal. 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 SHERMAN, FRENCH 6- COMPANY 
 
 1910 
 

 Copyright, 1910 
 Sherman, French &> Company 
 
TO 
 
 MY BELOVED • 
 
 WIFE AND DAUGHTER 
 AND THE TWO FRIENDS 
 
 ASSOCIATION WITH WHOM HAS LONG GIVEN 
 ME SO MUCH PLEASURE AND WHO, BY THEIR 
 INTEREST IN THIS WORK AND THEIR WISE 
 COUNSEL REGARDING IT, HAVE CONTRIBUTED 
 TO ITS PRODUCTION, IT IS AFFECTIONATELY 
 DEDICATED 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 I deem it only fairness to myself and my read- 
 ers to say that the facts given are, primarily, the 
 facts of my own faith, which I recognize as as- 
 sured beyond reasonable doubt, and therefore 
 rest upon without misgiving. 
 
 At the same time since my faith and the facts 
 which it recognizes are, in general, the same that 
 are known as Protestant Christianity, they have 
 the endorsement of that great body of Christian 
 people whose claim to be the most intelligent, 
 well-informed, and consistent representatives of 
 Christianity it is hard to dispute. 
 
 Moreover, since other very large communions 
 claiming to be Christians, while differing very 
 widely from Protestants in many important re- 
 spects, yet agree with them regarding many 
 fundamental facts and truths, this agreement 
 must be admitted to swell to very large propor- 
 tions the number of those for whom the facts of 
 this book are the real and undisputed "facts of 
 the Faith." 
 
 I have set them down vmder the impulse to 
 make clear to myself just what I believe, and 
 what good and sufficient reason I have for be- 
 lieving it, knowing full well how much is gained 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 in clearness of thought, and precision of state- 
 ment, and, therefore, in confidence of correctness, 
 by compelling one's self to reduce the random 
 and floating ideas of the mind to exact and posi- 
 tive expression. 
 
 But although this work has been done, first of 
 all, for my own benefit, I am not without the 
 strong hope that it may prove of advantage to 
 others. 
 
 Robert Browning once wrote to a friend, 
 " I want you to give my conviction a cMnch." 
 
 There are a good many of us, Christian 
 believers, who need to have our convictions 
 chnched. We have been living so long in an 
 atmosphere of doubt; unbelief has been so ar- 
 rogant and aggressive, and never more so than 
 now, that it is not strange that faith should 
 sometimes waver as to the value of its own evi- 
 dences. 
 
 It will be a great satisfaction to me if this 
 exhibit of facts of faith, which reassures me, 
 should also reassure any of my brothers who 
 have been unnecessarily alarmed by the giant 
 fire-crackers of infidehty. 
 
 And if, in addition to this, I am able to 
 awaken the attention, arouse the interest, and 
 enlist the serious and heartfelt consideration of 
 other minds in matters which so greatly concern 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 them as facts of Christian faith, I shall accom- 
 plish a purpose for which I shall be profoundly 
 grateful, and with which I am sure God will be 
 well pleased. 
 
 C. E. S. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. The Value of Facts .... 1 
 
 n. The Selection of Facts ... 8 
 
 m. Faith Its Own Judge of the 
 
 Facts 11 
 
 rV. The Fact of Self ^1 
 
 V. The Fact of Revelation ... 3^ 
 
 VI. The Fact of Jesus Christ . . 39 
 
 VII. The Fact of the Church . . 4*5 
 
 Vni. The Fact of Christian Experi- 
 ence . ^ 50 
 
 IX. The Fact of Nature , ... 55 
 
 X. Disputed Facts Now Proved . . 63 
 
 XI. A Final Survey of the Facts . 77 
 
THE VALUE OF FACTS 
 
 There are a good many people who do not 
 know the value of facts — at any rate in the 
 most important province of thought and life, 
 which is, of course, the province of religion. 
 
 They have an idea that all religions are 
 equally true, and, perhaps, equally false. They 
 see that the votaries of each seem equally cer- 
 tain of the truth and value of their own system, 
 and equally determined to live and die accord- 
 ing to its teachings. From this they conclude 
 that these various religions are either of no con- 
 sequence at all, or are all equally useful for re- 
 ligious purposes. 
 
 Is there, then, no important difference between 
 them.? Is there no means of discriminating the 
 true from the false, and the real and precious 
 from the unreal and worthless? 
 
 Suppose it could and should be shown that 
 Christianity, and Christianity alone, is based on 
 facts, and that all others are based on fictions! 
 Would that not be a sufficient reason for re- 
 garding Christianity as the one true and abso- 
 1 
 
a ' THE FACTS OF FAITH 
 
 lute religion, and all the others as counterfeits, 
 which must, sooner or later, pass away ? 
 
 The superior value of facts in other directions 
 there is no difficulty in realizing. 
 
 A gold mine is a fact. That gold is actually 
 taken fromi such a mine, there is abundant and 
 satisfactory evidence, which puts the matter be- 
 yond all doubt. 
 
 That gold can be extracted from baser metals, 
 such as lead and iron, is a theory, which was 
 widely received in the middle ages, and many 
 lives and much treasure were devoted to the dis- 
 covery of a process by which gold could be ob- 
 tained from that source. Occasionally this 
 theory is revived in these days. But nobody 
 has ever succeeded in getting gold in this way, 
 though the alchemists, as they were called, were 
 very sure it could be done. 
 
 A gold mine is a positive, substantial, certain 
 fcwt, in which it is wise and sane to believe. 
 
 Alchemy is an unproved theory, in which to 
 put any confidence would be foolish in the ex- 
 treme. 
 
 Wireless telegraphy was at first a mere theory, 
 which might possibly be true, but which needed 
 to be demonstrated before it could be accepted. 
 But when, in crossing the ocean, I actually read 
 a message which a fellow passenger had re- 
 
THE FACTS OF FAITH 3 
 
 ceived from his father on board a steamship a 
 hundred miles away, in answer to an inquiry 
 telegraphed by my fellow passenger from our 
 own ship, I was sure that wireless telegraphy 
 was no longer a mere theory ; it had become an 
 accomplished fact. 
 
 A theory may be true or it may be false. 
 While that remains undetermined, conduct can- 
 not be safely based upon it. But a fact is a 
 sure foundation, if it be big enough and strong 
 enough, for the superstructure which it is pro- 
 posed to rear. 
 
 The examples which have been given illustrate 
 the superior value of facts over theories. In 
 one case the facts destroyed the theory, though 
 it had been long and tenaciously held; in the 
 other the facts established the theory, though 
 it had been stubbornly disputed and widely dis- 
 believed. 
 
 Every trial in a court of justice makes mani- 
 fest the general realization of the superior im- 
 portance of facts. Witnesses are questioned 
 as to the facts they know, not the opinions they 
 may hold, regarding the merits of the case under 
 consideration. Each advocate endeavors to 
 show that the facts are on his side rather than on 
 his opponent's. 
 
 The single fact that the paper on which a 
 
4 THE FACTS OF FAITH 
 
 promissory note was written bore a water-mark 
 later than the date once overturned all the claims 
 and arguments of the holder of the note. 
 
 The fact that the almanac showed that the 
 moon was not shining, on a certain night in 
 which a person was accused of having committed 
 a crime, proved the accused to be innocent, and 
 secured his acquittal. 
 
 All progress in science is progress in the 
 knowledge of the facts. Theories are main- 
 tained or abandoned as they are found to agree 
 or disagree with the facts ascertained. It was 
 once believed that the world was flat, and George 
 Kennan found a high Buddhist dignitary in 
 Siberia who still adheres to that notion ; but the 
 world generally knows too much to do that. 
 The single fact that the earth can be sailed 
 around destroys the theory. 
 
 Right here it becomes necessary to show the 
 difference between faith and credulity. They 
 are often confounded, and spoken of as essen- 
 tially the same. 
 
 Faith is confidence in facts, and truths ^u^p"- 
 ported hy facts. Credulity is confidence in 
 theories, or imaginations, or assertions, which 
 are unsubstantiated by facts or any reliable 
 proof. 
 
 Faith is often misrepresented as confidence 
 
THE FACTS OF FAITH 5 
 
 which is the strongest when that which is be- 
 lieved in is the most improbable. On the con- 
 trary, faith demands not only probability, but 
 probability approaching certainty. It asks for 
 positive and incontrovertible evidence. It is 
 credulity that is willing to believe without evi- 
 dence, and, though it sometimes strains out a 
 gnat, swallows a camel without difficulty. The 
 wilder the fiction, the greater the lie, the more 
 impossible the fraud, the readier is credulity to 
 believe in it and to live by it. 
 
 I say believe, and as credulity believes, so it 
 may be said to have a kind of faith. It is 
 obvious that we must discriminate between the 
 two senses in which the word is used. By faith 
 I mean that which saves, not that which 
 destroys. I mean the faith which is said, in 
 Scripture, to work by love, and purify the 
 heart, and overcome the world — that is. Chris- 
 tian faith. 
 
 If, now, it can be shown that Christian faith 
 alone rests upon facts, and truths supported by 
 facts, and all other religions, as well as irre- 
 ligious, have no facts worthy of confidence, the 
 vast difi^erence between Christianity and other 
 beliefs and unbeliefs will disclose itself, and 
 Christian faith take its rightful place as the 
 only belief that is any better than credulity. 
 
6 THE FACTS OF FAITH 
 
 It becomes all the more necessary to perceive 
 this for the reason that we are being* assured in 
 our day, as perhaps never before, that the facts 
 of Christianity are of no consequence. 
 
 The assailants of Christianity attempt to 
 shake public confidence in every historical state- 
 ment in both Old and New Testaments. They 
 endeavor to take away from us the facts of 
 Revelation, Incarnation, the Sinless Christ, his 
 Atoning Death, his Triumphant Resurrection, 
 and everything beside on which Faith can rest. 
 
 But at the same time they assure us that 
 Christianity remains; that these facts are of no 
 consequence; that we still have the essential 
 ideas of Christianity; that the temple of truth 
 which has been built upon the " foundation of 
 the apostles and prophets," Jesus Christ himself 
 being " the chief comer-stone," will still stand, 
 and even be firmer than before, when its founda- 
 tion is taken away. 
 
 What is this? Is it common sense.? 
 
 Is it the unthinking carelessness of miners, 
 who in their greediness for gain excavate great 
 caverns beneath a town until its weight breaks 
 the crust, and it tumbles into the abyss? 
 
 Is it the strategy of enemies, who conceal 
 their sapping and mining from the garrison of 
 the fortress they are besieging, until they have 
 
THE FACTS OF FAITH 7 
 
 placed their explosives beneath the fortifications, 
 and can topple them into ruins? 
 
 Or is it only the brainless word-mongering of 
 theorists, hke the old philosophers, who said that 
 all the qualities of a substance may be removed, 
 and yet the substance remains? 
 
 Whatever it is, it is best that we should ap- 
 praise it at its real value. 
 
 If the enemies of Christianity make great ef- 
 forts to remove the facts on which it rests, do 
 they not thereby show how important those facts 
 are in their own estimation ? 
 
 Let us not be cheated out of that which is 
 unspeakably precious! Let no one, whether 
 he be seeming friend or apparent foe, deceive us 
 as to the value of the great facts of religion on 
 which Christianity, and Christianity alone, rests 
 with a firmness and immovableness like that of 
 the everlasting hiUs ! 
 
n 
 
 THE SELECTION OF FACTS 
 
 If it should be claimed that other religions 
 besides the Christian are also based upon facts, 
 it becomes necessary to ask, what hind of facts 
 afford a true and safe foundation for a religious 
 hope? 
 
 In some sense, everything is a fact, or per- 
 haps it may be better to say that there is a fact 
 about everything. It is a fact that men have 
 had all sorts of notions, fancies, dreams, and 
 have made all sorts of guesses, on every con- 
 ceivable subject. But all those notions, fancies, 
 dreams and guesses have not been correct, val- 
 uable and practical conceptions of the subjects 
 about which they have been made. 
 
 On the contrary, many of them have been 
 false, worthless, misleading and pernicious when 
 the subject had any important relation to life, 
 conduct and happiness. 
 
 A small boy having heard that Mr. Roosevelt 
 
 had gone to Africa to shoot lions, left his 
 
 father's house in an American town, expecting 
 
 to shoot lions with his toy gun. It was a fact 
 
 8 
 
THE SELECTION OF FACTS 9 
 
 that he had such an expectation, but there were 
 no facts on which such an expectation could be 
 reasonably based. 
 
 Savages in Africa are said to be in mortal 
 fear of a gigantic scare-crow, called Mumbo 
 Jumbo. A man of whom they have no fear at 
 all in his ordinary appearance disguises him- 
 self with a towering head-dress of sticks and old 
 clothes, and straightway he becomes the arbiter 
 of life and death, and is submitted to and wor- 
 shipped as a god. It is a fact that the savages 
 have these absurd and degrading ideas, but those 
 ideas do not spring from any facts worthy of the 
 consideration of a rational being. 
 
 We must wisely select our facts, then, when we 
 set out to choose our religion. The kind of 
 facts on which any religion is based determines 
 the character of the religion. 
 
 Are all religions based on equally substantial 
 and pertinent facts? If not, then they are not 
 all equally worthy of respect and confidence. 
 If, upon investigation, it should be found that 
 one, and but one, and that one, Christianity, 
 has the facts to support it which religion ab- 
 solutely needs — then we must conclude that 
 only Christianity is entitled to our confidence, 
 and must command and obtain our confidence. 
 
10 THE FACTS OF FAITH 
 
 This is what the Author of the Christian 
 reHgion himself claimed. He said : " There- 
 fore, whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, 
 and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise 
 man, which built his house upon a rock; and the 
 rain descended, and the floods came, and the 
 winds blew, and beat upon that house ; and it fell 
 not; for it was founded upon a rock." (Matt, 
 vii. M) 
 
 Was he not right in reminding us that we must 
 have firm foundations for our religion? 
 
 One's religion is the house of his soul, within 
 which he must find rest from care, comfort from 
 sorrow, safety from those tremendous storms of 
 remorse and retribution to which, as a sinful and 
 responsible being, he is liable, sooner or later. 
 It needs to be built on rock, not sand. 
 
 Religion is the bridge on which the soul must 
 cross the gulf between earth and heaven. Its 
 piers must be sunk through the concealing waters 
 and the overlying mud to the bed-rock of the 
 sea. No matter how much time and trouble it 
 may cost; that rock must be reached and built 
 upon, or the bridge is worthless. 
 
 What is that rock.? What are those rock- 
 like facts which together may furnish a founda- 
 tion as steadfast and immovable as the moun- 
 tains ? 
 
Ill 
 
 FAITH ITS OWN JUDGE OF THE 
 FACTS 
 
 The right, duty and necessity of private 
 judgment, in all matters affecting welfare, duty 
 and destiny, are illustrated and enforced by many 
 of the saddest and most tragic pages of human 
 history. 
 
 How many fatal accidents have occurred at rail- 
 road crossings of public thoroughfares, because 
 of too trustful dependence upon careless flag- 
 men, and the failure to use their own eyes and 
 ears most sedulously by those who were ven- 
 turing into dangerous places! 
 
 The power to doubt is the necessary balance 
 of the power to trust, and the safety of the soul, 
 in a world like ours, is guarded by its intelli- 
 gent and judicious exercise. 
 
 That part of the Bible which exhorts us to 
 put our hearty faith in its proper objects is no 
 wiser or more divine than its earnest warnings 
 not, credulously, to accept the ideas and pre- 
 tensions of false teachers and false prophets. 
 That these warnings are needed is proved by the 
 tremendous fact that the religious history of 
 11 
 
12 THE FACTS OF FAITH 
 
 the greater part of mankind, down to the present 
 time, has been that of blind leaders of the blind, 
 of great multitudes accepting, unquestioningly, 
 the pretensions of impostors, and of whole na- 
 tions and races hopelessly ensnared by an un- 
 scrupulous and tyrannical priestcraft. 
 
 It is for every one, then, as he cares for his 
 eternal destiny, to judge for himself, with all 
 the faculties he possesses and all the help he 
 can get, what the facts of religion really are, 
 and how they affect his own soul's welfare, and 
 that of others for whom he cares and for whose 
 guidance he is responsible. 
 
 And Christian faith must judge for itself, 
 with all its native and acquired qualifications, 
 what facts it can and must recognize as true 
 and solid foundations. 
 
 I want to show how many the facts are, how 
 great they are, how substantial, how sufficient, 
 as the strong, indestructible foundation on which 
 Faith, and Faith alone, may be seen to rest. 
 
 I am of the opinion that Faith often fails to 
 understand and appreciate itself, and am sure 
 that those who^ do not possess it underrate and 
 despise it. They do not perceive how mighty a 
 power it is, and how beneficent its function in 
 human life and human history. They con- 
 found it with credulity, and regard doubt as the 
 
FAITH ITS OWN JUDGE 13 
 
 superior faculty. They suppose that, like 
 credulity, it builds its house of confidence and 
 hope on the " wood, hay and stubble " of fancies 
 and speculations and falsehoods, instead of the 
 " gold, silver and precious stones " of realities 
 and well ascertained truth. 
 
 I would like to show how mistaken, and there- 
 fore misleading and pernicious, are these ideas, 
 and how much more confident of itself Faith has 
 a right to be than it often is. 
 
 I would have Faith foUow the counsel of 
 Scripture to " walk about Zion, and go round 
 about her; teU the towers thereof. Mark ye 
 weU her bulwarks, consider her palaces; that ye 
 may tell it to the generation following." 
 (Psalm xlviii. 12, 13) 
 
 I believe that if we can take this walk to- 
 gether, and observe these " towers " and " bul- 
 warks," we shall be so impressed with the fact 
 that they are impregnable as to be able to rest 
 in the assurance that " this God is our God for 
 ever and ever; he will be our guide even unto 
 death." 
 
 But in order to reach this assurance we must 
 proceed thoughtfully, intelHgently, with an 
 honest purpose to discover the truth, and a will- 
 ingness to give it fair and thorough considera- 
 tion. 
 
14 THE FACTS OF FAITH 
 
 Above all, we must be clear. We must take 
 no step without knowing just what we mean. 
 Religious errors and uncertainties are largely 
 the result of ignorances, misrepresentations and 
 misapprenhensions. 
 
 There are too many who are satisfied to see 
 truth dimly and indefinitely, like Edward Irving, 
 the friend of Carlyle, and for a time the assist- 
 ant of Dr. Thomas Chalmers. Alluding to the 
 exactness and precision of Chalmers in his teach- 
 ing, Irving said that, for his part, he liked to 
 see an idea " looming up through a fog." 
 
 There are too many spiritual navigators who 
 are unwilling to take the trouble to decide 
 whether it be land or fog toward which they are 
 sailing, and therefore get wrecked on an iron- 
 bound coast. 
 
 Edward Irving's mental habit finally carried 
 him and his church upon the reef of a fanatical 
 belief that they could exercise the power of 
 speaking with hitherto unknown tongues, such 
 as were spoken in the apostolic age. 
 
 Let us understand at the outset, then, just 
 what we mean by faith as well as what we mean 
 by factSy when we are about to survey the Facts 
 of Faith. 
 
 By faith I mean that noblest exercise of the 
 power of trusting in persons or things, which. 
 
FAITH ITS OWN JUDGE 15 
 
 in a world where there were no deceptions or 
 illusions, deceivers or impostors, would be the 
 normal feehng- of the soul, and at once a privi- 
 lege, a duty and a joy. 
 
 By faith I mean the power which the Christian 
 soul possesses, though it finds itself in a world 
 where appearances are often deceitful and false 
 teachers abound, of selecting the objects of its 
 confidence with all needful prudence, calling to 
 its aid all its faculties of investigation and 
 judgment, and, when satisfied of their worthi- 
 ness, reposing in them a trust strong because in- 
 telligent, and unfaltering because bulwarked by 
 proof. 
 
 And what do I mean by facts? I mean events 
 which have certainly taken place, truths which 
 have been established, beings and things whose 
 reality is sufficiently apparent to the faith which 
 I have described. 
 
 Faith which realizes the supreme importance 
 of its quest appreciates its responsibility for 
 making true decisions, uses all its faculties and 
 opportunities for investigation, takes time 
 enough to fully consider and reconsider its con- 
 clusions; it is this faith which I make the quali- 
 fied judge of what deserve to be called facts, 
 which demand and must receive consideration in 
 the settlement of great religious questions. 
 
16 THE FACTS OF FAITH 
 
 The facts which such a faith recognizes, ac- 
 cepts and uses it may well feel sure of, even 
 though they are denied by more than one class 
 of persons. 
 
 The skeptic who cultivates doubt until it be- 
 comes a mental disease, and reaches its climax 
 in doubting that he doubts, shows a lack of 
 sound judgment, which deprives his opinion of 
 all value. 
 
 Isaac Taylor, an acute English philosopher, 
 said " To one who affected to question the re- 
 ceived account of the death of Julius Csesar, we 
 should not say ' you want faith,' but ' you. want 
 sense.' " 
 
 The theorist who is so possessed by his 
 theory that facts which disagree with it and 
 destroy it remain unseen and disregarded, is not 
 a judge whose opinions can be respected. There 
 have always been many such persons, whose in- 
 fatuation with ideas which pleased them has 
 rendered them blind and deaf to the facts which 
 rendered those ideas impossible. 
 
 At this present time, the theory that all re- 
 ligious ideas have been evolved by man out of 
 the darkness of primeval ignorance and sav- 
 agery, without the least aid from a supernatural 
 revelation, is persistently maintained by many 
 educated men, in spite of the fact that such a 
 
FAITH ITS OWN JUDGE 17 
 
 revelation has been made and is shedding the 
 light of a revelation all around us. 
 
 It is like denying that the sun shines in the 
 full radiance of the noon day. 
 
 The atheist and the agnostic, to whom this 
 wonderful Universe, of which Alexander Pope, 
 in his Essay on Man, so truly said, " Order is 
 Heaven's first law," presents no evidence of a 
 Supreme Mind, and who can beUeve, or seem to 
 believe, that the adaptations, adjustments and 
 contrivances with which the Universe abounds, 
 are only happenings of " the fortuitous con- 
 course " of uncreated " atoms," can not be ex- 
 pected to accept the facts of Faith. But that 
 rejection loses all importance when it is con- 
 sidered that the most likely explanation of such 
 minds is in some fatal disease of the perceptive 
 and reasoning faculties, which renders their con- 
 clusions on such matters worthless. So, cer- 
 tainly, thought the author of the line, 
 
 " The undevout astronomer is mad.** 
 
 An astronomer once reproached an atheist who 
 inquired who was the maker of a fine orrery, a 
 mechanical model of the solar system, which 
 he found in the astronomer's study, with his in- 
 consistency in refusing to believe that the far 
 superior mechanism of the Universe had a Con- 
 
18 THE FACTS OF FAITH 
 
 triver, while he could not be persuaded that the 
 parts of the orrery had come together by 
 chance. 
 
 There is another who cannot be expected to 
 accept the facts of Faith: it is the opposer of 
 Christianity/ because it is too good for hvm. 
 Nothing can be more certain than that immoral 
 and unrighteous dispositions so bias and cloud 
 intelligence that the mind becomes incapable of 
 correct judgment. 
 
 Richard Cecil, as a youth, fell into depraved 
 habits, and then deliberately read infidel books 
 in order to quiet his conscience by plausible 
 answers to the Bible. In this way he became 
 an infidel himself, and led others into infidelity, 
 whom he could never bring back again. 
 
 Of such Jesus said, " They love darkness 
 rather than light because their deeds are evil." 
 
 Objections to the facts of Faith are, then, to 
 be expected from all these classes, and from 
 others not here mentioned; but there is some- 
 thing about them all which makes their objec- 
 tions worthless. 
 
 The skeptic, full of morbid doubt about 
 everything; the theorist, enamored of his hobby, 
 and as incapable of rational guidance as a run- 
 away horse with the bit between his teeth; the 
 agnostic, who, because he cannot know every- 
 
FAITH ITS OWN JUDGE 19 
 
 thing about God, insists that he cannot know 
 anything; and the bad man, who does not care 
 what is true or right, but only what is agreeable 
 to a depraved nature, — the fact that all these 
 deny the facts of Faith is not an argument 
 against them, but for them. 
 
 On the other hand, the character of those who 
 accept the facts of Faith is a powerful argument 
 for the correctness of those facts. It is the 
 " pure in heart " who " see God." It is they 
 " who wUl do the wiU of God " who may expect 
 to " know of the doctrines." Jesus said, " They 
 who are of the truth hear my voice." 
 
 If we can have the consensus of such spirits, 
 we may be sure of the foundation stones on 
 which we build our faith. If these be " for us " 
 it matters not who are " against us." 
 
 " I design the search after truth," said Bishop 
 Butler, " as the business of my life." Where 
 is the person among all the opponents of Chris- 
 tianity, the acuteness of whose intellect, the 
 openness of whose mind, the fairness of whose 
 judgment, the extent of whose learning, and the 
 excellence of whose character, qualify him to 
 stand side by side with Bishop Butler, the 
 author of the famous Analogy, of which the 
 noble Gladstone edited a new edition in the 
 closing years of his memorable C6u*eer.'^ 
 
«0 THE FACTS OF FAITH 
 
 It would be hard to find him. But the peers 
 of Butler, as qualified searchers after the great 
 truths of religion — may I not say without fear 
 of contradiction? — ^ are numberless among 
 those who accept the Christian religion. 
 
 We have a right to feel confidence in the ver- 
 dict of such a jury. 
 
 And we ourselves, though humble and obscure, 
 if our search be honest, careful and worthy of 
 the subject, may well hope to arrive at sane and 
 sound conclusions regarding the facts of faith. 
 
IV 
 
 THE FACT OF SELF 
 
 Am I myself a fact? And is this question, 
 necessarily, the beginning of Faith's search for 
 certainty ? 
 
 Assuredly it is the beginning. Presumptuous 
 and vain as it may seem, when we are looking for 
 rock-like foundations we must begin with our- 
 selves. Humble as we may seem, low as we may 
 estimate our own powers, uncertain as we may 
 be about much, or even most, of what is in- 
 cluded in self, we must be sure of something in 
 that self. If we are not sure of ourselves we 
 can be sure of nothing else. 
 
 We must begin here, or we shall end no 
 where ! 
 
 To begin with, I must be sure of myself as an 
 honest seeker after truth. 
 
 No other deserves to find the truth, or indeed 
 is capable of finding it. The natural and in- 
 evitable penalty of endeavoring to deceive others 
 is to deceive one's self. 
 
 Not to be fair in the judgment of evidence, 
 not to be candid in the consideration of facts, 
 to be willing to mistake error for truth, and to 
 
StSt THE FACTS OF FAITH 
 
 feel pride in making wrong look like right, is to 
 dtill one's perceptive faculties, and to foredoom 
 one's self to become the victim of illusions and 
 falsities. 
 
 The dishonest soul necessarily doubts honesty 
 in others. There is not in himself the quality 
 which he needs to find elsewhere, and missing it 
 at home, in his own soul, he suspects its absence 
 everywhere. 
 
 Faith begins and must begin with faith in 
 one's self; if not in one's sinlessness, at least in 
 one's sincerity. 
 
 That is the first fact for faith to build with. 
 
 And the second is that the tool he must work 
 with to acquire real knowledge, the structure of 
 his own mind, is an honest instrument, so con- 
 structed as to give correct results, and not to 
 deceive and mislead one. 
 
 To measure with a yard stick that is more or 
 less than thirty-six inches is to mistake the length 
 one wishes to find. To weigh with dishonest 
 scales is to cheat the buyer. 
 
 Theodore Parker once wrote, " It is for others 
 to decide whether I have mistaken a Httle grain 
 of brilliant dust in my telescope for a fixed star 
 in heaven." 
 
 But one must know for himself that there is 
 no dust in his telescope to deceive his vision. 
 
THE FACT OF SELF 23 
 
 There are those who distrust the soul's power 
 to discover truth on account of the deceptiveness 
 of its faculties. 
 
 They think that the very plan of the mind 
 is a false plan, so that neither do the senses nor 
 does the consciousness tell the truth about what 
 they pretend to perceive. If this were true we 
 should lack the very capacity for knowledge. 
 If this were true the Author of our being would 
 be a monster of deceptions, and the Universe a 
 sham and an illusion. 
 
 At the outset, then, we must decide whether we 
 will accept this view, or begin our search for 
 facts with the faith that an honest Universe 
 awaits our study, and a mind honestly con- 
 structed, and needing only to be fairly used, is 
 to serve as our instrument. 
 
 Let me, then, set down, first of all, the facts 
 that I am sure of about myself. 
 
 / am perfectly sure of my own existence; that 
 I am alive, not dead; that I am awake, not 
 dreaming; that my life is a reality, not an illu- 
 sion, and is to be reckoned with as a fact. 
 
 I am sure that I am a person, a conscious, 
 thinking, reasoning, feeling, willing, acting 
 person; that, as such, I am far superior to and 
 entirely distinguishable from the world of 
 thmgs; that, in some respects, I am wonderfully 
 
ft4i THE FACTS OF FAITH 
 
 and awfully separate from all other persons, in 
 the Universe, while, in other respects, I am no 
 less wonderfully and awfully related to them. 
 
 / am sure that I am a sovZ, and have a bodi/; 
 that however useful and even necessary my body 
 is in this present state of existence, it is only 
 the instrument which the soul uses, and not the 
 soul itself. That it should be as good an in- 
 strument as possible, and therefore is to be 
 taken care of most sedulously, is a matter of 
 course; but my great concern should be regard- 
 ing the nature, character and welfare of the 
 soul, which is myself. 
 
 / ami sure that I am a knowing person ; that, 
 within certain limits, I have the power of recog- 
 nizing facts and perceiving truth. Not that I 
 can know everything even about myself, but that 
 I can know something, sufficient for practical 
 purposes in any important direction. 
 
 / am sure that this power of knowing extends 
 so far that I am perfectly able to perceive the 
 truth of principles and the reality of facts 
 which I could not myself discover. What some 
 other mind, superior to mine in ability and 
 larger in knowledge, might reveal to me, I am 
 entirely competent to apprehend. For by far 
 the greater part of my knowledge I am indebted 
 to others who had larger powers or better op- 
 
THE FACT OF SELF , «6 
 
 portunities than my own. Isaac Newton has 
 instructed me in mathematics and astronomy, 
 and Tacitus and Motley have been my teachers 
 in history. I am not shut up to the facts which 
 I can perceive and possess unaided. And again, 
 I am not vain enough to think that no being in 
 this universe knows any more than myself. 
 
 However, within certain limits, I may modestly, 
 I must truthfully, assert and acknowledge that 
 I am sure of my own faculties. 
 
 I am sure that my senses are trustworthy 
 means of information regarding material things, 
 for I have proved their trustworthiness in num- 
 berless instances. When their testimony is 
 clear, positive and united I cannot doubt its cor- 
 rectness. Even the theorists who dispute that 
 testimony, I observe, take their fingers out of the 
 fire as uniformly as I do. 
 
 / am sure, too, of my consciousness as a truth- 
 ful revealer of my inner life, though not of all 
 that life. I know that there is more of my soul 
 than what I am conscious of, but as far as I am 
 conscious of mental states they are as real to me 
 as the material world. 
 
 / flww. sure of those vrvtmtive truths which I 
 share with every other human being, which are 
 the foundations of all knowledge and a part of 
 the very structure of the mind. Among these, 
 
26 THE FACTS OF FAITH 
 
 and one of the most important, is the axiom that 
 " every effect must have a cause '* adequate to 
 produce it. The contrary to this is simply un- 
 thinkable. Sophists have cast doubt upon its 
 validity, but every one knows it, though he can- 
 not tell how he knows it, and every one acts 
 upon it continually. It is an irresistible intui- 
 tion of the soul. 
 
 Another intuition which I am sure of is the 
 distmction between right and wrong, and that I 
 ought to do and be the right and not the wrong. 
 How I make this distinction I do not know, but I 
 do make it, and that it is a real distinction by 
 which I ought to be governed I do not and can- 
 not doubt. It is a moral intuition of which I 
 am absolutely sure, and of which I stand in awe. 
 The German philosopher Kant said that two 
 things filled him^ with awe, the starry heavens and 
 the moral law. Both are sublime objects of 
 thought, but I doubt not Kant would agree with 
 me in saying that, of the two, the more impres- 
 sive and awe-inspiring fact is the mxyral law m 
 the soul. 
 
 Darwin is said to have become uncertain of 
 his intuitions through the influence of his theory 
 of man's evolution from the brutes. This is a 
 notable instance of the manner in which a 
 
THE FACT OF SELF 27 
 
 theorist confuses and bewilders his own percep- 
 tions of the most indubitable truths. 
 
 John Stuart MiU, also, once expressed his 
 doubt whether two and two might not make five 
 in some other world. The mind that thus hesi- 
 tates to admit the vahdity of its own funda- 
 mental and necessary ideas must abandon all 
 expectation of arriving at any positive knowl- 
 edge. 
 
 / am sv/re that I am a responsible being and, 
 as such, held to give account to conscience for 
 my obedience to its commands, and take its 
 praise or blame for my obedience or disobedience. 
 From this responsibility I cannot successfully 
 escape, any more than Pilate when he made a 
 show of washing his hands in water, by putting 
 the blame of my bad action on another. 
 
 Neither does it serve that purpose to throw 
 the blame back upon my ancestors as having 
 transmitted to me bad dispositions, or upon my 
 contemporaries as having surroimded me with 
 corrupting associations. However they may 
 also be to blame, I am sure that / am to blame 
 for any evil I have done or been myself. All the 
 theorists cannot make me believe that I am not 
 a free agent, and, more than any or all others, 
 the author of my own character. 
 
^8 THE FACTS OF FAITH 
 
 And / am sure that, wherever the praise or 
 blame for my character may lie, mz^ moral 
 character determines my destmy. 
 
 Well-being and happiness are certainly pos- 
 sible, in the long run, only to the right kind of 
 character. 
 
 Degradation and misery are certain conse- 
 quences of the wronug kind of character, whatever 
 or whoever may have had a hand in producing 
 it. 
 
 When I consider what my position and pros- 
 pects as a moral and responsible being are, I am 
 quite sure that the answer turns, chiefly, on the 
 judgment of conscience as to what my character 
 has been and still is. 
 
 / am sure that the determination of this matter 
 requires a properly educated conscience, and all 
 the light thrown upon the subject which can 
 come from any source. 
 
 / am sure the Bible is the very best source, 
 and having reflected upon its teachings, / ami 
 sure that I am the sinful being it describes. 
 
 There is enough remorse in my conscience for 
 the evil I have done, said, thought and been, to 
 make me wretched as long is I exist, unless in 
 some way my conscience can be propitiated and 
 its accusations hushed. 
 
 There is enough depravity in my tastes and 
 
THE FACT OF SELF 29 
 
 habits to balk any essential success in my efforts 
 to be better, and, unless arrested, to corrupt all 
 remnants of a better nature still remaining in my 
 soul. 
 
 / (rni sure that I have not the power, in myself, 
 either to pacify conscience or to banish depravity 
 from my nature, and am therefore in a situation 
 very greatly to appreciate a gospel of salvation 
 from the guilt and power of sin. 
 
 In this desperate emergency I am compelled to 
 look away from myself for knowledge and power 
 which I do not possess. 
 
 Like a shipwrecked sailor I scan the horizon 
 to find any sign of one coming to rescue me. 
 
 Is there anything in me, or about me, which 
 suggests the possibility of such a gospel as I 
 need? 
 
 At the very foundation of my intellectual be- 
 ing lies that irresistible, intuitive conviction that 
 every effect must have an adequate cause, and 
 neither I nor any other human person can think 
 the contrary. It is a truth that is self-evident, 
 necessary and universal. 
 
 / am sure that I am an effect and must have 
 a cause. 
 
 I am a complex and highly organized effect, 
 abounding in wonderful contrivances, remark- 
 able adjustments and adaptations, extraordinary 
 
30 THE FACTS OF FAITH 
 
 combinations, to which only an Infinite Mind 
 with infinite power could have been equal. 
 
 I ami sure that I perceive God. 
 
 With the Russian poet I say, " I ami, O God, 
 and surely Thoii must he! '* 
 
 Or, as that noble 139th Psalm puts it, " I 
 will praise Thee, for I am fearfully and won- 
 derfully made; marvelous are Thy works, and 
 that my soul knoweth right well." 
 
 I have not only found God, but I can teU 
 somewhat as to His character. 
 
 He must be a holy being, or He would not 
 have put this conscience into my soul which re- 
 quires me to be holy also. 
 
 He must be a hmd and loving hei/ng, or He 
 would not have made me capable of these feel- 
 ings, and surrounded me with so much to give 
 me pleasure and joy. 
 
 / am sure that there is at least the possibUitt/, 
 nay, more, much more, the proTmse, in the 
 very structure of my being, of an almighty 
 Friend, who is able to do for me all that I need. 
 
 I am sure that the reverence of which I am 
 capable belongs to Him, and that admiration 
 and worship are the proper attitude of the crea- 
 ture toward the Creator. 
 
 I involuntarily turn toward Him with a prayer 
 for enlightenment, help and salvation. 
 
THE FACT OF SELF 31 
 
 I await in hope a fuller revelation of Him- 
 self to me, such as I need and such as I am confi- 
 dent He is able to make. 
 
 In a word, my sblf -inspection has supplied me 
 with numerous, momentous, essential facts, for 
 which Christianity alone, supplies the comple- 
 ment. 
 
 / have found that Christlamty is made for m^, 
 and that I am made for Christianity. 
 
THE FACT OF A REVELATION 
 
 Momentous fact, if it be a fact, compared 
 with which most other facts of knowledge sink 
 into insignificance. The Christian rehgion 
 claims to have a revelation from God, in the 
 Bible, of all the information desirable and neces- 
 sary on the most important religious questions, 
 for every member of the human race. Is that 
 a real revelation, and is it a fact that a real 
 revelation has been made? 
 
 One cannot but hope that it is. If any one, 
 and even a large number, should wish it not to 
 be, and strive with enmity to destroy confidence 
 in an actual revelation, that would be such a 
 manifestation of human depravity as to strongly 
 confirm what is said on that subject in the 
 Bible. 
 
 It would be like the joy of pirates who set 
 their captives adrift in mid-ocean, without a 
 chart or compass, to find their way as best they 
 can to some friendly harbor. Or like that of 
 savages who desert their prisoners in some great 
 desert or primeval forest, out of which they 
 have no means to extricate themselves. 
 
THE FACT OF REVELATION 33 
 
 For what is desert, forest or ocean as an un- 
 known and pathless extension, compared with 
 the life we have to live and the death we have to 
 die? And what must be the character of that 
 heart that is willing to make our human course 
 blinder, more confused and perplexing and more 
 dangerous, less hopeful and happy than it might 
 otherwise be? 
 
 It is certainly a fact that we need a revelation 
 of rehgious truth. 
 
 It is a fact that God is the great Person of 
 this universe " with whom we have to do," and 
 to know his character, purposes and will is more 
 important to us than aU possible knowledge be- 
 side. 
 
 It is a fact that we are all involved in evils 
 from which we know not how to escape, in 
 calamities from which only God can deliver us; 
 but as to whether he will dehver us we are all 
 naturally ignorant. 
 
 It is a fact that aU the wisdom of this world, 
 independently of the Bible, has never been able 
 to answer the questions of the soul regarding 
 God, hfe, death and immortality. 
 
 It is a fact that no religion in the world ex- 
 cept the Christian possesses anything worthy 
 to be considered a revelation. 
 
 The most that can be made of the so-called 
 
34 THE FACTS OF FAITH 
 
 " sacred books " of the heathen, or of the con- 
 clusions of philosophers, ancient or modem, is, 
 that they are guesses, though sometimes the 
 guesses of very able minds, at the truths oi re- 
 ligion. They show how little man knows, or 
 can know, of himself, about the most important 
 matters which concern him. 
 
 As for all modern pretensions to having re- 
 ceived divine revelations, such as Swedenborg's, 
 the Mormons', Spiritism's, it is sufficient to say 
 that there is nothing in these pretended revela- 
 tions which is not attributable to purely human 
 sources, and that they are generally regarded 
 as impositions upon particularly credulous 
 minds. 
 
 It is a fact most impressive that for any book 
 to gain wide reputation as a divine book, as the 
 " Word of God," is well-nigh impossible. 
 
 Yet it is a fact, indisputable, that this reputa- 
 tion, to all other books impossible, has been 
 achieved and numitained for thousands of years 
 by the Christiam Bible. The Old Testament 
 enjoyed that reputation before the Christian 
 era, and the Old and New together have held 
 that high place for the almost 2000 years since 
 that era began. 
 
 It is a fact that the Bible must possess the 
 very highest qualities, to have obtained and pre- 
 
THE FACT OF REVELATION 35 
 
 served this reputation down to the present time 
 and to be venerated and loved as the Word of 
 Grod by many millions of many races, and es- 
 pecially by those who must be regarded as the 
 most intelligent, virtuous and competent judges 
 of what a divine book ought to be. 
 
 It is a fact that the Bible is the greatest liter- 
 ary work in the world. It stands in a class by 
 itself, all others being far below it. 
 
 It is a fact that although the Old Testament 
 consists of 39 books, by perhaps nearly thirty 
 human authors, and the New Testament con- 
 sists of 27 books, by ten human authors, there 
 is a unity of meaning and purpose and style 
 running through all, which makes them seem like 
 one book ; and it is consistent with the idea that 
 the divine mind planned and ruled over the com- 
 position of all the pfcirts. 
 
 It ?> a fact strongly supporting this idea that 
 no book which has ever been written, not even 
 any which the Bible itself has suggested and in- 
 spired, would be for a moment regarded as 
 worthy to be bound up with the books of the 
 Bible as an additional part. 
 
 It is a fact that the Bible is the best book in 
 the world. It deserves to be called the Holy 
 Bible. Its elevating, and ennobling influence 
 upon individuals and nations and races is a fact. 
 
36 THE FACTS OF FAITH 
 
 the evidence of which is abundant and familiar. 
 To introduce the Bible into human society, even 
 in that society's lowest and most degraded con- 
 ditions, is to raise it rapidly towards the high- 
 est known standards, even the standards of the 
 Bible itself, than which there is nothing higher. 
 
 It is a fact that the Bible is a book for all 
 tvme, having in it that which has interested, in- 
 structed, comforted and elevated all past ages ; 
 and so far from being exhausted is it at the pres- 
 ent time that it is more read, studied, discussed, 
 objected to by enemies, and loved, defended, and 
 extolled by its friends, than ever before. There 
 is not the slightest probability that it will not 
 continue to be the greatest book in the world as 
 long 6is the human race shall last. 
 
 It is a fact that while, like Nature, the Bible 
 contains many things the purpose and value of 
 which have never yet been clearly perceived, it 
 also, like Nature, contains many things so great, 
 noble and excellent for us that they can be at- 
 tributed only to their divine Author. For ex- 
 ample, the Ten Commandments, the Lord's 
 Prayer, and the portrait of Jesus, are so far 
 above all human inventions that they must be 
 considered divine. 
 
 It is a fact that the Bible contains predictions 
 of future events, the fulfillment of which proves 
 
THE FACT OF REVELATION 57 
 
 them to have been made by divine knowledge. 
 Thus the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, which was 
 certainly written centuries before the coming of 
 Christ, is such a vivid and detailed description 
 of the closing events of his life as must have is- 
 sued from a mind to which the future is as evi- 
 dent as the past. 
 
 It is a fact that the conception of Salvation 
 which is peculiar to the Scriptures, as that of a 
 fallen and lost race beyond all possibility of 
 self-deHverance, to be rescued by God through 
 Incarnation, Atonement, Regeneration, Justifi- 
 cation, Sanctification and Resurrection, is so for- 
 eign to human thought and so impossible of hu- 
 man invention that it can have come to us only 
 from God himself. 
 
 That this wonderful plan, which could have 
 originated only with God, and which, in all its 
 parts, God alone could execute, is the great sub- 
 ject of the Bible and may be found everywhere 
 in it, makes the book eminently worthy to be a 
 divine book, and separates it immeasurably from 
 all other so-called " sacred books." 
 
 It is a fact that all attempts, of which there 
 have been many, to discredit the Bible have 
 proved futile up to this time. It is an anvil 
 which has worn out many hammers. If we may 
 judge the future by the past, the Bible will tri- 
 
d8 THE FACTS OF FAITH 
 
 umph over all assaults which shall or can be 
 made upon it. 
 
 It is a fact that no individual, race or nation 
 has anything to gain by destroying faith in the 
 Bible, but everything to lose. Peace of mind, 
 comfort in sorrow, strength against temptation, 
 kindness and justice between man and man, hope 
 in death, are all promoted and kept alive by such 
 faith, and are all in danger of perishing by its 
 destruction. For the world to lose its Bible 
 would be, apparently, to have the dark night of 
 atheism and anarchy settle down upon mankind. 
 From that conclusion shall not every one of us 
 pray, " Good Lord, dehver us ! " 
 
VI 
 
 THE FACT OF JESUS CHRIST 
 
 It is a fact that for now nearly 2000 years 
 Jesus Christ has been the most important re- 
 ligious figure of the world's knowledge. 
 
 It is a fact that for all that time he has been 
 regarded as the world's greatest religious teacher 
 and the world's greatest man. 
 
 It is a fact that he has been worshipped as 
 God and trusted in as Saviour by a constantly 
 increasing number, of many nations and races, 
 and that there were never so many who wor- 
 shipped and trusted in him as now. 
 
 It is a fact that those who so regard him are 
 not the savage, ignorant, superstitious and least 
 enlightened peoples, but those whose conceptions 
 of God are the highest which men have ever en- 
 tertained, even those found in the Bible, of an 
 infinite, eternal, aU-wise, almighty, just, holy 
 and loving being. 
 
 It is a fact that this beautiful and sublime 
 conception is itself, largely, the result of the 
 study of the character of Christ himself, as set 
 forth in the Holy Scriptures, and that, for God 
 to be as great and good as Jesus Christ, is an 
 S9 
 
40 THE FACTS OF FAITH 
 
 idea which satisfies our minds, hearts and con- 
 sciences, and meets our greatest needs and lofti- 
 est aspirations. 
 
 It is a fact that we get our knowledge of 
 Jesus Christ not from any mere human biog- 
 raphy or history, but from that greatest and 
 best book in the world, which contains so much 
 which could not have come from purely human 
 sources, and is so far above all other literature 
 that we are compelled to regard God as its only 
 sufficient Author. 
 
 It is a fact that the four Gospels from which, 
 principally, we derive our knowledge, while con- 
 taining independent and peculiar accounts of 
 this great Person, yet so wonderfully agree in 
 their harmonious portraiture of his unique char- 
 acter, as is possible only from actual and inti- 
 mate acquaintance with him, supplemented and 
 completed by a divine influence which left noth- 
 ing lacking in their representations or needing 
 correction. 
 
 It is a fact that it is now known that the 
 epistles of Paul were written, and in circulation, 
 within only tmenty-five years of the death of 
 Christ; that these letters contain the essential 
 facts of his history, which was therefore soon 
 and widely known, as important and real facts 
 are likely to be. 
 
THE FACT OF JESUS CHRIST 41 
 
 It is a fact that the personal claims of Jesus, 
 recorded in the Gospels, to equality with the 
 Father as the Son of God, are so clear and posi- 
 tive that the worship of Him as divine must be 
 considered to have been desired and intended by 
 Him. 
 
 It is a fact that His life and death were in 
 the highest degree worthy of a God who should 
 become man for the salvation of the world. 
 
 It is a fact that many things which Jesus said 
 about himself, and which would surprise and dis- 
 gust us if said by any other, seem entirely fitting 
 and proper, because so completely in harmony 
 with his exalted character. 
 
 It is a fact that the discourses, parables, 
 promises, exhortations and denunciations by 
 Jesus, recorded in the gospels, are of a quality 
 such as we should expect from a divine-human 
 person. No human literary genius ever com- 
 posed a prayer appropriate to such a person, 
 but the 17th chapter of John contains such a 
 prayer. To suppose that John invented it is 
 to rate him far above the most stupendous liter- 
 ary genius the world has ever known. His task 
 was far easier: he had only to record what he 
 must have heard Jesus say. 
 
 It is a fact that, in the judgment of those who 
 are the most scrupulous regarding right and 
 
42 THE FACTS OF FAITH 
 
 wrong, Jesus is entirely without faults. Many 
 who hesitate to pronounce as to his divine na- 
 ture yet grant, and insist upon, his sinlessness. 
 And he, though the keenest discemer and great- 
 est teacher of moral distinctions, had no con- 
 sciousness of guilt, and never asked for for- 
 giveness. He is the one person of the human 
 race of whom such perfection can be believed. 
 
 It is a fact that this moral perfection is not 
 less wonderful than any of the miracles attri- 
 buted to Jesus, and is itself a miracle which pro- 
 claims him all that he has been thought to be. 
 
 It is a fact that the miracles which he is said 
 to have performed, and the supernatural manner 
 of his coming and his going, are in perfect har- 
 mony with his claims and character as the Son 
 of God, and exactly what we ought to expect if 
 God should become incarnate. 
 
 It is a fact that the perception of his divinity 
 by his apostles was the very rock on which he 
 meant to build his church, and that up to the 
 present time his prediction that the gates of 
 Hades should not prevail against it has been ful- 
 filled. 
 
 It is a fact that in all situations in which 
 Jesus is described, and in all his relations to per- 
 sons and classes, the propriety, dignity and 
 beauty of his behavior never falls short of what 
 
THE FACT OF JESUS CHRIST 43 
 
 we might expect of " God manifest in the flesh." 
 
 It is a fact that the pathos, moral beauty and 
 majesty of Christ's death, and the solemn and 
 profound impression made by it, are all in en- 
 tire harmony with its significance as a voluntary 
 sacrifice for human sin, and that the general 
 judgment endorses the famous saying of the 
 French infidel, Rousseau, " Jesus Christ died 
 like a god." 
 
 It is a fact that God himself could do nothing 
 more or better than to sacrifice Himself to atone 
 for the sins of His guilty creatures, and that 
 to deny that He did this, in the person of Jesus, 
 is to rob Him of his greatest glory, and to make 
 Him less than Jesus himself. 
 
 It is a fact that the resurrection of Christ is 
 so well attested that we can be surer of nothing 
 than of that. So much has happened which 
 could not otherwise have happened, that it must 
 have occurred. 
 
 It is a fact that prophecy and history, the 
 past, present and the future, have their only 
 explanation, and indeed their only possibihty, 
 in the fact of Jesus Christ. 
 
 It is a fact that as Christ's birth is the cen- 
 tral point of all history, all events being dated 
 according to their occurrence either before or 
 since that birth, so it was the crisis and turning 
 
44i THE FACTS OF FAITH 
 
 point of the world's history, when, from having 
 sunk to the lowest depths of degredation and 
 misery, mankind began to rise socially, morally 
 and religiously. 
 
 It is a fact that the only intelligible concep- 
 tion of the meaning of human existence, the pur- 
 pose for which man is designed, and the plan by 
 which that purpose is to be effected, are fur- 
 nished by Jesus Christ, and by him alone. 
 
 It is a fact that the only substantial founda- 
 tion of which man has ever heard for a reason- 
 able hope of becoming ultimately perfect and 
 eternally happy, is that supplied by the promises 
 and power of the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 It is a fact that the only Gospel which has 
 ever proved effectual in producing true repent- 
 ance for sin and turning the heart toward God 
 in loving trust and submission is the gospel of 
 a Crucified Saviour, whose loving self-sacrifice 
 is the expression, at once, of divine justice and 
 divine love, and the highest proof man can have 
 of his own essential dignity and worth. 
 
VII 
 
 THE FACT' OF THE CHURCH 
 
 It is a fact that the greatest and most power- 
 ful religious institution which the world has 
 ever seen, having for its object the betterment 
 of the race and the salvation of the soul, is the 
 Christian Church. 
 
 It is a fact that it sprang into existence in a 
 single day, only fifty days after the crucifixion 
 of Christ, and in the very city where he had been 
 crucified, and at the close of that day numbered 
 more than three thousand persons. 
 
 It is a fact that on that very day it was sub- 
 stantially the same that it is now ; with the same 
 conditions of membership, the same doctrines, 
 principles, methods, aims and hopes which have 
 characterized it from that time to this. 
 
 It is a fact that the disciples of Jesus had 
 been plunged into such dejection and apathy, 
 by the apparently horrible and hopeless calamity 
 of his shameful death, that nothing less than his 
 resurrection can account for the wonderful vigor 
 and confidence with which the Church began. 
 
 It is a fact that the wonderful descent of the 
 Holy Spirit, with aU its attendant miracles, in 
 4^ 
 
46 THE FACTS OF FAITH 
 
 the very manner described in the second chapter 
 of Acts, must be added to the Resurrection in 
 order to furnish an adequate cause for the sud- 
 den birth of the Church on the Day of Pentecost. 
 
 It is a fact that from this time onwards the 
 apostles and early disciples evinced no slightest 
 doubt or hesitation, and were ready, if need be, 
 to seal their testimony with their blood. 
 
 It is a fact that mthi/n the first year the gos- 
 pel was carried, and the Church extended, 
 through all parts of Palestine and into neigh- 
 boring regions; that the Church at Jerusalem 
 had grown to 10,000 or more; and that Saul of 
 Tarsus, the greatest mind of that or any suc- 
 ceeding age with the single exception of Jesus 
 Christ, and at first the bitterest and cruelest 
 enemy of Christianity, had been converted and 
 had become its most ardent friend and its great- 
 est apostle.^ 
 
 It is a fact that the subsequent triumphs of 
 the Christian religion over the inveterate hos- 
 tility of Judaism and the apparently overwhelm- 
 ing power of Paganism can be explained only 
 by its inherent excellence and by the super- 
 natural co-operation of God. 
 
 It is a fact that the survival of the Church 
 
 1 Dr. Behrends' Yale Address. See Bible Student and 
 Teacher, April, 1909, p. 241. 
 
THE FACT OF THE CHURCH 47 
 
 through the Dark Ages, and during the vicissi- 
 tudes of all the centuries since its origin, until 
 at the present time its magnitude and influence 
 are greater than ever before, is a manifestation 
 of providential care and control, than which 
 there could be none more convincing. 
 
 It is a fact that the doctrines of Christianity 
 are so opposed to the natural conceptions of 
 mankind, its motives are so contrary to human 
 inclination, and the life it proposes and insists 
 upon so distasteful to human nature, that noth- 
 ing less than a new spiritual birth, as the regen- 
 erating work of God's Holy Spirit, can account 
 for either the beginning of the Church or its 
 continuance from generation to generation. 
 
 It is a fact that the corruptions of the Church 
 at various times and in many countries, the de- 
 cline of its piety, the perversion of its doctrines, 
 the hypocrisy and priestcraft of those who have 
 acted in its name, only render more wonderful 
 the fact of its continued existence and the degree 
 of the purity which it has been able to maintain. 
 Its greatest enemies have been its false friends; 
 its worst foes have not been without but within ; 
 a false church has been the most formidable rival 
 of the true church; and the infidels from whom 
 it has had most to fear are the infidels who have 
 masked as Christian preachers and teachers in 
 
48 THE FACTS OF FAITH 
 
 its pulpits and press and schools. All these se- 
 cret foes it has had in addition to all the avowed 
 enmity of all the powers of worldly evil, and yet 
 it lives on, undestroyed and indestructible. 
 This is the great fact of history, which Bunyan 
 represented by a fire on which water was continu- 
 ally thrown to extinguish it, but which was kept 
 ahve by oil secretly poured on from behind. 
 
 It is a fact that the ordinances of Baptism and 
 the Lord's Supper, the observance of which can 
 be traced through nineteen centuries to the very 
 beginning of the Christian Era, are a historical 
 monument of the origin and nature of Christian- 
 ity, which cannot be successfully overthrown. 
 
 It is a fact that Christianity was the ark in 
 which the treasures of learning, civilization and 
 true rehgion were borne to us through that 
 flood of ignorance, superstition and barbarism 
 which prevailed in so many countries during 
 many centuries of our era. 
 
 It is a fact that for the preservation of the 
 Bible in the world, the maintenance of spiritual 
 worship, the success of great moral reforms, 
 and the practice and spread of humaneness, we 
 are now, as we have always been, dependent 
 chiefly upon the Church of the Lord Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 It is a fact that the great missionary organi- 
 
THE FACT OF THE CHURCH 49 
 
 zations of the Church, which have been endeavor- 
 ing for a hundred years to evangelize the nations 
 of the earth, and yvhich are continually en- 
 larging their operations upon a more and more 
 prodigious scale, have done and are doing more 
 than all other agencies for the progress of the 
 human race. The philanthropy, the unselfish- 
 ness and the heroism of Missions are a continu- 
 ally recurring demonstration that Christianity 
 is from God. 
 
 It is a fact that at the present time, after all 
 the experiments of thousands of years, by all the 
 races, nations, governments, philosophies, sci- 
 ences, arts and organizations, to raise the world 
 to a higher level, there is nothing in sight which 
 gives such brilliant promise of success as the 
 Christian Church. Its wonderful achievements 
 in the past, its world-wide enterprise and ag- 
 gressiveness at the present, and its evidence of 
 alliance with the Ruler of the Universe and the 
 Savior of men, give it a prestige which can be 
 found nowhere else, and afford the happiest 
 augury of its future complete triumph. The 
 fortunes of mankind are in the hands of the 
 Church of Jesus Christ, as they are in no other 
 keeping whatsoever. 
 
vni 
 
 THE FACT OF CHRISTIAN EXPERI- 
 ENCE 
 
 It is a fact that a peculiar, unique and blessed 
 experience is common to all who truly believe 
 on the Lord Jesus Christ and really accept him 
 as their Lord and Savior. 
 
 It is a fact that in these persons the mind is 
 so illuminated, and the understanding so quick- 
 ened and clarified, as to enable them to perceive 
 the facts of self and of God, and the truths of 
 Revelation, with a clearness and certainty which 
 produce the greatest possible assurance of their 
 trustworthiness. 
 
 It is a fact that there is a change of disposi- 
 tion and of tastes in such persons which amounts 
 to a revolution, and that they love what they 
 formerly were indifferent to or hated, and hate 
 what they formerly tolerated or loved. 
 
 It is a fact that in these persons the will is 
 now exercised to make entirely opposite choices 
 to those which it formerly made, and that the 
 motives which it allows to influence it are mo- 
 tives which formerly had for it no power. 
 60 
 
THE FACT OF EXPERIENCE 61 
 
 It is a fact that to those who experience this 
 change of mind, heart and will, the worship of 
 the God revealed in the Bible ceases to be a dis- 
 tasteful and mechanical performance of duty, 
 and becomes a delightful contemplation and 
 adoration of the Being most honored and loved. 
 
 It is a fact that at the same time, and by the 
 same means, the fellow men of the convert to 
 Christianity are no longer regarded with in- 
 diiFerence, aversion or hate, but with a truly un- 
 selfish affection and a desire to contribute to 
 their happiness and ensure their salvation. 
 
 It is a fact that while these feelings are ex- 
 ercised toward all men without distinction of 
 race, color or nation, the Christian feels a pe- 
 culiarly strong and tender affection for other 
 Christians, such as is fitting toward the spiritual 
 children of a common heavenly Father. 
 
 It is a fact that these peculiar experiences and 
 this remarkable revolution of character may be 
 often, and even quite generally, traced to re- 
 flection upon some passage or passages of the 
 Bible which have served, like spiritual seed, to 
 cause the uprising of a new spiritual life. 
 
 It is a fact that the fostering of this new 
 spiritual hf e, and the cultivation of it to higher 
 grades of excellence, is the result of continued 
 
62 THE FACTS OF FAITH 
 
 acquaintance with the Bible, with confidence in 
 its truth, acceptance of its teachings and sub- 
 mission to its guidance. 
 
 It is a fact that this unique Christian experi- 
 ence is exactly what the Bible promises and de- 
 scribes, and attributes to the supernatural 
 agency of the Spirit of God. 
 
 It is a fact that the conviction of sin and the 
 assurance of forgiveness are often, and most 
 frequently, the results of the contemplation of 
 the death of Christ, as described in the Gospels, 
 and faith that, by that death, atonement was 
 made to the divine justice, and pardon to guilty 
 but penitent sinners rendered possible. 
 
 It is a fact that for these reasons, and the 
 recognized inseparable and causal connection of 
 the Bible with this precious Christian experience, 
 it becomes to the Christian the Book of books, 
 and proves its divine authorship beyond doubt 
 or question. 
 
 It is a fact that because, in the Church, the 
 Christian finds associates who share and confirm 
 his own blessed experience and stimulate him to 
 cherish and increase it, supplying, at the same 
 time, the means of grace by which such increase 
 is furthered, his love for the Church and his 
 confidence that, like the Bible, it is divinely 
 
THE FACT OF EXPERIENCE 63 
 
 originated and continued, become fixed and in- 
 destructible. 
 
 It is a fact that Prayer, in the truest sense, 
 begins and is maintained as an indispensable part 
 of the Christian life; and that the longer it is 
 continued, and the firmer the habit becomes, the 
 stronger is the conviction that God really meets 
 and answers the praying spirit. 
 
 It is a fact that by this Christian experience 
 life is ennobled, sweetened and made in every way 
 worthier. It is directed to superior aims, occu- 
 pied with higher thoughts, made stronger 
 against temptation, more patient in trials, more 
 resolute against difficulties, more enduring un- 
 der adversity. In the humblest as well as the 
 highest vocation, life becomes worth the living. 
 The joys of Christian experience make all other 
 joys seem small and inconsiderable. 
 
 It is a fact of Christian experience that death 
 itself is robbed of its terrors, and changed from 
 the greatest of misfortunes into the greatest of 
 blessings. The dying Christian is often so con- 
 scious of supernatural grace supporting his 
 weakness, removing his fears, and brightening 
 his future, that the hour of his departure be- 
 comes to him an hour of triumphant entry into 
 celestial gates. Innumerable instances of such 
 
64 THE FACTS OF FAITH 
 
 departures confirm the conviction that the Lord 
 Jesus always fulfills his promise to come again 
 and receive his disciples unto himself. 
 
 It is a fact that the world owes to Christian 
 experience its greatest advantages and blessings, 
 since it has been those who have possessed it who 
 have been the world's greatest benefactors. As 
 ministers, missionaries, philanthropists, states- 
 men and doers of good works generally, they 
 have taken the leading part in the promotion of 
 education, religion, freedom and civilization. 
 
 It is a fact that the reality, power and value of 
 this experience are attested by too many wit- 
 nesses and proved by too many evidences, to be 
 reasonably disputed. The searcher after re- 
 ligious truth must give it a large place in his 
 investigations, if he wishes to be truly scientific. 
 That there are many who have never had this 
 experience cannot be urged against it, unless 
 it can be shown that they have supplied all con- 
 ditions on which it is promised. Nor can the un- 
 worthy and injurious results of a corrupted and 
 paganized Christianity be used to depreciate and 
 disparage the experience of the actual followers 
 of Jesus Christ. For themi, all that has been 
 claimed must be admitted in all its reality and 
 power. 
 
IX 
 
 THE FACT OF NATURE 
 
 It is a fact that the natural universe, including 
 the human race, is a revelation of God, with 
 which all other revelations must necessarily har- 
 monize. 
 
 It is a fact that the descriptions of Nature in 
 the Bible are the most beautiful, sublime and 
 affecting to be found in all literature. 
 
 It is a fact that no conflict between the Bible 
 and Science has ever been proved, although many 
 attempts to prove such a conflict have been made. 
 
 It IS a fact that each of several so-called sci- 
 ences, at its first appearance, has been supposed 
 by some to be capable of being used to convict 
 the Bible of error; but each in its turn, as its 
 facts came to be more fully and correctly ap- 
 prehended, became a witness for the truth of the 
 Sacred Scriptures. 
 
 It is a fact that some of the truths of the 
 natural sciences, which have only recently been 
 discovered through investigation, were antici- 
 pated by the T\Titers of the books of the Bible, 
 showing that they were inspired by Him who 
 knew all things from the beginning. 
 65 
 
66 THE FACTS OF FAITH 
 
 It is a fact that these writers were wonderfully 
 preserved from incorporating in their works the 
 false ideas of Nature which were current in their 
 times, so that the Bible contrasts so completely 
 with other so-called sacred books as to show 
 that it alone came from God. 
 
 It is a fact that statements of the Bible re- 
 lating to Natural History, which scientists have 
 for a long time confidently disputed, have re- 
 cently been proved true, showing that the charge 
 of error was based, not upon knowledge, but 
 upon ignorance. 
 
 It is a fact that the Christian conception of 
 God is based upon the revelation of Him in Na- 
 ture, and includes and harmonizes with all that 
 we know of Him from his natural works. 
 
 It is a fact that the Christian conception of 
 man is the only one which makes an adequate ac- 
 count of his actualities and his possibilities, of 
 his worst and his best, of what he is and what he 
 may be. 
 
 It is a fact that human nature is fallen and de- 
 praved, with a tendency to gravitate toward 
 lower depths of sin and guilt, and that in spite 
 of remnants of a better nature and recurrent im- 
 pulses to retrieve itself, it has no power to lift 
 itself to a permanently higher level and achieve 
 a thoroughly faultless character. 
 
THE FACT OF NATURE 67 
 
 It is a fact that the most intelh'gible idea of 
 the plan and purpose of the natural world, an 
 idea consistent with, all the facts, is that it is 
 the appropriate home of a smfvl race, whom 
 God would reform, educate and save. As such 
 it is fitted up, not with the ideal appointments 
 which a holy race would deserve and enjoy, but 
 with the furniture which sinners, not incapable 
 of salvation, need and may be benefited by. 
 
 It is a fact that the human race are undergo- 
 ing a moral and evangelical probation, the re- 
 sult of which appears to be the settlement of 
 their final destiny. 
 
 It is a fact that for this purpose God has re- 
 vealed himself to man in many ways, that better 
 acquaintance with our Maker may incline us to 
 repentance, reconciliation and entire concord. 
 
 It is a fact that Nature holds a mirror up to 
 Man in which he sees the reflection of his own 
 vices in the lower races of wild and noxious ani- 
 mals with which he has to share his dwelling 
 place, so that he recognizes the phases of de- 
 praved human character as similar to the nature 
 of bears, foxes, snakes, wolves and other dreaded 
 wild beasts. 
 
 It is a fact, too, that the great Teacher, Jesus, 
 used many natural objects as symbols of spirit- 
 ual facts, thereby indicating that the primary 
 
68 THE FACTS OF FAITH 
 
 purpose of these objects was the religious edu- 
 cation and salvation of men. 
 
 It is a fact that Jesus made use of Nature to 
 show himself to be the incarnate God, and by 
 such miracles as the multiplication of the loaves 
 and fishes, the healing of incurable diseases, the 
 stilling of the tempest, and the raising of the 
 dead to life, proved himself to be the Creator 
 and Ruler of the Universe and the sufficient 
 Saviour of his people. 
 
 It is a fact that the human conscience, by its 
 recognition of the distinction between right and 
 wrong, and the approval it renders for right and 
 the remorse it inflicts for wrong, reveals the 
 character and judgment of its Maker and his 
 moral government over mankind. 
 
 It is a fact that in addition to conscience, 
 there is a system of rewards and punishments 
 under God's moral government, according to 
 which the greatest benefits follow welldoing and 
 the greatest penalties follow evildoing. 
 
 It is a fact that the disposition to forgive of- 
 fences, when the offenders appear truly penitent, 
 is a characteristic of the noblest natures, and 
 may therefore be expected of God. 
 
 It is a fact that, under all forms of human 
 government, the disposition to pardon has to 
 be exercised with great caution, lest the escape 
 
The fact of nature 5d 
 
 of the pardoned from just punishment encourage 
 evildoers to expect to be able to break law with 
 impunity. 
 
 It is a fact that in all true sorrow for sin there 
 is a desire to atone in some way for the evil done, 
 that law may be honored and the injury to others 
 repaired. 
 
 It is a fact that those who honestly endeavor 
 to attain a high degree of moral excellence 
 realize keenly the depravity of their own natures 
 and the need of a change of heart, such as Jesus 
 said must take place before entrance into the 
 kingdom of Heaven. 
 
 It is a fact that in the natural world every 
 kingdom has the power to lift the kingdom be- 
 low it to its own level, although no kingdom has 
 the power to rise above itself. Thus the vegeta- 
 ble kingdom takes the mineral kingdom and 
 makes it a part of its own life, and the animal 
 kingdom does the same for the vegetable king- 
 dom. Unnumbered insects deposit their eggs 
 in the stems or leaves of plants, whereupon the 
 plant abandons its normal course and builds a 
 wonderful dwelling for its tenents. In like man- 
 ner, man lifts all kingdoms below him to other 
 and higher uses than they would serve of them- 
 selves. So that being " bom from above " is a 
 general law of Nature, as well as the method of 
 
60 THE FACTS OF FAITH 
 
 salvation by which the Holy Spirit does for a de- 
 praved sinner what he could not do for himself. 
 
 It is a fact that the remarkable influence which 
 some men exert upon others, by which character 
 is changed and careers are revolutionized, affords 
 strong corroboration of the doctrine that the 
 Holy Spirit of God is able to exert an influence 
 over the mind and heart, which is a virtual re- 
 creation and makes the person a new creature in 
 Christ Jesus. 
 
 It is a fact that the Fatherly love of God for 
 his human off^spring, which Jesus so beautifully 
 taught, is testified to by numberless adjustments 
 of Nature and natural processes, which tend to 
 give pleasure, gratification, comfort, health 
 and happiness ; while even pain, sickness, sorrow 
 and death are often seen to work out beneficent 
 results, which show kindness and good will to be 
 the characteristics of the Creator. 
 
 It is a fact that the Hberty of choice to which 
 the Gospel addresses itself, the abuse of which is 
 the source of all moral evil, is the indispensable 
 condition of all really virtuous character and of 
 all perfect: happiness; it was, therefore, the 
 crowning gift with which God originally en- 
 dowed human nature. 
 
 It is a fa£t that that self-sacrifice of which 
 even fallen human nature is capable, which is 
 
THE FACT OF NATURE 61 
 
 continually demanded in every relation in life 
 and which is cheerfully rendered by heroic souls, 
 would lead us to expect that the God who made, 
 loves and pities this lost race, would sacrifice 
 himself for our salvation, in the very manner de- 
 scribed in the gospels. 
 
 It is a fact that the self-sacrifice of another 
 for its sake is the most powerful means of ajffect- 
 ing a base mind, inducing a desire for reform 
 and a purpose to be better ; so that the death of 
 Christ for us sinners is entirely in accord with 
 all that we can understand of the philosophy of 
 salvation. 
 
 It is a fact that the desire for a future Uf e, 
 and the general expectation of such a life, which 
 have prevailed in all lands and ages, are exactly 
 what we should expect in view of the fuller reve- 
 lation of hfe and immortality made by our Lord 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 It is a fact that the resurrection of the body 
 in a form at once identical with the old, but new 
 and far more glorious, is typified by Nature in 
 many ways and numberless instances. The res- 
 urrection of the grain of wheat in the new body 
 which God gives it, which, though so different 
 and so much greater and more beautiful, is yet 
 identical with the seed sown, is Paul's chosen 
 illustration, in the fifteenth chapter of First 
 
62 THE FACTS OF FAITH 
 
 Corinthians. The butterfly, which reaches its 
 gorgeous cUmax by passing from the caterpillar 
 through the crysalis, is only the most splendid 
 representative of the whole insect world, which 
 seems designed to teach the Resurrection. 
 
DISPUTED FACTS NOW PROVED 
 
 That Moses wrote the books attributed to him 
 has been, and still is, widely denied, on the 
 ground that the art of writing was unknown as 
 earij as 1500 B. C. But whole libraries of a 
 far earlier date have been unearthed in Assyria 
 and Egypt, containing works on grammar, 
 geography, natural history, theology, astrology 
 and history. The age of Abraham, who lived 
 at least five hundred years before, was an age of 
 culture. At Tel-el-Amama, in Egypt, tablets 
 have been found containing business records, and 
 letters from the high officials of Palestine, dis- 
 closing the very state of affairs described by the 
 book of Joshua.^ 
 
 The fact that light was created, before the sum, 
 as stated in the first chapter of Genesis, was long 
 ridiculed, but is now generally admitted by men 
 of science. 
 
 That vegetation appeared before animal life 
 was also stoutly denied, but is now abundantly 
 
 1 Prof. Sayce, " The Higher Criticism and the Monu- 
 ments," p. 51. 
 
 63 
 
64 THE FACTS OP FAITH 
 
 proved by the beds of graphite, which consist 
 of vegetable remains. 
 
 The order of events given by the creation- 
 chapter has long been fiercely contested, but it 
 is now established that there is no conflict be- 
 tween the Scripture record and that of geology.^ 
 
 That the Sabhath was primeval has been dis- 
 puted, and its origin assigned to the institutions 
 of the Hebrew people. But it is now known 
 that it was observed in the most ancient times, 
 and that it had then the sweet name — " a day of 
 rest for the heart." ^ 
 
 The story of the deluge of Noah, recorded in 
 Genesis, and referred to by Christ as an actual 
 event, was long considered the " deluge myth," 
 and is still so styled by those who do not seem 
 to have heard of or kept pace with, the progress 
 of the science of geology. It is now fully es- 
 tablished that, since man appeared upon the 
 earth, there was a tremendous flood, which sud- 
 denly swept him and the races of animals then 
 living, from existence. It is now affirmed by 
 the ablest geologists that " there is no other great 
 physical catastrophe which is confirmed by so 
 
 1 " New BibUcal Guide," Vol. I, p. 40. 
 a "Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testament," 
 Vol. I, p. 19. 
 
FACTS NOW PROVED 66 
 
 imposing an array of witnesses and testimon- 
 ials." 1 
 
 The unity of manki/nd, as descended in all its 
 branches from the' family of Noah, is a fact, 
 the knowledge of which, we owe entirely to the 
 Bible. It has, however, been disputed not only 
 by infidels like Voltaire, who said that " no one 
 who was not blind could doubt that Whites and 
 Negroes are of different races," but also by 
 statesmen like Calhoun and by anthropologists 
 of wide reputation. But great naturalists, such 
 as BufFon and Linnaeus, have always maintained 
 that the teaching of Scripture is correct; and 
 finally, after the most searching and even micro- 
 scopical study of race differences, Pritchard de- 
 clares, in his " Researches into the Physical His- 
 tory of Mankind," that Science refuses to be 
 responsible for the objections made in her name. 
 The tenth chapter of Genesis, which, to the 
 casual reader, is an uninteresting list of names 
 and places, is the most important and trust- 
 worthy document which ethnologists possess, 
 from which they obtain their knowledge of the 
 ancient nations and places.^ 
 
 The tower of Babel has been declared unhis- 
 
 ^ Bibliotheca Sacra, July, 1907, p. 544. 
 2 « New Biblical Guide," Vol. I, p. 414. 
 
66 THE FACTS OF FAITH 
 
 torical, but it has been identified with the tower 
 of Borsippa, a mountain-like structure a few 
 miles from the ruins of the ancient city of Baby- 
 lon. Its preservation through so many centur- 
 ies is ascribed to the very well made bricks of 
 which it is built, a fact which is particularly 
 mentioned in the account in Genesis xi, 13. 
 
 The history of Abraham has been refused cre- 
 dence on the ground that everything about him 
 is prehistoric, and therefore utterly uncertain, 
 and if there ever was such a man he must have 
 been a savage. But the city in which he dwelt 
 before God called him, Ur of the Chaldees, has 
 been identified, and its ruins " reveal that it was, 
 in Abraham's time, a center of learning and of 
 civilization, of the sciences and the arts, a place 
 of wealth and luxury." ^ One of the ablest of 
 living Assyriologists, Professor Clay, of the 
 University of Pennsylvania, has said that the 
 time of Abraham " was only about midway in 
 the written history of man." 
 
 The beautiful story of Joseph, whose charac- 
 ter and history are so remarkably like that of 
 our Redeemer, has been assailed as unhistorical, 
 and many of its details have been said to be 
 inconsistent with the age and the country in 
 
 1 " New Biblical Guide," Vol. II, p. 87. 
 
FACTS NOW PROVED 67 
 
 which they are placed. But investigation and 
 discovery have proved the story to be in exact 
 and minute harmony with the Syria and Egypt 
 of that time. The very Pharaoh who made 
 Joseph his prime minister has been identified as 
 Apophis II, one of the Shepherd Kings, a 
 foreign dynasty, of a race akin to the Hebrews, 
 who conquered and ruled Egypt for centuries. 
 It has been learned from a papyrus, now in the 
 British Museum, that this Pharaoh became the 
 worshipper of one God,^ a fact which is ex- 
 plained by the Scripture history of the rescue 
 of Egypt from destruction by famine through 
 the instrumentality of a servant of Jehovah. 
 
 The authorship of the five books purporting 
 to have been written by Moses has been denied 
 to him and assigmd to Ezra, who hved a thou- 
 sand years later in Persia and Babylon. In 
 that case these books would contain unmistak- 
 able marks of their origin in Persian and Baby- 
 lonian words, such as would be familiar to 
 Ezra. On the contrary they contain many 
 Egyptian words, some of them so ancient as to 
 have lost their meaning by Ezra's time, and 
 only now coming to be understood through dis- 
 coveries by Egyptologists. Almost every cir- 
 
 1 M. Mariette's " Histoire Ancienne," p. 167. 
 
68 THE FACTS OF FAITH 
 
 cumstance of the Scriptural history of the 
 Israelites in Egypt has been found to agree 
 with the memorials of ancient Egypt. The op- 
 pression which they suffered, which Exodus at- 
 tributes to the fact that " another king arose 
 who knew not Joseph," is explained by the re- 
 covery of sovereignty by an Egyptian dynasty, 
 which expelled the Shepherd Kings. The very 
 buildings erected by the Israelites during their 
 bondage have been found, showing bricks at 
 first with straw, and then with " stubble," and 
 finally without straw or stubble, the supply hav- 
 ing been exhausted. 
 
 The Pharoah of the oppression has been 
 identified, and the great calamities inflicted upon 
 the nation by the ten plagues and the burial of 
 Pharaoh's army in the Red Sea, are attested by 
 the fact that this Pharaoh had no son to suc- 
 ceed him, and Egypt lapsed into a condition of 
 feebleness and unimportance, which lasted for 
 many years. ^ 
 
 The Mosaic code has been declared to have 
 been impossible on account of the rudeness of 
 the age in which it purports to have been made, 
 but the code of Hammurabi, king of Babylon, 
 has been found, and may be seen in the British 
 Museum, a code which antedates the Mosaic law 
 
 1 Speaker's " Commentary," Vol. I, p. 456. 
 
FACTS NOW PROVED 69 
 
 by 500 years, being, in some respects, still more 
 elaborate.^ 
 
 The wcmdermgs of the Israelites in the Wil- 
 derness have been denied to be historical, and 
 called the invention of Ezra, or some other priest 
 who lived a thousand years later in some other 
 land. But the country has been carefully sur- 
 veyed, the record of the journey in the books 
 of Moses compared with the topography and 
 found to fit it, step by step, station after sta- 
 tion, until the surveyors felt no doubt that " the 
 Pentateuch was written by one who had taken 
 part in the events which he describes." ^ 
 
 The crossing of the Jordcm by Joshua and 
 the Israelites, related in the third chapter of the 
 Book of Joshua, has been disputed on the ground 
 that no such overflow of the river at the 
 time (April) when the crossing is said to have 
 taken place could possibly occur. It has been 
 said that at that time the winter rains have long 
 since ceased, and the tributaries of the Jordan 
 are dried up. Moreover, the account says that 
 the overflow took place at the " time of har- 
 vest," which is later than April, so that the time 
 mentioned seems too late for a flood and too 
 early for the harvest. But Dr. Thompson, 
 
 ^ Bible Student and Teacher, July, 1907, p. 46. 
 2 " New Biblical Guide," Vol. Ill, p. 363. 
 
70 THE FACTS OF FAITH 
 
 long a missionary in Palestine, confirms the 
 Scripture. He says that the Jordan is not de- 
 pendent upon tributaries, but is fed by great 
 fountains, which become swollen by the melting 
 snows on Hermon and Lebanon, and the flood 
 reaches the neighborhood of the crossing by the 
 middle of March, and continues for several 
 months. As for the harvest, that takes place in 
 the same locality at this early date, because the 
 Jordan Valley is thirteen hundred feet below sea 
 level and has a tropical climate.^ Thus are the 
 speculations of skeptical critics shown to be 
 baseless, and the history found to agree with 
 the facts of the locality. 
 
 It has been denied that the city of Jerusalem 
 bore that name until the time of David, and its 
 occurrence in the account of the Conquest of 
 Canaan by Joshua proves, it has been said, that 
 that account was wiitten long after the time of 
 Joshua. But among the finds at Tel-el- Amama, 
 in Egypt, is a letter from the king of Jerusa- 
 lem, and it is now evident that the name is 
 Babylonian and came into Palestine " when 
 Babylonian writing and culture first penetrated 
 to the west." ^ 
 
 The history of the period of David amd 
 
 1 " The Land and the Book," Vol. II, p. 454. 
 2 « New Biblical Guide," Vol. IV, p. 397. 
 
FACTS NOW PROVED 71 
 
 Solomon, in the books of Samuel, Kings and 
 Chronicles, has been declared to be unreliable, 
 as the compositions^ of writers long after the 
 age described. But the discoveries of archaeolo- 
 gists all strongly confirm the Scripture record. 
 Two discoveries of this kind may be mentioned 
 here. 
 
 First, it has been found that at this time the 
 rival empires of Assyria and Egypt were both 
 reduced to such a feeble condition as to allow 
 David and Solomon opportunity to augment 
 their forces and extend their conquests without 
 interference from any great power of the 
 world. 
 
 Second, the excavations made at Jersulem by 
 Captain Warren, of the Palestine Exploration 
 Society, disclosed the very great and costly 
 foundation-stones of the Temple, which were 
 prepared and laid by Phenician builders em- 
 ployed by Solomon, with the very builders' marks 
 for rightly placing them still upon them in red 
 paint and in Phenician characters; so that no 
 fitting was necessary at the Temple site, accord- 
 ing to the account in the sixth chapter of First 
 Kings.^ 
 
 To this it may be added that the list, in the 
 ninth and tenth chapters of I Kings, of articles 
 
 1" Recovery of Jerusalem," pp. 138, 139. 
 
7^ THE FACTS OF FAITH 
 
 brought by the navy of Solomon from Ophir," 
 almug trees, gold, silver, ivory, apes, and pea- 
 cocks," has been interpreted and verified by 
 Max Muller, who says that the names are 
 Sanscrit, the language which was spoken at that 
 time by the people of India, near the mouth of 
 the Indus, where the articles could be found. 
 
 It has been denied that there ever was such 
 a people as the Hittites, mentioned in Genesis 
 X. 15: II Kings vii. 6, and elsewhere in the Old 
 Testament. This denial was made on the 
 ground that no allusion to them had been found 
 in any other book than the Bible. But the 
 monuments, both of Egypt and of the Hittites 
 themselves, have given us accurate portraits of 
 these people, and we now know that they were a 
 great and warlike race, who were in Southern 
 Palestine in the days of Abraham, but had been 
 driven back to Northern Syria in the time of 
 Joshua.^ 
 
 The scerw on Mownt Carmel, when, after a 
 severe famine, Elijah challenged the priests of 
 Baal to prove the power of their divinity by 
 bringing down fire from heaven to consume their 
 sacrifice, has been discredited as " legendary " 
 
 1 Sayce's " Higher Criticism and the Monuments," pp. 
 15, 16, 140-143. 
 
FACTS NOW PROVED 73 
 
 and the " creative work of popular fancy." As 
 yet the history admits of the comparison with 
 the results of research only at two points, but at 
 both of these it • is confirmed. The famine 
 spoken of is proved by Josephus to have oc- 
 curred at the time mentioned by the quotation 
 from Menander, an ancient Greek historian. 
 The peculiar manner in which the priests of 
 Baal are said to have worshipped, leaping and 
 cutting themselves with knives, is confirmed by 
 an inscription found upon an ancient temple of 
 Baal at Beyrouth, and by descriptions of such 
 worship by Lucian, Cattulus, and by Livy.^ 
 
 The healing of Naamariy the Syrian, by Elisha 
 has been dismissed by a recent critic as a " cur- 
 ious marvel, of no practical importance." But as 
 our Lord spoke of it as an actual occurrence of 
 great significance, it seems worth while to refer 
 to it. The only real difiSculty in the account 
 is in Naaman's boast that Abana and Pharpar, 
 rivers of Damascus, were better than all the 
 waters of Israel. The difllculty grew out of the 
 fact that there is but one river at the city of 
 Damascus. But it is now known that, in 
 Naaman's time, that was the name of the 
 country/ as well as of the city, and not far from 
 
 i"New Biblical Guide," Vol. V, pp. 389-398. 
 
74 THE FACTS OF FAITH 
 
 the city the two rivers are to be found, suffi- 
 ciently beautiful and important to justify the 
 Syrian's partiality.^ 
 
 The book of Esther has been declared to be a 
 " work of the imagination," without the marks of 
 an historical composition." Almost every per- 
 son in it and nearly every event or custom re- 
 lated, has been assailed as fictitious. The 
 writers of articles in recent Bible dictionaries and 
 encyclopaedias do not seem to have learned that 
 the historical accuracy of the book has been 
 thoroughly established, but such has been the 
 case. Ahasuerus has been identified as the 
 Xerxes the Great of Persia ; Shushan the palace 
 has been found and described, and the book has 
 become our highest authority for the manners, 
 customs and events of the time and the country 
 to which it relates.^ 
 
 The hook of Jonah has been called a fable, 
 and we have been taught, in the name of Science, 
 that the swallowing of Jonah by a fish is an 
 impossibility on account of the contracted 
 throat of the whale, the largest fish of which we 
 know. As it is not said that it was a whale, 
 but that " God prepared a great fish," it is not 
 
 1 Dr. Porter in Journal of Sacred Literature, New 
 Series, Vol. V, p. 46. 
 
 2 Bible Student and Teacher, June, 1905, p. 437. 
 
FACTS NOW PROVED 76 
 
 necessary to meet this objection, but it is now 
 removed by Science itself. It is now known 
 that of some fifty-one species of whale, of only 
 one, the Greenland whale, is it true that the 
 throat is so contracted.^ 
 
 1 mention but one more of these disputed facts, 
 and it is a most notable one. 
 
 Belshazzar, the king of Babylon, at whose 
 idolatrous feast the miraculous handwriting ap- 
 peared upon the wall and was interpreted by the 
 prophet Daniel, has been declared to be a myth, 
 and the book of Daniel, therefore, a forgery. 
 The ground of this charge was the absence of 
 this king's name from any known history. 
 But a cylinder which has been disinterred at Ur, 
 Abraham's own city in Chaldea, and which is 
 now in the British Museum, contains an in- 
 scription, which is a prayer of Nabonidus, the 
 last king of Babylon, that his god would be 
 gracious to Belshazzar, his eldest son. This in- 
 scription convinced Sir Henry Rawlinson that 
 the son had been co-regent with his father at 
 the time the city was captured, and this explains 
 why Daniel was made the third ruler in the 
 kingdom, as stated in Daniel v. 39.^ 
 
 This Hst might be extended much farther, did 
 
 ^ Bible Student and Teacher, Sept., 1905, p. 176. 
 
 2 « New BibUcal Guide," Vol. II, p. 86. 
 
76 THE FACTS OF FAITH 
 
 the limits of this work permit. But enough has 
 been said to show how often denials of Scrip- 
 ture statements are made in pure wantonness of 
 spirit and sheer ignorance of facts, instead of 
 in sober regard for truth and a modest hesita- 
 tion to impugn a great and venerable authority. 
 Those who have realized, in the reading of this 
 chapter, how many and how great have been the 
 " mistakes " of those who have charged Moses 
 and other Bible authors with error will, it is 
 hoped, be slow, henceforth, to give too hasty 
 credence to such charges, and will have a whole- 
 some confidence that if mistakes have been made 
 it is not the greatest book in the world that has 
 made them. 
 
XI 
 
 A FINAL SURVEY OF THE FACTS 
 
 Now that we have glanced at some of the 
 facts of Faith, it is possible to form some proper 
 conception of their meaning and value. We 
 ought by this time to realize their importance. 
 
 To begin with, how Twmierous they are ! 
 
 Let no one suppose we have exhausted the list, 
 or even mentioned the most of them! In truth, 
 we have only produced samples of that vast host 
 which only He " who calleth the stars by name " 
 can number. The Bible, Science of every kind. 
 History, personal experiences, all departments of 
 human life and human knowledge are full of 
 them. 
 
 Isaac Newton said that he had " only picked 
 up a few pebbles on the beach " of truth. That 
 is all any one can do. There are so many facts, 
 there is so much to be known, that, after all our 
 learning, the most still remains unknown. That, 
 however, cannot justly deprive what is in sight 
 of our admiration. 
 
 The ore that still remains untouched in the 
 mountains is, perhaps, far greater in quantity 
 than that which has been mined. But when one 
 77 
 
78 THE FACTS OF FAITH 
 
 thinks of the immense amount that has been 
 taken out, and is now being manufactured or is 
 visible in structures and implements and machin- 
 ery and all kinds of forms for all kinds of uses, 
 the total seems overwhelmingly enormous. 
 
 So of the known facts which are available for 
 Faith's purposes; they are like the sand that is 
 upon the seashore, innumerable. 
 
 But not, like the grains of sand, do they 
 seem small and insignificant. On the contrary, 
 they impress us as great facts, if we have ob- 
 tained any adequate idea of their magnitude. 
 Their importance, in the world of morals and re- 
 ligion, is only symbolized by that of the mighty 
 suns and systems of the physical universe. 
 
 For example, consider the greatness of the 
 fact of the Bible! That there should be one 
 book, far and away the greatest of all books, 
 even as literature; and when considered in its 
 moral and religious character and influence, 
 what the dying Sir Walter Scott called it, the 
 one book of the world! What a gigantic fact 
 that is, that, among books, one stands hy itself, 
 far apart from all others, alone and unapproach- 
 able! 
 
 What a great fact is Jesus Christ! That a 
 young man who had lived only to the age of 
 thirty-three, lived a private and obscure life for 
 
A FINAL SURVEY 79 
 
 all but three of those years, wrote not a word to 
 leave to posterity, died a death of shame, re- 
 pudiated and denounced as a criminal by his own 
 nation, should have become the greatest name 
 in history, and influenced all succeeding ages for 
 good more than any or all others — what a 
 colossal, even infinite fact this is! 
 
 What a great fact the Church is! It sprang 
 into existence, and was numbered by thousands, 
 onli/ fifty dat^s after its founder had been shame- 
 fully executed as a criminal, and in the very city 
 of his execution. 
 
 Withm thirty years it established itself in 
 the great cities of the known world, and re- 
 peated the wonder of the Mother Church at 
 Jerusalem, by great bodies of disciples, in town 
 and country, in Asia, Europe and Africa. 
 
 It is now, after nineteen centuries of existence, 
 the most powerful religious body in the world, 
 numbering its adherents by many millions, and 
 exercising its influence over the greatest nations 
 and the leading races of mankind. 
 
 It finds members even in the most degraded 
 and depraved persons, of the lowest and most 
 brutalized classes, all over the earth ; transforms 
 them into bright and shining examples of the 
 noblest types of human character; and enrolls 
 them as citizens of that kingdom of heaven, of 
 
80 THE FACTS OF FAITH 
 
 which the pure and perfect Jesus Christ is the 
 only, though the invisible, King. 
 
 Its destruction has been threatened by every 
 form of physical or mental force which the 
 world possesses. 
 
 Its martyrs are numbered by millions. 
 
 Its most formidable eneTtiy has always been, 
 and still is, a corrupt church which usurps its 
 functions, imposes itself upon human credulity 
 as the only true church, and by its scandalous 
 superstitions and crimes brings discredit and 
 disgrace upon the fair name of Christianity. 
 
 It has survived all its persecutions by Judaism, 
 Paganism, Romanism, and every species of false 
 religion; it rode, like the ark of Noah, the 
 deluge of ignorance and barbarism which we 
 call the Dark Ages ; has vanquished the repeated 
 onslaughts of infidelity which have followed in 
 these later centuries; and now penetrates and 
 dominates the life of the twentieth century, with 
 the confidence of eternal youth and the prestige 
 of unconquerable power. 
 
 These great facts, like the great stones in 
 the ancient wall of Jerusalem, not only astonish 
 us by their magnitude, but unite to furnish a 
 substantial and indestructible foundation for 
 faith. How solidly and immovably the Bible, 
 and Jesus Christ, and the Church, and Christian 
 
A FINAL SURVEY 81 
 
 Experience, and Nature, and History, stand 
 together; opposing their united weight to all 
 the efforts of time and circumstance to disturb 
 them ! Fancies may be displaced and dissipated, 
 but facts remain unchanged and immovable 
 from generation to generation and from age to 
 age. 
 
 The facts of religion, like the facts of science, 
 are too numerous and too powerful to be af- 
 fected by doubt and dispute, when once they are 
 seen and understood. 
 
 It was the faUi/ng of an apple which is said 
 to have suggested to Newton the idea of the 
 attraction of gravitation. But that was only 
 one small fact out of myriads that might be 
 mentioned of the same kind. Air falls, water 
 falls, the sun and stars fall, the whole universe, 
 in all its parts, exhibits the same phenomenon. 
 When once this vast array of facts is perceived, 
 the conclusion to which it leads is irresistible. 
 No sane and intelligent mind any longer dis- 
 putes the doctrine of gravitation. To do so 
 would be to convict one's self either of ignorance 
 or of the lack of common sense. 
 
 The facts on which Christian faith rests are of 
 the same compelling kind — so many, so united, 
 so irresistible, that when once candidly faced 
 and truly appreciated, they must be accepted. 
 
82 THE FACTS OF FAITH 
 
 It is that Christicm who beholds this adaman- 
 tine foundation of facts which underiies his 
 faith, who remains undisturbed by all the re- 
 peated assaults of hostile criticism. 
 
 His faith is truly scientific, because he has 
 considered and given proper place to the facts 
 which bear upon the great- questions of re- 
 ligion. 
 
 He sees that wnbelief is anything but scienti- 
 ficy since it refuses a candid investigation of the 
 facts, and is, in its very nature, incapable of 
 appreciating them. 
 
 As for rival religionSy what have they to 
 show which can for a moment parallel the array 
 of facts which substantiate Christianity.? 
 
 Which of them has a BiblCy a Jesus Christ, and 
 a Church to put beside these great facts of the 
 Christian religion.? 
 
 Can you put Mohammed, the Koran, and their 
 Arabs and Turks beside Jesus, the Bible, and the 
 Christian Church, and think that they do not 
 suffer by comparison ? 
 
 It is but too evident what that religion has 
 done for its votaries, for the judgment of Chris- 
 tendom was long since coined into the phrase, 
 " the unspeakable Turk.'* 
 
 Carlyle expressed the sense of the civilized 
 world, regarding the most favorable view to take 
 
A FINAL SURVEY 83 
 
 of Moslemism, when he called it in his " Heroes 
 and Hero-Worship," " a kind of bastard Chris- 
 tianity." All that is true and good in it 
 filtered into it from Christianity, which was al- 
 ready nearly six centuries old when Mohammed 
 was bom. 
 
 As for the Koran, it is sufficient to say of it 
 that, compared with the " Arabian Nights En- 
 tertainment," the most, and almost the only, 
 widely-known book of Arabian authorship, it 
 is equally wild and fanciful, equally a work of 
 fiction. The stories it tells of Solomon are bor- 
 rowed fables from the Jewish Talmud. But 
 here its resemblance to the " Arabian Nights " 
 ends, for that is one of the world's favorite 
 story books, and the Koran is, perhaps, the 
 most stupid book in the world. " Insupportable 
 stupidity," says Carlyle, who is disposed to say 
 all the good he can of it ; and he adds, " it is 
 difficult to see how any mortal ever could con- 
 sider this Koran a book written in heaven. . . 
 or indeed as a book at all, and not a bewildered 
 rhapsody." 
 
 What other religion is worth mentioning as 
 a possible rival to that of Jesus.'' When Sir 
 Edwin Arnold's " Light of Asia " was pub- 
 lished, it was fancied by many that he had dis- 
 covered in Buddha another Jesus. But the 
 
84. THE FACTS OF FAITH 
 
 mirage he produced soon faded into nothingness, 
 leaving Jesus in his unapproachable glory. 
 
 Sir Edwin Arnold said, in effect, to a veteran 
 Christian missionary, the late Rev. Dr. William 
 Ashmore, who was his companion in a voyage 
 to the East, that he had had no idea of making 
 the " Light of Asia " the equal of the " Light of 
 the World," and considered one verse of the Ser- 
 mon on the Mownt as worth more than all the 
 sacred books of the Hindoos. 
 
 We are, then, and we cannot repeat it too 
 often or realize it too deeply, dealing with a 
 world of fact and reality when we are examining 
 the documents and credentials of the Christian 
 faith. 
 
 All other beliefs have little to show us except 
 the cloud-land of speculations, fables and fic- 
 tions. 
 
 It is not difficult to tell where fog and cloud 
 cease and solid earth begins. 
 
 It begins with the facts of Christian faith. 
 As we study them we feel that we tread on the 
 firm ground of truth and reality. 
 
 But wherefore? 
 
 For what purpose are foundations, but to 
 support superstructures ? 
 
 We lay foundations only because we desire 
 to rear enduring edifices upon them. 
 
A FINAL SURVEY 85 
 
 That deep and massive foundation, which is 
 the wonder of explorers at Jerusalem, was laid 
 that Solomon's magnificent Temple might be 
 based upon it. 
 
 When we have the facts of Christianity fully 
 in our possession, in all their solidity and cer- 
 tainty, we are inevitably impelled to rear upon 
 them the mugnvficent temple of Christian doc- 
 trine. 
 
 For we instinctively ask, what do these facts 
 mean? What truths do they imply? What 
 becomes evident from their existence? What do 
 they teach which it is important to understand? 
 
 When we have thought out our answers to 
 these questions we have discovered the doctrines 
 in which we must believe. When we have stated 
 our doctrines in words we have our Creed. 
 
 Let us not be alarmed at these terms! They 
 have been used to frighten people. The soph- 
 ists of this generation talk of " doctrine " and 
 " dogma " as not only useless and incumbrances, 
 but as if they are a kind of mental hydrophobia. 
 
 It is common in these days to hear the promise 
 of a new religion which is to be creedless. 
 
 They who make this promise do not realize 
 that it is non-sense, unworthy of an ordinary 
 mind, much less of one who claims to be able to 
 teach men. 
 
86 THE FACTS OF FAITH 
 
 To be creedless and without doctrine, a re- 
 ligion must be truthless and idea-less ; that is to 
 say, it must be thoughtless and senseless. It 
 must have no facts, for froTn facts spring doc- 
 trmes. 
 
 Politics has its doctrines, true and false. We 
 speak of the " Monroe doctrine," by which we 
 mean President Monroe's idea of the peculiar 
 relation of the United States to the other na- 
 tions of America. 
 
 That " all men are created free and equal " 
 is a doctrine of the Declaration of Independence. 
 
 That all government is rightfully " of the 
 people, for the people, and by the people " was 
 a favorite doctrine of President Lincoln. 
 
 Science has its doctrines, and always has had 
 them. Concerning the facts which it discovers 
 it asks, what do they teach.? The answers to 
 that question which it gives are its doctrines. 
 
 Sometimes they are true, and sometimes 
 false. 
 
 If they are false, it is either because they are 
 hastily made, before sufficient knowledge of 
 needed facts has been obtained, or because 
 human reason has been unable to comprehend 
 their real significance. 
 
 The fact that water will not rise in a pump 
 above thirty-two feet was supposed by Galileo 
 
A FINAL SURVEY 87 
 
 to teach the doctrine that " Nature abhors a 
 vacuum." This was to attribute thought and 
 feeling to the inanimate world, and Galileo 
 reahzed that is was • unsatisfactory ; but in the 
 lack of additional knowledge, it was the best 
 that he could da. 
 
 Torricelli conceived the idea that what sup- 
 ported the water in the pump was the weight of 
 the atmosphere, and partially proved it to be 
 true by his barometer, in which a column of 
 mercury, which is fourteen times heavier than 
 water, stands at a correspondingly low level. 
 
 Pascal reasoned that if the weight of the 
 atmosphere balances these columns at their re- 
 spective heights at the sea-level, when the barom- 
 eter is carried to the top of a mountain the 
 columns will fall a distance according to the 
 height of the mountain. This experiment being 
 tried and proving successful, the new doctrine 
 was established. Calculations made afterwards 
 settled the question of the approximate height 
 of the atmosphere. It had been imagined as ex- 
 tending to the moon, but was now found to be 
 practically limited to the height of fori:y-five 
 miles. 
 
 These illustrations may suffice to show how 
 doctrines spring from facts, and not facts from 
 doctrines. 
 
88 THE FACTS OF FAITH 
 
 Given a body of facts, and doctrines follow 
 as necessary consequences. We can escape the 
 doctrines only by refusing to look at the facts, 
 or by disproving the facts. 
 
 If we are willing to see them and cannot dis- 
 prove them, we naturally and necessarily come 
 to some conclusions regarding their significance. 
 These conclusions are doctrines. They are the 
 truths which we have learned from the facts 
 which we have found out. The statements of 
 these truths which we make to ourselves, and ac- 
 cept as established, are our creeds, political, sci- 
 entific or religious, according to the nature of 
 the facts on which they are based. 
 
 AU men mat/ be said to have a religious creed 
 of some kind. 
 
 Even the agnostic's denial, that he can know 
 anything about God, becomes his creed, his con- 
 clusion regarding the matter of religion ; and it 
 is a creed that determines his attitude toward 
 worship, prayer, Christ and the Church, equally 
 with that of the devout believer. 
 
 The facts of religion, moreover, have this pe- 
 culiarity, namely, that some conclusion mitst be 
 made, consciously or unconsciously, positively or 
 negatively, concerning them; since to reject 
 them, as well as to accept them or even to ignore 
 
A FINAL SURVEY ^ ' '^9' 
 
 them, is a conclusion by which duty as well as 
 destiny, good and evil, joy and sorrow, the aims 
 and purposes of Hfe, its possibilities, successes 
 and failures, are all 'determined. 
 
 The doctrines or politics of science are com- 
 paratively unimportant: we may leave them un- 
 settled and suffer no serious injury. 
 
 But the fact of an Incarnation, if it be proved, 
 cannot innocently or safely be left unconsidered. 
 A divine Revelation is not a fact about which 
 any one can afford to have no opinion. 
 
 Duty and destiny y and everything else belong- 
 ing to many are not the same thvng, whether these 
 arey or are noty facts. 
 
 If there be a Revelation it is because I need 
 one; and my voyage of life is safe or perilous, 
 and I make it with or without peace of mind, 
 as I am, or am not, conscious that I sail by my 
 chart or utterly neglect it. 
 
 Upon the facts of religion there can be, and 
 there ought to be, reared a super-structure of 
 doctrine which is to the soul a refuge, a fortress 
 and a home. It may be small and simple, like 
 an Esquimau's snow hut, but even that poor 
 house protects the inmate from winter storms and 
 Arctic cold. It may be large and elaborate, and 
 worthy to be called a system, for the materials 
 
W l*Hfi f'ACTS OF FAITH 
 
 are ample, and the constructive power of the 
 Christian mind is able to rear a Palace of Truth 
 which shall be both grand and beautiful. 
 
 Let Faith, then, know her facts! 
 
 Let her realize that they are facets, not fancies, 
 fictions or phantasms ! 
 
 Let her buMd upon them her house of rest! 
 
 And when the winds of dovbt blow, and the 
 floods of trovble come, the house will not fall, 
 
 FOE IT IS BUILT UPON A EOCK. 
 
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