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 / 
 

 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 • 
 
The Foundations: 
 
 A SERIES OP LECTURES 
 
 ON 
 
 THE EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN MONRO GIBSON, D.D., 
 
 AUTHOR OP "THE AGES BEFORE MOSES." 
 
 CHICAGO: 
 
 JANSEN, McCLURG & COMPANY. 
 
 1880. 
 
COPYRIGHT. 
 
 JANSEN, McCLURG & COMPANY. 
 A. D. 1880. 
 
 STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED 
 BY 
 THE CHICAQO LEGAL NEWS COMPANY. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The author of these Lectures is well aware that 
 ** of making many books " on the Evidences of Chris- 
 tianity " there is no end ; " but, neither does he see why 
 there should be, until there is an end of infidelity. 
 The present brief series makes no pretensions to fulness 
 of treatment, but it is hoped that its general method 
 and plan, which are believed to be new; its attempt to 
 deal with phases of unbelief which are specially promi- 
 nent at the present time ; and, above all, its brevity, 
 may secure it a field of usefulness, and realize, in some 
 measure, the expectations of those who have urged its 
 publication. 
 
 ■ ^ 
 
 Chicago, February, 1880. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 LBOTTJKB PAQB 
 
 I. Clearing the Ground 11 
 
 GOD IS. 
 
 II. The Witness Within 29 
 
 III. The Witness Without 43 
 
 Secotttr ^axt: CSe©Jief fflotnei; Stone, 
 
 GOD IN CHRIST, 
 
 rV". I\EVELATION OF GOD IN A HuMAN LiFE. 61 
 
 V. Credentials OF THE Christ 74 
 
 VI. Miracles op the Gospel 88 
 
 VII. The Resurrection 104 
 
8 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 GOD IN CHRIST MADE KNOWN BY THE 
 
 SPIRIT. 
 
 VIII. Revelation by the Spirit 123 
 
 IX. The Sixty- six Books 136 
 
 X. Tub One Book 164 
 
 <SoncIut)(ttfiarontta£tt: 
 
 THE TWO STRONGHOLDS. 
 
 • 
 
 XI. Tub Stronghold op Unbelief : A 
 
 Dogma 173 
 
 XII. The Stronghold op Faith : The 
 
 Christ op History 189 
 
23 
 36 
 54 
 
 3 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 9 
 
THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 LECTUEE I. 
 
 CLEARING THE GROUND. 
 
 1 
 
 Christianity is its own best evidence. Give us 
 more and more of real Christianity, and we shall 
 need less and less of its evidences. " Ye are my 
 witnesses," says Christ to His disciples. One truly 
 Christian life will do more to prove the divine origin 
 of Christianity than many lectures. Hence, it is of 
 much greater importance to develop Christian char- 
 acter than to exhibit Christian evidences. 
 
 But it is not right to neglect the other altogether. 
 Christianity is not merely a life, the beauty and 
 goodness of which ought to be made apparent by 
 living specimens. It is a history and a doctrine, 
 the truth of which ought to be made apparent, as in 
 the case of any history or any doctrine. It carries 
 with it a claim on the allegiance of all mankind, 
 
 (11) 
 
12 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 whicli claim ought by all means to be amply justi- 
 fied. Hence the importance of what are called the 
 evidences of Christianity. 
 
 The faith which the Bible claims is not blind 
 faith, but intelligent faith. "We are called upon to 
 prove all things, and to be ready always to give to 
 every man that asketh us a "reason of the hope that 
 is in us," and we cannot do this — the first not at all, 
 the other not thoroughly — ^without at least a gen- 
 eral knowledge of the foundations of our faith. 
 
 In these times especially, it is important that this 
 subject should be widely known. In former times 
 infidelity for the most part took the shape of simple 
 indifi^erence and cold neglect. Now it takes the 
 position of open hostility, and we ought to be ready 
 to meet it. Questions concerning the fundamentals 
 of religion are no longer confined to a few infidel 
 writers on the one side and a corresponding 
 number of theologians on the other. They are dis- 
 cussed throughout the whole compass of our litera- 
 ture. "We find such discussions in every issue of 
 all the first-class reviews, and in almost every issue 
 of the first -class newspapers. 
 
 If this be so, why add to the Babel of words? 
 Is not the subject quite enough discussed already? 
 But here is the difiicultv. Infidel writers have the 
 very easy task of presenting objections. Easy for 
 
 I 
 
CLEARING THE GROUND. 
 
 13 
 
 two reasons. First, an objection may be presented 
 in a sentence or two; the answer to it may re- 
 quire a column or a pa^e. It will be at once seen 
 what enormous advantage this gives in a news- 
 paper controversy to the anti-Christian side. But 
 besides this, an objection appeals to ignorance; the 
 answer to it must be founded on knowledge. How 
 much knowledge does it require to see the point of 
 such objections as those which Colonel IngersoU 
 brings against religious truth? Are not the most ig- 
 norant people the most apt to accept his travesties 
 as genuine arguments ? On the other hand, it requires 
 some familiarity with linguistic and literary and 
 historical, and even with theological studies, to be 
 able fairly to appreciate the answers to such objec- 
 tions even as these. 
 
 The evidences of Christianity are cumulative. 
 They consist of a vast mass, all converging to one 
 point, viz., the divine origin of Christianity. It is 
 obvious then. that it requires a quite extensive 
 knowledge to be able to appreciate the evidence in 
 its fulness and completeness. And it requires a 
 proportionate knowledge to be able to appreciate a 
 proportionate amount. You can easily see, then, what 
 an easy task an objector has with one who is almost 
 ignorant of the subject in its entirety. Tou are 
 standing hy the side of a great river. A dark mist 
 
u 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 is hanging over it, so tliat you cannot see the direc- 
 tion in which it is flowing. Close beside you, near 
 enough to see by peering down into it, your atten- 
 tion is called to a little stream flowing north. So 
 " the river flows north," you are told. " Yes, I 
 see it does." Yet all the while the majestic river 
 is flowing south, and that is only a little eddy. But 
 before you can be convinced that its course is really 
 southward, it will be necessary that the mist be 
 raised from a large part of the stream. If the mist 
 had not been there, if the broad expanse of the 
 stream had been full in your view, it would have 
 been impossible to lead you astray by pointing to 
 the little eddy. And so it is with many to whose 
 minds the little eddies of apparent contradiction are 
 so easily presented. If they only saw ths vast stream 
 of truth flowing majestically and mightily on, they 
 would not be disturbed by these little counter-cur- 
 rents. But they do not ; and the reason why they do 
 not is simply because they have never made them- 
 selves acquainted with the evidences. The subject 
 is too large ever to be presented at all comprehens- 
 ively even in the reviews, far less in the newspapers; 
 and as for books on the subject, few have the time, 
 even if they had the inclination, to read them. 
 
 The object of this course of lectures is to present, 
 in as brief and comprehensive a form as possible, a 
 
CLEARING THE GEOUND. 
 
 15 
 
 general view of this extensive subject, so as to sup- 
 ply for those who may need it, at least a framework on 
 which knowledge derived from subsequent reading 
 and reflection may be worked in ; and so as to show 
 that, though there are many questions about Chris- 
 tianity which it is hard, and some of which it may 
 be impossible, to answer, there are so many, many 
 things to be said in its favor that any reasonable 
 man who has them in view may " know the cer- 
 tainty" "of those things which are most surely be- 
 lieved among us." 
 
 All that I propose to do at present is to clear the 
 ground for the foundations, by ofibring some pre- 
 liminary considerations. Some of these have been 
 slightly referred to in what has already been said: 
 but they are of sufficient importance to justify an 
 articulate and distinct statement. 
 
 1. The subject does not admit of mathematical 
 demonstration. Is this an acknowledgment of 
 weakness, to begin with? By no means. Math- 
 ematical demonstration is out of the question in 
 all departments of real knowledge, i, e., our know- 
 ledge of persons and things. Its form is this : " Sup- 
 posing this to be so and so, then that will necessarily 
 follow." But it never can say: "This or that is so 
 and so." Every student of mathematics knows that 
 it is of no great consequence whether he draw his 
 
16 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 figure well or ill. His right-angled triangle may be 
 any number of degrees off the square, and his 
 straight lines may be very shaky and crooked. No 
 matter, the demonstration comes out all the same. 
 Why ? Because he is not demonstrating anything 
 about the figure actually before him, or any figure 
 that he knows to exist, but about a figure in his 
 mind constructed from a definition that has been 
 laid down in the beginning. All that he proves 
 is: ''Suppose the figure to be so and so, then so 
 and so will follow." When we have the liberty to 
 make our own premises, then of course we may 
 draw our conclusions with mathematical certainty; 
 but in dealing with realities we cannot make our 
 own premises; we must accept the facts as we 
 find them, and when we reach certainty it can- 
 not be mathematical, but what is called moral 
 certainty. Now the distinction between mathe- 
 matical and moral certainty lies here: mathemat- 
 ical certainty is the result of a single line of evi- 
 dence, of such a nature as to be irresistible to 
 any mind capable of following it. Moral certainty 
 is the result of a number of converging lines of evi- 
 dence, none of which may be absolutely convincing 
 in itself, but which taken together claim the belief of 
 reasonable men, and form a sufficient basis for duty. 
 Now, it is of great importance to remember that it 
 
CLEARING THE GROUND. 
 
 IT 
 
 is on moral and not on mathematical certainty that 
 all our substantial beliefs are founded. It is not 
 possible to demonstrate gravitation, yet we surely 
 believe it. It is not possible to demonstrate that 
 the sun will rise to-morrow, yet we surely expect it. 
 It is not possible to demonstrate that it is wrong to 
 steal, yet we do not scruple to punish the man that 
 does it. All that we ask in other departments of 
 thought and action is reasonable grounds for our 
 faith ; and why should we ask more in religion ? Let 
 us then, by all means, look for the converging lines 
 of moral demonstration, and not for any single line 
 of mathematical demonstration. 
 
 2. Our second consideration is the consequence 
 of the first. It is this : That we are by no means 
 bound to answer all the difficulties that may be pre- 
 sented as we travel along the different lines of proof. 
 In a mathematical demonstration there are no diffi- 
 culties and no room for objections. Why? Because 
 the whole question lies within such easy compass. 
 Dealing, as the demonstration does, not with real 
 things, but only with certain supposed cases origin- 
 ating in the mind itself, we are easily master«5 of the 
 whole field. We have the beginning, middle and 
 end of it within the compass of our own minds. 
 But as soon as we pass out of our own minds and 
 deal with real things, as in science, the case is en- 
 2 
 
18 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 
 tirely altered, as is apparent from the fact that, 
 while all good mathematicians agree, the best of 
 doctors may differ ; and what is true of the doc- 
 tors is true of all scientific men, as well as theolog- 
 ians. Now, the field which is covered by the Chris- 
 tian religion is as broad as the universe and as long 
 as eternity, for God, whom it reveals, is the Crea- 
 tor of all worlds, and His purposes, which it pro- 
 fesses in part to unfold, stretch far beyond the lim- 
 its of passing time. Kather a wide scope for objec- 
 tions, you see. And it would be passing strange if 
 even a feeble mind could not gather a sufficiently 
 formidable array. To answer all possible objections 
 would require omniscience. Let us never, there- 
 fore be so foolish as to undertake to solve all diffi- 
 culties. Never let what you do not know disturb 
 what you do know. Enough to have sufficient pos- 
 itive evidence for believing what we do believe, 
 without our troubling ourselves about answering 
 all the difficulties which lie along the line of our be- 
 lief. It must surely be a great mistake to allow an 
 appeal to our ignorance to have greater weight than 
 an appeal to our intelligence. Let us, then, not be 
 disturbed by difficulties, so long as our positive 
 proof is sufficiently strong. 
 
 3. Be careful to distinguish between links and 
 strands of evidence, and do not allow our strands 
 
 iiii. 
 
CLEARING THE GEOUND. 
 
 19 
 
 to be treated as if they were mere links. The 
 strength of a chain is the strength of its weakest 
 link. But the strength of a rope is not the strength 
 of its weakest strand. It is the united strength of 
 all of them. Here is a chain -cable warranted to 
 hold an ocean steamship. "Will it hold? Eight in 
 the middle of it is a weak link that would not bear 
 the strain of a single ton. No matter how strong 
 the other links may be, it is plain that tliat ca- 
 ble will not hold. Here again is a huge rope. 
 Will it hold? Suppose you take one of the many 
 fibres of which it is wrought and show it will not 
 bear tlie strain of one pound weight. Does that 
 prove the rope will not hold? By no means. It de- 
 pends on how many such fibres are wrought together 
 to make the one rope. !N"ow, if you consider for 
 a moment, you will see how unfair it would be, in 
 order to show that the rope would not hold, to take 
 each of its pieces separately, and say: There is 
 something in this strand, but not sufficient to bear 
 the strain, so it must be set aside: and so to go on 
 from strand to strand until the entire rope was con- 
 demned. But that is just the way that most infi- 
 del writers deal with the evidences of Christianity. 
 There are very many lines of proof. They take up 
 each line by itself, and while they cannot but admit 
 that there is some force in it, they say (and pos- 
 
20 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 I' 
 
 sibly they may be right in saying it sometimes) 
 that there is not force enough to bear the strain of 
 the mighty claim that Christianity makes on our 
 faith and allegiance. And what then ? Why, they 
 set it aside altogether, and, in dealing afterwards 
 with the other lines of evidence, they allow it no 
 force at all. Is not that glaringly unjust ? Remem- 
 ber I make no charge here, or anywhere else through- 
 out these lectures, of intentional dishonesty. There 
 are many who deal unfairly in their arguments who 
 are perfectly honest in their intent. But the unfair- 
 ness is r ne the less real on that account. 
 
 The illustration of the rope is good enough so far 
 as it goes, but it does not go far enough, as a 
 moment's thought will show, A rope of say three 
 equal strands has three times the strength of e*».ch of 
 them. But has a three-fold line of evidence just 
 three times the strength of each line? No; it has 
 immeasurably more. Take the simple case of in- 
 dependent witnesses. The testimony of one man 
 gives a certain degree of probability. Does the 
 testimony of a second quite independent witness 
 only double the probability? No; it indefinitely in- 
 creases it. And if a third independent witness should 
 testify to the same fact, we should in all ordinary 
 cases accept it as conclusive. Now consider whether 
 it would be fair to say, " The first man may be mis- 
 
 i^ 
 
CLEARING THE GROUND. 
 
 21 
 
 taken, or may be untruthful, bo you cannot accept 
 his statement as settling the matter, and accordingly 
 he must be set aside;" and then, having disposed 
 of the second and third in precisely the same way, 
 to sum up by saying: "I have proved that not 
 one of all the three viritnesses is conclusive, so your 
 case is dismissed." Is there a lawyer in all the land 
 that would justify such treatment of evidence? Yet 
 it is done all the time in dealing with the many 
 independent lines of Christian evidence; and we 
 must not allow it. 
 
 4. "Where the links in the evidence are success- 
 ive, be sure to take them in the right order. A 
 pyramid is the most stable of all structures ; but 
 even a pyramid will not stand upon its apex. The 
 most skilful builder cannot build a house by be- 
 ginning at the second story. Now, it is true that 
 those who wait upon the Lord may "mount up 
 with wings as eagles," and so there are multitudes 
 of Christians who have attained to the very heights 
 of Christian experience without climbing up the 
 stairway of the Christian evidences. But when we 
 wish to exhibit the solidity of the Christian temple, 
 we must begin at the foundation and go up by 
 plain and strong steps. You will find persons that 
 are foolish enough to stake the entire system of 
 Christianity on the interpretation of some partic- 
 
22 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 iilar text of Scripture. "When somo old idea that 
 lias long been attached to it has been exploded, 
 they begin to tremble as if the very foundations 
 were giving way. The foundation of their faith 
 was the verbal inspiration of the entire Bible, from 
 the beginning of Genesis to the end of Revelation, 
 so that a doubt attaching to a sentence or even a 
 sinorle word is sufficient to fill them with alarm. 
 Now it is quite evident that this is not a desirable 
 position for any one to hold. I here pronounce no 
 opinion on the question of the nature or degree of 
 inspiration. I only object to this or any theory of 
 inspiration being made the foundation on which 
 the whole structure of Christianity is supposed to 
 rest, the ultimate fiict beyond which we cannot go. 
 There are three main stages in the inquiry before 
 us. There is, first, the being of God ; second, the 
 revelation of God in Christ ; and last, the record 
 of that revelation by the Holy Spirit in the sacred 
 Scriptures. I^ow, it is true that, in a certain sense, 
 the last is first and the first last. We open the 
 Scriptures to learn of Christ, and we study Christ 
 to know God. The Holy Spirit is the way to 
 the Son, and the Son is the way to the Father. 
 "Through Him we all have access by one Spirit to 
 the Father." But in building the foundations, it 
 will not do to invert the order. The existence of 
 
 ■-■ A- 
 '■A 
 
CLEARING THE GROUND. 
 
 88 
 
 God must be a settled matter before you raise the 
 question whether lie revealed Himself in Christ. 
 And so, too, wo must find some evidence that 
 Christ was what He claimed to be, before we can 
 be assured of the certain truth of what lie said 
 about the Holy Spirit and the sacred Scriptures. 
 
 The true order then is God, Christ, the Bible. 
 And that is the order we propose to follow in these 
 lectures. It will be understood from what we have 
 said concerning the vast range of the subject, that 
 we have no idea of being able to present it in 
 its completeness. All we can do is to give an 
 indication of the kind of argument by which the 
 truth of Christianity is made apparent to those who 
 honestly and earnestly inquire into it. We shall 
 first show some of the reasons for believing that 
 God exists. At this stage of the inquiry the Bible 
 will not be used as evidence at all. We shall next 
 show some of the reasons for believing that God has 
 revealed Himeelf in His Son Christ Jesus. At this 
 stage of the inquiry, the books, which when bound 
 together are called the Bible, will be used, but sim- 
 ply as books by human authors, and, dealt with ac- 
 cording to the laws of evidence. We shall not beg 
 the question of their inspiration. We shall then 
 show some of the reasons for believing that we have 
 a record of this revelation and of all that it is nee- 
 
24 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 II 
 
 essary for us to know in regard to the preparations 
 for it and results of it, a record which is not 
 only generally correct, but on which we can rely 
 because the men to whom we are indebted for it 
 spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. Af- 
 ter honestly and candidly pursuing such a line of 
 inquiry as this, we believe a candid mind should 
 have no difficulty in reaching an intelligent convic- 
 tion that the Scriptures of the Old and New Tes- 
 taments are really "given by inspiration of God 
 and are profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for cor- 
 rection, for instruction in righteousness;" and when 
 we reach this point, the evidences of Christianity 
 have fully served their end. Tlie foundation s firmly 
 laid, we are ready to enter the temple and worship. 
 
 Eemember, however, in conclusion, that while it 
 is very desirable to be acquainted with the evi- 
 dences of Christianity, both in order to prove all 
 things for ourselves that we may " hold fast that 
 which is good," and also that we may be able to 
 " give to ever}'' man a reason for the hope that is in 
 us," it is not necessary to know them in order to 
 know Christ and be assured of His salvation. There 
 is the sure and easy path of personal experience, 
 which is open to all. It may take a learned man to 
 set forth the reasons why bread is good, but a hun- 
 gry man need not wait till the lecture is done before 
 
CLEARING THE GROUND, 
 
 25 
 
 he tries it. " O taste and see that God is good." 
 And yet there is one thing more, the unspeak- 
 able importance of the spirit in which you approach 
 this subject, whether by way of the evidences or 
 by the way of personal trial. You must come in 
 the spirit of " meekness and fear." F^'rst, meek- 
 ness. If you are vain in your own conceit, all will 
 be vain. The gate of the kingdom is humility. 
 And then, fear. It must be in no light and trifling 
 spirit that you come. It is for your life. Come, 
 then, in meekness and fear. Seek humbly and 
 earnestly, and you will not seek in vain. 
 
FIRST PART. 
 
 THE BED ROCK, 
 
H 
 
LECTUEE II. 
 
 THE WITNESS WITHIN. 
 
 The Being of God is the underlying foundation 
 of all religion. "We propose, accordingly, to begin 
 by giving some of the many reasons for believing 
 that God is. This is, at present, the thick of the 
 fight between the believer and the unbeliever. In 
 former times, among English-speaking people, the 
 alternative was Deism or Christianity. Infidelity 
 meant the rejection of Christ, while the belief in 
 God was supposed still to remain, and to be all- 
 sufficient for religious purposes. But the deistic 
 position is now practically abandoned. It is aban- 
 doned entirely by the leaders, and, though a good 
 many of the rank and file of infidelity hold the old 
 position still, they hold it in a very vague kind of 
 way, and make no attempt worth speaking of to 
 defend it. The great question is not now as be- 
 tween God in Christ and God out of Christ, God in 
 the world and God out of the world, but between 
 God and no God; or to put it more accurately, be- 
 
 (29) 
 
30 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 tween those who say that the heavens and the earth, 
 and all that are in them declare the glory of God, 
 and those who leave it an entirely open question 
 whether there be a God or not. Plence the special 
 importance, in these times, of this part of the argu- 
 ment. 
 
 Hemember at the outset that the claim to know 
 God does not mean to comprehend Him. We do 
 not even comprehend one another. We know one 
 another, and even ourselves, only in part. But, 
 though I may know you only very partially, that 
 is no reason for doubting that I know your exist- 
 ence, and something about you besides. You see 
 how careful the Apostle is in this regard. He says, 
 "That which maybe known of God, is manifest," 
 implying that there is very much we may not 
 know; but that casts no discredit whatever on the 
 little we do know. 
 
 But, though our means of knowing God are nec- 
 essarily limited, yet the subject is so extensive that 
 it would be presumptuous to attempt, after any 
 fashion, anything like a complete presentation of 
 it. All we can hope to do is to indicate the main 
 lines of evidence, and give some idea of the manner 
 In which each of them contributes to the conclu- 
 jion, which all of them taken together render 
 
 abundantly certain. 
 
THE WITNESS WITHIN. 
 
 31 
 
 The knowledge of God is borne in upon us on 
 every side of our many-sided nature. We are bound 
 to the great Author of our being by a manifold cord 
 which, if carefully analyzed, would be found to 
 consist of very many strands. But as our limits 
 forbid any attempt at minute analysis, we propose 
 to consider the cable as consisting of four great 
 strands. Whether or not there be any suggestive- 
 ness in the four-fold distribution of the powers with 
 which we are called upon to worship God, " Thou 
 shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and 
 with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and 
 with all thy mind," we shall not, I think, go far 
 astray, if we say that in man's complex nature we 
 can distinguish intellect, conscience, heart, and soul 
 (the meaning of the dubious word " soul" to be after- 
 ward explained). Each one of these has its own 
 witness to the being of God. 
 
 ]^ow, before we examine the witnesses, let us see 
 if we know anything as to their truthfulness. If 
 the testimony be clear, can we accept it as true? 
 It seems to me that the only possible answer is, 
 that w^e must. If our very nature is a lie, it is of no 
 use to inquire after truth on any subject whatever. 
 We must then accept as trustworthy the faculties 
 with which we find ourselves endowed, and which are 
 the only means we have of ascertaining truth. And 
 
32 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 be it remembered this applies to them all alike. It is 
 evidently irrational to suppose that we may dis- 
 credit one part of our nature and be quite sure of 
 another. Of course every part of our nature is liable 
 to error. But this error to which we are liable can- 
 not be supposed to come from our original constitu- 
 tion, else it would be impossible ever to recognize 
 it as error, and equally impossible to correct it. 
 We may err through ignorance, or through careless- 
 ness, or through weakness; but we cannot suppose 
 that the source of the error can lie in the faculty 
 itself, for to suppose this would be to render knowl- 
 edge on any -siibject utterly uncertain. This is 
 generally admitted so far as the intellect is con- 
 cerned. Notwithstanding the many errors of think- 
 ing into which all men are apt to fall, hardly any 
 ever suppose tliat the laws of thinking are a delu- 
 sion and a snare. We must accept as true, that 
 which the intellect decides to be true, inasmuch as 
 there are no other possible means of deciding it. 
 But the very same principle applies to the decisions 
 of the conscience and of the heart. There are many 
 of those who have absolute confidence in the human 
 intellect, who have little faith in the conscience, and 
 none in the heart. But is it not as plain as day, 
 that if we are so constituted that our conscience will 
 lie to us, it is just as likely that our intellect will 
 
THE WITNESS WITHIN. 
 
 83 
 
 do the same? If the love which we find in our 
 hearts be a delusion and a snare, why may not the 
 laws of logic, which we find in our mental constitu- 
 tion, be equally a delusion and a snare? The man 
 who will meditate a lie will look a lie; and if he 
 can look a lie he may also act a lie; and if he can 
 act a lie you cannot trust him not to tell a lie. If 
 a man is a liar at all, you cannot trust him in any- 
 thing. And so is it with our faculties. We must 
 trust them all, or we cannot put confidence in any 
 of them. 
 
 "We shall begin with the witness of the heart. 
 Here we find deep-rooted in our nature a sense of 
 dependence on a Superior Being, and certain affec- 
 tional longings and aspirations reaching out toward 
 Him. Augustine but expressed the sentiment of 
 humanity, except in so far as it has been overlaid 
 by sin or starved by neglect, when he said: *' Thou 
 hast made the heart for Thyself, and it is ever rest- 
 less until it finds its rest in Thee." As a rule, 
 our infidel friends are not disposed to contradict ns 
 here. They say: "All right; that is just where 
 religion belongs; it is a matter of sentiment, of 
 emotion." And by saying this they think they 
 hav^^ cast some doubt upon its reality. Xow, it is 
 true tii.at pur passing sentiments and emotions can 
 never be a standard of reality; but to say that a 
 3 
 
84 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 deep-seated abiding sentiment of the human heart 
 is a falseliood, is to impeach our entire nature, and 
 make it impossible to trust any part of it. What 
 if this deep-rooted sense of relation to a Superior 
 Being be, as it is sometimes called, a mere instinct; 
 is that any reason why we are to suppose it a lie? 
 Is it a common thing for instincts to lie? Do you 
 know of a single case in which instinct in the 
 animal kingdom has been proved to be a lie? Then 
 what good ground have you for supposing that " the 
 instinct of prayer," if it be only an instinct, is a 
 lie? 
 
 There have been those who have felt the power 
 of this witness to be so great that they considered 
 it not only sufficient to stand alone without support 
 from any other, but evc/i against what seemed the 
 contradiction of all the others. Tliis is the kev-note 
 of a large part of Tennyson's " In Memoriam," as, 
 for example, in this passage: 
 
 ** If e'er, when Faith had fallen asleep, 
 I heard a voice, ' Believe no more,* 
 And heard an ever- breaking* shoro 
 That tumbled in the Godless deep; 
 
 A warmth within the breast would melt 
 
 The freezing reason's colder part; 
 
 And, like a man in wrath, the heart 
 Stood up and answered, ' I have felt.' '* 
 
TUE WITNESS WITHIN. 
 
 85 
 
 And yet it is quite common for infidel writers to 
 treat the witness of the heart as not onlv of no 
 force at all, but as rather tending to discredit tlie 
 reality of that which it attests! Whether that be 
 a rational mode of procedure I am quite willing to 
 to leave to your good judgment. I have faith, you 
 see, in the trustworthiness of your faculties. 
 
 Take next the witness of the soul. Let me ex- 
 plain what I mean by soul. If you and your dog 
 stand on "Table Eock" and look off at Niagara, 
 the two pairs of eyes probably see much alike. But 
 if you be a man of any soul, j^ou will see immeasur- 
 ably more than your dog sees. I am not denying 
 that in a certain sense a dog has a soul. That is a 
 mere matter of the meaning of the w^ord. The soul 
 I am speaking of now, is what the dog has not, and 
 you have. Perhaps we might have called it imag- 
 ination, but BO many people think that the imagin- 
 ation has only to do with imaginary things, that 
 its associations are misleading. AVhat we refer to 
 is that faculty which recosjnizes the beautiful and 
 sublime in nature, images the perfect in life, and 
 takes hold, so to speak, of the skirt of the Infinite. 
 That this is a hona fide faculty of the human soul 
 no one will deny, though on account of sadly pre- 
 valent neglect and starvation it is reduced to very 
 small dimensions in most men. Still*, it is a facul- 
 
 i 
 
86 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 I 
 
 ty of the Boul, aiulj as such, we cannot supposo it to 
 bo an utter delusion. There luive been skeptics 
 who have been bold enough to say so. One, in 
 particular, has gone the length of casting ridicule 
 on men's admiration of the starry heavens, which 
 he characterizes as a "luminous eruption, no more 
 worthy of wonder than an eruption in man, or a 
 swarm of flies;" but I doubt if any of us is so hope- 
 lessly prosaic as to agree to this. Now, unless this 
 feeling of wonder and awe be entirely false and 
 misleading, it must point us to One above us, in 
 whom all .our ideals are realized and always abide. 
 I know that to most people this witness is but a 
 faint one, but it is not from any defect in itself, but 
 simply because this is a part of our nature that is 
 more neglected than any other. 
 
 On the other hand, here again, as in the former 
 case, you will find minds that can rest in it, as in it- 
 self all sufficient and irresistible. As an illustra- 
 tion, read once more Coleridge's " Hymn before 
 Sunrise in the Yalley of Chamonix." By the bye, 
 what utter nonsense that much admired hymn must 
 be, if there is no force in this witness of the soul 
 to God! ' 
 
 "We come, in the third place, to the witness of the 
 conscience, with its irresistible conviction of obli- 
 gation and responsibility. Obedience is due to 
 
THE WITNESS WITHIN. 
 
 87 
 
 
 superiors; and why iim I summoned to obey, if 
 there be no Superior IJeing to whom my obedienco 
 is due? AVhy do I talk of responsibility if there 
 is no one to answer to? Can it be that my very 
 conscience, the best of me, is a lie? 
 
 Here, again, there have been those among our 
 most distinguished philosophers who have rested 
 the evidence for the being of God on this alone. 
 Kant is probably the most illustrious of these. By 
 his critical philosophy he was led to discredit the 
 other witneisses, but when he came to this witness, 
 he found it absolutely invulnerable to criticism, 
 and announced it accordingly as a sufficient basis 
 for faith, even though all the others were silenced. 
 "We believe that his critical method was unfairly 
 oritical, and that, after all his criticisms, the evidence 
 of all the witnesses stands as good as ever; but it 
 is something to know that such unsparing, relentless 
 criticism was powerless to weaken in the slightest 
 degree, even in his own estimation, the mighty 
 witness of Conscience to the being of God. 
 
 We take the witness of the intellect last, because 
 it is the most important; not, indeed, on account 
 of any admitted superiority of the intellect to the 
 other faculties of the soul, but because the great 
 bulk of the discussion is carried on in this region. 
 And here we shall pass by the so-called a jpriori 
 
38 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 proofs, because it is only those who are well ac- 
 customed to abstract metaphysical discussions who 
 can appreciate the force that may be in them. And 
 there is great abundance without them. 
 
 It is one of the laws of our intellectual nature 
 that we cannot tliink of any tiling beginning to ex- 
 ist without a cause. We are continually inquiring 
 into the causes of things. And we are making large 
 progress in the discovery of causes. But all the 
 causes we have yet discovered by our search are 
 themselves effects. They, in their turn, began to 
 exiKi] and hence a cause must be sought for them 
 too, And so the mind is led back, and back, and can 
 find no rest until it reaches the great first Cause. 
 The only way to escape the force of this reasoning is 
 to hold the eternity of the universe; to deny that the 
 universe, as a whole, ever began to exist; in which 
 case it is not necessary to seek a cause back of the 
 universe itself. But besides the great difficulty of 
 believing that, the universe of matter is eternal, it 
 cannot be denied that the recent investigations of 
 science aH point in the direction of a beginning. 
 The evidences against the eternity of the universe 
 are multiplying every year, and strengthening the 
 necessity for a great first Cause " in the beginning." 
 
 Now the only way possible for us to conceive of 
 a first cause at all clearly is to regard it as will — 
 
THE WITNESS WITHIN. 
 
 39 
 
 the will of a free agent. "We have said that the 
 causes which science discloses are all tlieniselves 
 effects. But there is one set of causes, and only 
 one that we know, that have no appearance of being 
 effects, that have all the look of originality about 
 them. These are acts of wnll. Whatever you do 
 of your own will, without any external compulsion, 
 is a cause simply, so far as you know it. What is 
 the cause of this book rising from the table? The 
 hand that holds it. What raises the hand? The 
 arm. What raises the arm ? The muscles. What 
 contracts the. muscles? The nerves. What stimu- 
 lates the nerves? The brain. What sets the brain 
 in motion? The will. That is the end of the se- 
 ries. You can go no further. The only first cause 
 of which we have any knowledge is will. And 
 lience we are constrained by the law of our intel- 
 lectual constitution, if w^e take it for our guide (and 
 we have no other), to conceive of the great first 
 Cause, as Will in action. " He spake, and it was 
 done; He commanded, and it stood fast." 
 
 Again, we are constrained by a law of our intel- 
 lectual constitution, not only to demand a cause for 
 everything that begins to exist, but to demand an 
 adequate cause. Out of nothing, nothing comes. 
 And if only a part of an effect can be attributed to 
 any particular cause, we cannot rest till the remain- 
 der of the effect is accounted for also. Hence it 
 
 ii 
 
 ill 
 
 4 
 
 i! 
 
40 
 
 7:he foundations. 
 
 follows that, inasmuch as there is life in the uni- 
 verse, the great first Cause must be a living cause. 
 And this is altogether irrespective of the question 
 as to whether it is possible to get life produced by 
 a process of nature out of dead matter. I do not 
 believe it will ever be done. But even supposing it 
 was found that among the wonderful evolutions of 
 nature must be included the development of dead 
 matter into living organisms, we should simply 
 have to alter our conceptions of the so-called dead 
 matter. It might still have the appearance of dead 
 matter; but if it were possible for life to be got out 
 of it, there must be life in it t^omehow, however 
 deep down in its being and far bid from our eyes it 
 might be. Out of notliing, nothing comes. And 
 if anything be absolutely and totally dead, you 
 cannot get life out of it. You can conceive of a 
 living agent putting life into dead matter, but it is 
 clearly impossible to get life out of it in any shape, 
 if there were not life in it previously in some shape. 
 Hence, in any event, it is utterly impossible to es- 
 cape the conclusion that the first cause of the uni- 
 verse must have been a living cause. And accord- 
 ingly even the strictest materialists, when they 
 think at all clearly on the subject, attribute to the 
 original atoms at least the " promise and potency" 
 of life. So you see the choice is not between a liv- 
 ing cause and a dead cause, but between one living 
 
THE WITNESS WITHIN. 
 
 41 
 
 cause and countless millions of living causes. And 
 whether it is more rational to assume one really liv- 
 ing God or countless millions of potentially living 
 atoms, as the great first cause of the system of 
 things in which we live, I think I may leave a can- 
 did mind to judge. 
 
 Furthermore, this same law of our intellectual 
 constitution constrains us to seek an intelligent 
 cause. Here we might argue back from the fact 
 of intelligent existence, just as we have been doing 
 from the fact of life. In the same w^ay, as the atoms 
 must have been potentially living before it was pos- 
 sible that life could have been evolved out of them, 
 so they must have been potentially intelligent be- 
 fore intelligence could have been evolved out of 
 them. There must always be involution before there 
 can be evolution ; and the question still remains, if 
 the atoms are possessed of even potential life and 
 intelligence, where did that potential life and intel- 
 ligence come from? And here a<i:ain the alterna- 
 tive is between one living, intelligent God, and 
 millions upon millions of potentially living and 
 intelligent atoms as the great first cause of the uni- 
 verse. 
 
 But besides the fact of intelligent life, there are, 
 also, the marks of intelligence all over creation. 
 Here we come to the great " argument from design," 
 as it has been called. But this covers so vast afield 
 
 f-iS 
 
 i] 
 
 ■'4 
 
42 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 that we must reserve it for separate consideration. 
 There the evidences for the being of God are so 
 multitudinous that no one wlio has even a small 
 fraction of them clearly in view, without being 
 mystified by the sophisms of those who have tried 
 to obscure their meaning and destroy their force, 
 can fail to be thoroughly convinced. This we hope 
 to see clearly in next lecture. . 
 
 Meanwhile let us see where we are. "We have 
 had the testimony of the heart, the testimony of the 
 soul, the testimony of the conscience, the testimony 
 of the intellect — all pointing in the one direction. 
 Each of these witnesses alone has been found suf- 
 ficient by some of the greatest and best men that 
 ever lived. And what shall we say of the strength 
 of the evidence when all the four are found to con- 
 verge to the same result ! Eem ember what we 
 found in regard to the nature of evidence — that the 
 second independent witness far more than doubles, 
 and the third immeasurably more than trebles, the 
 strength of the evidence. And here we have four, 
 not one of which can be impeached in truthfulness 
 without making our nature a lie and the certain 
 knowledge of anything an impossibility. May we 
 not, tlien, assuredly believe that God is, and shall 
 we not worship and honor and love Him with all 
 
 our heart and soul and strength and mind? 
 
LECTUEE III. 
 
 THE WITNESS WITHOUT. 
 
 "We have had the evidence for the existence of 
 God from our spiritual constitution, and we have 
 found there at least four independent witnesses: 
 tl ^ heart, the soul, the conscience, and the intel- 
 lect. We now look out into the wide Universe to 
 see what we can find there. And as soon as we 
 open our eyes upon the great world without us, wo 
 recognize what seem to be unmistakable signs of a 
 designing and controlling mind everywhere. "We 
 do not need to go further than our own bodies for 
 evidence which is quite irresistible to the unsophis- 
 ticated. Study tlie eye, the ear, the hand, any part 
 of that curious and most complicated mechanism 
 which brings us into relation to the outer world, 
 and the evidence is already complete. Then you 
 may consider the body as a whole, with the wonder- 
 ful mutual adaptations of its various parts. You 
 may then think of the relation of these bodies of 
 ours to their environment : to the air which we 
 
 (43) 
 
u 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 breathe, the light by which we see, the food we eat, 
 the water we drink, the earth on which we tread, 
 and so on through innumerable relations, every one 
 of which in its accuracy of adaptation is a separate 
 evidence of the consummate wisdom of Him whose 
 thought it expresses. And if in our own bodies 
 we see such overwhelming evidences of design, 
 what shall we say of the tens of thousands of species 
 of living creatures with which the earth is peopled, 
 every one of which is a study in itself? "What 
 shall we say of the innumerable varieties of plants, 
 every one of them a closely-packed volume of 
 thought ? What shall we say of the wonders which 
 science has revealed to us of the action and inter- 
 action of the great forces of nature, such as gravi- 
 tation, heat and electricity — of the endless varia- 
 tions and combinations of matter, from the invisi- 
 ble atom and molecule to the vast mass of the 
 planets and suns which the spectroscope has proved 
 to be made up of the same elements with which we 
 on earth are so familiar ; and of the great laws of 
 order by which these tremendous forces, and these 
 huge masses, and those most delicate and fragile or- 
 ganisms are all so regulated, and controlled, and 
 related to each other, that the vast system is no 
 chaos but a true cosmos? What more can we say 
 with our larger view than was said of old : " O 
 
THE WITNESS WITHOUT. 
 
 45 
 
 Lord, how manifold are Thy works ! In wisdom 
 hast Thou made them all; the earth is full of Thy 
 riches?" 
 
 To those who are not acquainted with the direc- 
 tion of recent discussions on the subject, it will no 
 doubt seem very strange that any sane mind should 
 question the force of such evidences as these. But, 
 such is the ingenuity of modern skepticism that, 
 though new investigations are continually adding 
 to the vast multitude of the evidences, yet there 
 never was a time when the conclusions i;o which 
 they point have been more obstinately doubted. 
 Clouds of sophistry have been raised, and the vision 
 of many has been sadly obscured. And the task 
 for him who would present the evidence, is not to 
 multiply illustrations — this is done as eflfectively 
 as could be desired by some of those who reject the 
 conclusion, as for example, in some of the fascina- 
 ting studies of Charles Darwin — but to clear away 
 those clouds of sophistry in which the entire subject 
 has been enveloped. This is what we shall now at- 
 tempt to do. 
 
 Remember, first, that you can not get rid of in- 
 tention in the doing of a thing by showing how it 
 is done. Even after we have Earned all about the 
 way in which a watch is constructed, it is quite as 
 evident as before, that it was constructed for a pur- 
 
 ! II 
 
 au-CK-rrm-ij^ 
 
46 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 pose, and that it would never have been, unless 
 there previously had been a mind to design it. 
 And even supposing some wonderfully complex 
 machine were invented which dispensed with all 
 need of watch-making skill; that all that was 
 necessary was to feed it with pieces of gold and 
 steel, etc., and watches would come out at the other 
 end; would that prove that the watch was not the 
 product of intelligence? By a certain sophistry it 
 could be made to appear so. '• You see that boy 
 who is putting the metal into the receiver? Well, 
 he has scarcely an idea in his head. He has no 
 more idea of the mechanism of a watch than a dog 
 has. Yet you say the watches he is making are the 
 product of intelligence ! " The fallacy is very trans- 
 parent. It seems to need little intelligence if you 
 take for granted the system of things ready to the 
 boy's hand. But when you ask how came that 
 system there, you find that in order to explain it, 
 you require to assume not only the intelligence 
 which is expressed in the watch itself, but that 
 which is expressed in the complicated machine by 
 which all the parts are put together without the 
 need of any further skill in the process. Suppose 
 now, finally, that a machine were constructed that 
 did not even need feeding, that could select and 
 attract its own materials and carry on the whole 
 
THE WITNESS WITHOUT. 
 
 4T 
 
 process without either an engineer or even a boy to 
 attend to it. Would you say that the watches 
 made by such a machine were produced without 
 intelligence? Is it not evident that the more you 
 dispense with the skill of an artificer in the pro- 
 cess, the more need is there for a high degree of 
 intelligence in the original invention? I have 
 chosen the good old watch illustration, just because 
 it has been so much objected to. It has been 
 objected to as leading to a pitiable *' carpenter 
 theory" of the world, as Herbert Spencer calls it, 
 as if the Deity were some great man standing out- 
 side of his work, and making it as a carpenter 
 makes a chair or a watchmaker a watch. And the 
 objectors suppose that as soon as they have shown 
 that the work is not done from without, but as it 
 wore from within, — that as soon as they have shown 
 an array of blind forces busily at work producing 
 the result without intelligence, they have got rid 
 of the argument altogether; whereas the simple 
 truth is, they have only added so much to its force. 
 It is not so immediately apparent, b^^«use the 
 forces which you see actually working are unintel- 
 ligent; but very little reflection is needed to make 
 it evident that back of these unintelligent forces 
 there must have been a designing mind that set the 
 whole train in operation. ; ' 
 
 %i ■■■ 
 
 1 [. 
 
 n. 
 
 -5 1 
 
48 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 " Suppose, now, we drop the illustration of a watch 
 and take, instead, an apple. An apple certainly 
 looks as if it were something more than a chance 
 combination of particles of matter. It looks as it 
 the diiferent parts of it were adapted to each other, 
 and as if the whole of it were intended for some 
 use or uses). Now how does it affect the question 
 to sh6w tliat the apple is the product of certain un- 
 intelligent forces in the tree itself? It only shows 
 that the tree needs to be accounted for as well as 
 the apple. And how does it affect the question to 
 know that this wonderful apple-making machine 
 (for it is this, though it is much more than this) 
 feeds itself and runs itself ? The only difference it 
 makes is that the self-feeding and self-running have 
 to be added to the evidences of intelligence in the 
 whole phenomenon. 
 
 IS^ow apply this to Prof. TyndalPs famous at- 
 tempt to construct (in tli^ory) the eye by means of 
 the action of light, causing first a slight bulging of 
 the epidermis, and then " through the operation of 
 infinite adjustments" at length reaching the " per- 
 fection it displays in the hawk and the eagle." 
 Most unsophisticated people would think it a most 
 absurd attempt to explain the formation of the eye. 
 But even supposing it were quite correct, would it 
 take away the evidence of an intelligent mind in 
 
THE WITNESS WITHOUT. 
 
 49 
 
 desi<ijning and producing the eye ? What about 
 the life, and light, and the many complex conditions 
 wliich he classes together as environment, all which 
 he needs to start with ? Give me the right kind of 
 material and the right kind of environment, and I 
 will make watches without any effort of mind quite 
 as well as Prof. Tyndall can make eyes. And then 
 after he gets the right kind of material and the 
 right kind of force and the right kind of environ- 
 ment, he still needs further, "infiniteadjustmen.s." 
 I use liis own phrase "infinite adjustments." 
 Where does he get any adjustments if, as he holds, 
 nothing is adjusted ? Ah ! these words "environ- 
 ment" and "adjustment" are very convenient. 
 They seem to be so simple. They seem to make a 
 thing so plain. Whereas they really leave tlie 
 problem as complex as ever, and as much as ever 
 in need of intelligence to account for it. And yet 
 how many unreasoning people are there who think 
 that Prof. Tyndall has accounted for the wonderful 
 mechanism of the eye without any intelligent cause 
 by saying that it is due to infinite adjustments, by 
 an adjusted light, upon an adjusted epidermis, in an 
 adjusted environment ! Is it not manifest that there 
 is nothing in all these phrases but a fog of sophistry, 
 and that the evidence which the eye furnishes of intel- 
 lis-ence in the Creator is left as stroniT as ever? 
 
 11 
 
 hi' 
 
 i 
 
 't 
 
 v'- 
 
50 
 
 THE FO UxXD ATIONS. 
 
 Itcineuibcr, in the second ])laco, that jou can not 
 explain complexity by putting it so far away that 
 you can no longer discern it. A considerable de- 
 gree of skill is required to construct a great balloon. 
 And as you look at it upon the ground, it is quite a 
 complex mechanism. But after it has sailed away up 
 until it is nearly out of sight you lose sight of all the 
 complexity of its construction, and, for all you can 
 see, it would require no skill to make it. But 
 no one in his senses would say that as soon as it got 
 nearly or quite out of sight all evidence of intelli- 
 gence in its construction was gone. We shall see 
 presently how the illustration applies. Here is the 
 evolution theory as given by Tyndall: "Not only 
 the more ignoble forms of animalcular or animal life, 
 not alone the noble forms of the horse and the lion, 
 not alone the exquisite and wonderful mechanism 
 of the human bodv, but the human mind itself — 
 emotion, intellect, will, and all their phenomena — 
 were once latent in a fiery cloud." Now apart 
 altogether from the probability or improbability of 
 that theory, consider a moment whether it really 
 accounts for the complexity of the universe. It 
 seems to do it. A cloud is to our notion a very 
 simple thing. But what of this evolution cloud? 
 I do not refer merely to its being fiery. That is a 
 very slight addition to its complexity. But think 
 
 A 
 
 I 'I 
 
\ 
 
 
 THE WITNESS WITHOUT. 
 
 61 
 
 of the infinity of things that are in it. They are 
 
 ther 
 
 But what does latent 
 
 "latent 
 
 mean ? Lying hid. They are all there, only wo 
 can not see them. Does the fact that wo can not 
 see them get rid of them? By no means. The 
 latent complexity of the far-away balloon is as real 
 as the patent complexity of the near one. And the 
 latent complexity of the evolutionist's fiery cloud is 
 as real as the patent complexity of the vast and 
 varied universe which they say has been evolved out 
 of it. And if we wanted crov/ning evidence of in- 
 finite intelligence, we should ask nothing more 
 overwhelming than the fact of the existence of such 
 a fiery cloud, with such wonderful complexity and 
 potency lying hid in it. 
 
 Herbert Spencer says (in his " First Principles"), 
 and the long words give an air of very great wis- 
 dom to the saying: " The transformation of an in- 
 definite, incoherent, homogeneity into a definite, co- 
 herent heterogeneity, which goes on everywhere * 
 * is consequent upon certain simple laws offeree;" 
 which being translated means this: The simple is 
 constantly being changed into the complex by mere 
 force (without intelligence). ]^ow let me ask your 
 attention while I expose the fallacy here. The idea 
 is that by tracing back, for example, all the forms 
 of animal organism to simple protoplasm, as evolu- 
 
 W 
 
 if 
 
 ! 
 
 T 
 
 ;• 
 
 4. 
 
 
 
J, 
 
 I 
 
 52 
 
 IHE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 tion seeks to do, and many think it has done, you 
 have no longer to account for the complexity of 
 eyes and ears and hands and feet and so on, but 
 only for the simple structureless protoplasm out of 
 which all have been evolved. But what do "simple" 
 and "structureless" mean as applied to protoplasm? 
 Do they mean reall}' simple arid really structureless? 
 !N"o thing of the kind. They mean simple and 
 structureless so far as our eyes aided by our micro- 
 scopes can see. No further. And the more 
 thoughtful of our evolutionists are beginning to ac- 
 knowledge this. As evidence let me quote from 
 the inaugural address of President Allman at the 
 last meeting of the British Association: "Of two 
 particles of protoplasm between which we may de- 
 fy nil the power of the microscope, and all the re- 
 sources of the laboratory to detect a difference, one 
 can develop only to a jelly-fish, the other only to a 
 man, and one conclusion alone is here possible^ — 
 that deep within them there must be a fundamental 
 difference, which thus determines .their inevitable 
 destiny, but of which we know nothing, and can 
 assert nothing beyond the statement that it must 
 depend on their hidden molecular constitution. 
 In the molecular condition of protoplasm there 
 is probably as much complexity as in the disposi- 
 tion of organs in the most highly differentiated 
 
 1^ 
 
THE WITNESS WITHOUT. 
 
 53 
 
 organisms; and between two masses of protoplasm 
 indistinguishable from one another, there may be 
 as much molecular difference as t^iere is between 
 the form and arrangement of organs in the most 
 widely separated animals and plants." You see, 
 then, evolution is not from thf; really simple, 
 but only from the apparently simple, to the com- 
 plex. Is the complexity any less because it is 
 "deep within?" Does it explain or even simplify it 
 at all to shift it from organic conditions in which 
 we see it, to molecular conditions in which we can- 
 not see it? Kot at all. The wonder remains as 
 great as ever, if anything, greater; and the necessity 
 as urgent as ever for an intelligent -oower to account 
 for the latent complexity of things which seem so 
 simple and are " so wondrous wise." 
 
 Eemember, next, that you cannot dispense with 
 intelligence by laying stress upon laws. Every one 
 sees, of course, that original creation is not touched 
 by the supposition of laws. Ihere must be some- 
 thing to regulate before there can be a law. But 
 many seem to think that with che exception of the 
 bare act of creation, the laws of nature shut God 
 out of the universe, and account for all its changes 
 without Kim. But what is a law of nature? It is 
 simply a certain order in which things are invar- 
 iably done. But we have already shown that to 
 
 ;n 
 
 
 if 
 
54: 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 explain the order in which a thing is done does not 
 show that it can be done without intelligence, far 
 less that no one does it. What do these people, 
 that make so mnch of the potency of laws, imag- 
 ine that laws are? Are they persons or things, or 
 what? Are they anything else than a statement 
 of the order in which things are done? Take, 
 for example, the law that is made so much of 
 now-a-days: the law of the cornilation and conser- 
 vation of force. "What is it? I underscand it to 
 be a statement of certain invariable relations that 
 have been discovered among the forces of nature. 
 But a statement of certain relations does not surely 
 account for them. It has been well said by Prof. 
 Christlieb: "The old heathen personified the forces 
 of nature and made them demi-gods; we do the 
 same and call them laws. The heathen, however, 
 were rational enough to place these individual les- 
 ser gods in subjection to the Most High; while we 
 invest our laws of nature with sovereign power, in 
 whose august presence the very hands of God Him- 
 self are tied and bound!" The truth is that the 
 laws of nature are among the very wonders of the 
 universe which need to be accounted for, and which 
 cannot be accounted for without a designing and 
 controlling mind. 
 The want of time forbids me to taka up some 
 
THE WITNESS WITHOUT. 
 
 55 
 
 / 
 
 minor sophistries, such as the quibble of John 
 Stuart Mill, that the adaptation of means to an end 
 implies weakness — an objection which he presents 
 as if it were new, and which lias been hailed by 
 many as if it were new, though you will find it 
 taken up and answered in so old and well-known a 
 book as Faley (Natural Theology, Chap. Ill) — or 
 the many appeals to our ignorance by pointing 
 out things of which we cannot now see the use, in 
 answer to which it is enough to say that there are 
 so many, many things in which we can see con- 
 summate wisdom, that it is not unreasonable to 
 take some things on trust which we can not 
 see, and join with the psalmist, even though we 
 have to go beyond the region of knowledge 
 and into that of faith in making the ascription 
 universal, " O, Lord, how manifold are Thy works; 
 in wisdom hast Thou made them all; the earth is 
 full of Thy riches." 
 
 And Eow, having reached the limit of time, I 
 am reluctantly compelled . to come to a conclusion 
 by pointing out that, though we have been able 
 only in the slightest way to open up the subject, 
 we yet have evidence for the existence of God be- 
 yond what we have for the existence of our fellow- 
 men. What evidence have I that you exist; you 
 as an intelligent being, I mean? I can not see your 
 
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 m 
 
 
 w 
 
 ■ ■■r 
 1 t 
 
56 
 
 THE FOUNDATION. 
 
 intelligence. I can not see you^ strictly speaking, 
 at all. I see certain motions of your body which 
 look like intelligence (though I may not think that 
 all of them do — some of your actions may be such 
 that I can not see m.uch sense in them), and I am 
 conscious of some sensations which seem to be in 
 my ear, and which appear to me to be the result of 
 certain vibrations of the air, of which the motion 
 of your lips and the force of your lungs seem to me 
 to be the cause, and from these material phenomena 
 I infer the existence of a spirit in relation to mine. 
 Well, we have precisely the same kind of evidence 
 for the existence of God; and in addition, we have, 
 as we have seen, the witness within us, the testi- 
 mony of the heart, of the soul, of the conscience, 
 and of the intellect. . 
 
 Hiyw is it, then, if the evidence is so complete, 
 that there can be any atheism ? A very lengthened 
 answer might be given to this question, but I can 
 only make two suggestions, — the one looking to in- 
 tellectual, the other to ir.oral, considerations. The 
 phenomena by which I judge of your existence are 
 all within so limited an area that they can be easily 
 grasped in their unity, and the/ are so familiar that 
 I can easily explain them as in harmony with each 
 other; whereas, the phenomena by which I judge 
 of the existence of God are so vast and varied and 
 
THE WITIS^ESS WITHOUT. 
 
 67 
 
 T^idely scattered, and many of them so difficult to 
 interpret, that the mind becomes confused by the 
 magnitude of the subject. But, though the reason- 
 ing is more difficult to follow, it is precisely the 
 same reasoning, and just as vab'd, as the other; and 
 though the conclusion is often missed, it is reached 
 (when it is reached), exactly in the same way, and on 
 the same grounds as the other. But besides the in- 
 tellectual difficulties there are moral difficulties. 
 The disturbing element of sin is one which must 
 not be lost sight of. Men are in danger of saying 
 ill their hearts, '' There is no God." And the ali- 
 too-natural aversion of the human heart to God 
 gives only a too sufficient explanation of the preva- 
 lence of unbelief in the Divine presence and agency 
 in the universe. 
 
 We do not deny that there are difficulties in the 
 subject and obstacles in the human heart; and that 
 is the reason why we hold that, though the evidences 
 for the being and agency, and even for the goodness 
 of God, are amply sufficient to satisfy a candid in- 
 quirer, yet there is room and there is need for a 
 revelation, to explain, so far as may be, the difficul- 
 ties, and remove the obstructions to the knowledge 
 and worship and love of the only living and true 
 God. This we hope to see quite clearly in our 
 next lecture. 
 
 I' 
 
 ■ 
 
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■■■■■■ 
 
 If I 
 
 
 SECOND FAET. 
 
 THE CHIEF CORNER STONE, 
 ®oti in Cljrist. 
 
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Wi 
 
LECTUEE IV. 
 
 REVELATION OF GOD IN A HUMAN LIFE. 
 
 From the bed-rock of Theism we pass now to 
 the temple of Christianity which is reared upon it. 
 From the great fact of the universe, that " God is," 
 we pass to the great fact of history, that " God 
 was in Christ." Oar former inquiry was as to 
 the foundation of all religion. Our present in- 
 quiry is as to the foundation of Christianity dis- 
 tinctively. Let us then proceed to this second in- 
 quiry as carefully and as candidly as we can. 
 
 At the outset we have to encounter an unreason- 
 ing and unreasonable prejudice in the common 
 notion among skeptics, that it is an extremely im- 
 probable thing that God would make Himself 
 kiiown in a human life. If any man in the present 
 day should set up the claim to be himself a revel- 
 ation of God, all sensible people would consider 
 him lit for a lunatic asylum. And why, they say, 
 should we treat such a claim any differently from 
 the mere fact of its being made long ago? "Which 
 
 (61) 
 
62 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 would be sensible enough if there was nothing but 
 the mere fact of its being made long ago. But 
 what if there be so many facts and considerations 
 in the case of the claim advanced by Jesus of Naz- 
 areth, that no man who allows these facts and con- 
 siderations their proper weight, can fail to recog- 
 nize that His claim is unique and irresistible ! Some 
 of these many facts and considerations we shall 
 present further on. Meantime what we propose to 
 do is, to show that there is no Improbability in 
 God's revealing Himself in a human life, but that 
 it is just what, from an intelligent view of man and 
 his environment, we should naturally and reason- 
 ably expect. 
 
 We have seen that the revelation which God has 
 given of Himself in nature and in the soul of man 
 is sufficient to prove His existence and agency, 
 "His eternal power and godhead;" but it is not 
 sufficient to satisfy the craving of his nature, and 
 meet the wants which spring out of his circum- 
 stances. Even the intellect requires something 
 more definite in order to a clear and abiding con- 
 viction of God's personality. "We have seen at the 
 close of the last lecture that, though the personality 
 of God is revealed to us in the same way as the 
 personality of our fellow-men, yet the tokens of it 
 are distributed over so wide an area, and many of 
 
 I 
 
REVELATION OF GOD IN A HUMAN LIFE. 63 
 
 them so difficult to interpret, tliat tlie mind is apt 
 to be bewildered and lost. We have a touching 
 illustration of this in the cry of Job: "Behold I go 
 forward, but lie is not there; and backward, but I 
 cannot perceive Him ; on the left hand, where He 
 doth work, but I cannot behold Him; He hideth 
 Himself on the right hand, that I cannot see Him." 
 And it is a well-known fact, that those who reject 
 the revelation of God in Christ are very apt to lose 
 their conviction of His personality. Hence the dei- 
 fication of natural laws; hence Pantheism; hence, 
 too, Agnosticism. Hence also such speculations as 
 that of Matthew Arnold about " the power, not our- 
 selves, that makes for righteousness." The intel- 
 lect then craves and needs a definite revelation of 
 personality. 
 
 The conscience, too, craves additional light. We 
 cannot think of the God of the universe as anything 
 but a just God. Yet how many things are there 
 which it seems impossible to reconcile with justice. 
 And then there is sin. What are w^e to do about 
 it? Here, then, you see there are two great ques- 
 tions awaiting solution. How can God be shown 
 to be just with man? And how shall man be just 
 Avith God? To these questions nature gives no an- 
 swer; and the conscience cries out for a revelation. 
 
 Then there is the cry of the heart. There are 
 
 m 
 
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 ■ I 
 
 
 .;f 
 
64 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 many things in nature that tell of divine good- 
 ness; but then there are so many things which 
 seem to contradict them. And even though good- 
 ness were proved, the heart wants more, it craves 
 for love. And can it be, that the God who has im- 
 planted this great, this seemingly divine love in 
 my heart is a stranger to it Himself? Nature 
 seems a revelation of law; and the heart inquires, 
 may there not be also a revelation of love? 
 
 Finally there is the cry of the soul. 
 
 *' Here sits he shaping' wings to fly; 
 His heart forbodes a mystery; 
 He names the name, Eternity: 
 That type of Perfect in his mind 
 In Nature can he nowhere find.'* 
 
 And shall it not be found at all? And shall the 
 veil which hides the eternal world remain forever 
 drawn ? Must it be that we shall have no hint of 
 what the future life shall be, or even any assurance 
 whether it shall be at all? 
 
 Such considerations as these are often brought 
 forward as arguments against the existence of God. 
 But it is manifest that in such a connection they are 
 out of place. They are all appeals to our igno- 
 rance; and as we have seen, we have no right to let 
 what we do not know disturb what we do know. 
 But as we are using them now, they are not an ap- 
 
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 mms^ ^* m '4.*s i ^%.*j. sr^--.- 1^^ ,*i5 ^i^;.^:-r__ti"^wzr,"r^ -TV* 1 
 
REVELATION OF GOD IN A HUMAN LIFE. 65 
 
 peal to ignorance, but an n\MpQQ\from ignorance, 
 calling for more light. While they by no means 
 discredit what we otherwise know about God, they 
 do show very clearly that the light of nature is not 
 sufficient, and that therefore we may reasonably ex- 
 pect some further revelation. We sorely need some 
 revelation which will be not only as valid, but as 
 definite and intelligible as is the revelation which 
 we make of ourselves when we speak to one another, 
 or as near it in definiteness and intelligibility as 
 the nature of the case will admit of. 
 
 And now the questions come: Can God give 
 such a revelation? And will He give it? That He 
 can do it no believer in the existence of God can 
 deny. "He that formed the eye, shall He not see?" 
 He that has given us the faculty of speech, can He 
 not speak to us? Of course He can, if he will. But 
 will He? Ko one can tell certainly; because He 
 is a free agent. But if God is just and kind, as we 
 cannot help believing Him to be, if we believe 
 in God at all (for belief in an unjust and unkind 
 God would be manife'=^tly worse than atheism itself), 
 if He is just and kind, we have every reason to be- 
 lieve that He will. And all the analogy of nature is 
 in favor of it. Wherever there is a mouth, there is 
 something to fill it; wherever there is a want, there 
 is some provision for its supply, and when every part 
 
 1 s 
 
 >6 i 
 
 
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 v 
 
55:* . 
 
 6f. 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 I 
 
 of man's spiritual nature cries out for a definite reve- 
 lation of God, surely it is not unreasonable to sup- 
 pose that it niaj^ be forthcoming. 
 
 We see then that it is not only not improbable, 
 but in the highest degree likely, that God should 
 add some revelation to that which nature supplies. 
 It remains to be seen whether it is probable that 
 such a revelation should be given in a human life^ 
 Buch as was that of Jesus of Nazareth. 
 
 In order that we may be prepared intelligently 
 to consider this question, let us inquire into the 
 necessary conditions of God's revealing Himself to 
 man. What must God do in order to bring His 
 personality distinctly within the range of human 
 knowledge? Two conditions are necessary. First, 
 self-limitation. God is infinite, we are finite. The 
 finite can- not grasp the infinite; and accordingly 
 the revelation must be through the medium of 
 some finite representation. But not only is self- 
 limitation necessary : there must also be condescen- 
 sion to the limits of the human faculties. There 
 might have been many ways of revelation through 
 the medium of the finite, which would have been 
 quite out of the reach of our faculties. The revel- 
 ation which God will make of Himself, therefore, 
 must be in terms of that which is already known. 
 Not only was it necessary that the revelation should 
 
REVELATION OF GOD IN A HUMA.N LIFE. 67 
 
 be given in some finite form, but in some familiar 
 form. JN'ot only must it be something we could by 
 possibility grasp, but something we could readily 
 understand. 
 
 You see, then, that the revelation, if made at all, 
 must be made through the medium of some of the 
 finite things with which we are familiar. Now, of 
 all thest> things, which would you consider the 
 most likely? You would certainly expect that use 
 would be made of that which was superior rather 
 than of that which was inferior. Manifestly the 
 higher in the scale of being, the better for the pur- 
 pose. Well, what is the highest thing in the scale 
 of being that you familiarly know? Is it not a 
 human life, a pure and true human life? From 
 this it follows that a human life, such as that of 
 Jesus of Nazareth was, is the best conceivable 
 medium for the revelation of God. 
 - As this is a matter of very great importance, let 
 me illustrate it a little further. Let us for the 
 moment put ourselves in the skeptical attitude of 
 one of th« disciples of Christ when he said, "Lord, 
 show us the Father, and it sufiiceth us." The diffi- 
 culty of Philip, you see, is just the difficulty which 
 many have at the present time. It did not satisfy 
 him to have the existence of a Father in Heaven as 
 a matter of faith; he wanted it as a matter of 
 
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 1!), 
 
 Iv 
 
 II: 
 
 I 
 

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 P 
 
 
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 If 
 
 G8 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 knowledge. " If He exists let Him show Himself," 
 he pleads. Keasonably enough, we say. It is quite 
 reasonable that our Father in Heaven should take 
 some means of showing Himself to us. Well, then 
 suppose some manifestation is expected, of what 
 nature may it be? To be quite satisfactory, it 
 must to some extent, come within the range of our 
 senses, and best of all if it come within the range 
 of sight, according to the common proverb, " see- 
 ing is believing." Well, what kind of a shape 
 do you think such a skeptic as Philip might 
 reasonably expect to see? Of all the shapes you 
 can think of, which would be the most appropri- 
 ate? To this there can be only one answer. If any 
 shape at all was to bo expected, it must, beyond all 
 doubt, have been that of a man ; because it is the 
 noblest and most expressive form we know any- 
 thing about. Where do you look for the highest 
 efforts in art — in painting for example? Is it in 
 dealing with the lovely landscape, or with the toss- 
 ing sea, or with the golden clouds of sunset? Or 
 the chosen fields of Sir Edwin Landseer and Eosa 
 Bonheur, — are these the highest fields of art? Is 
 there not one department which stands above them 
 all — the delineation of "the human face divine?" 
 Higher than this art cannot go. Our artists paint 
 angels, it is true, but is it not with human faces 
 
 g" g «si yS *p'i"iB t^ 
 
\ 
 
 KEVELATION OF GOD IN A HUMAN LIFE. 69 
 
 tliat they paint them? As for the wings ,it is a 
 question whether they would not be better angels 
 without them. The art, at all events, in painting 
 a good angel is not in producing the wings, but in 
 drawing the face and the form. It is in that which 
 is human in the picture, that the glory and the 
 beauty are found. If, then, any form was to be 
 expected at all, reason would undoubtedly declare it 
 must be the form of a man. But again, surely, it 
 would not be a dead shape, like a statue or a pic- 
 ture, or a lifeless spectral form, that a reasonable 
 man would expect to see as a manifestation of the 
 living God. Surely it would be not merely the 
 shape of a living thing, but a living shape. Clearly 
 so. "Well then, what have we come to? A form 
 is expected? Yes. Of a man? Yes. Living? 
 Yes. Why, what is that but just a man? And 
 there he isl There He stands, eyes beaming with 
 highest intelligence, face wreathed in the most 
 attractive smile, heart beating with the warmest 
 love, voice soft and tremulous with suppressed emo- 
 tion, as in tenderest tones He speaks and says, in 
 answer to the skeptical disciple's appeal: " Have I 
 been so long time with you and yet hast thou not 
 known me, Philip? He that hath seen Me hath 
 seen the Father." 
 
 Suppose, now, we approach the subject on an- 
 
 I. 
 
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 t 
 
 h 
 
 ,vi- 
 
 ( <! 
 
 *, : -i 
 
' K 
 
 70 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 other side. Wliat is wanted is a revelation (Df God 
 as near as possible in definiteness and intelligibility 
 to the revelation which we make of onrselves to 
 one another. Well, how do we get to know one 
 another? Let us try several ways and see which 
 is the best and most promising. Can you get to 
 know a man by seeing specimens of his workman- 
 ship? Not well. If you go into a carpenter-shop 
 when the carpenter is not there, you can learn some- 
 thing about the man no doubt. You can judge 
 somewhat of his skill; and, after you have looked 
 all around and examined as carefully as you can 
 every specimen of his handicraft you can find, you 
 may be able to tell something about his hands and 
 a little about his head; but you can scarcely say 
 that you k'low him. Or, if you go into an artist's 
 studio when the artist is not there, and look at his 
 works as they are disposed about the room, you 
 may be able to pronounce some opinion on the * 
 artist, but you can scarcely say you know the man. 
 It is only a very little way that the sight of a per- 
 son's works will carry you in getting to know him. 
 Will it do to tell us words he has spoken? This 
 is a good deal better. You can learn a great deal 
 more about a person from the words he speaks than 
 from the things he makes. From written words 
 you can learn something. From spoken words you 
 
 \ ! 
 I 
 
 ii 
 

 EEVELATION OF GOD IN A HUMAN LIFE. 71 
 
 can learn more. But even words, however nmch of 
 revelation there is in them, are not the ultimate reve- 
 lation of a person. If all you know of a person is sim- 
 ply what he says, your knowledge is still imperfect. 
 
 What is wanted besides? You want to know 
 how he acts. Besides his works and his words, you 
 want to see his doings, his conduct day by day. 
 That is the ultimate revelation of i* man. To know 
 him thoroughly you must have him live before 
 you, you must see how he bears himself amid the 
 vicissitudes of life, in itj trials and temptations, its 
 joys and sorrows. To what does all this bring us? 
 Just to the same point which we have reached 
 already by other roads: that if we are to have a 
 •pvela-ion of our lather God, such as our nature 
 Uw^vefl and needs, it must be in a life, a life like 
 to our own — a human life. 
 
 You see, then, how unreasoning and how unrea- 
 sonable is the prejudice so common among skeptics, 
 that it is an extremely improbable thing that God 
 would reveal himself in a human life. It is just 
 the reverse. It is extremely probable on principles 
 of reason alone. 
 
 It is true, indeed, that there are difficulties in- 
 volved in the thought of " God manifest in the 
 flesh." How could it be otherwise? But it will 
 be found that all these difficulties resolve themselves 
 
 
 ir 
 ii 
 
 i: 
 
 ' I 
 
V 
 
 i. i 
 
 72 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 into the necessary conditions of revelation with 
 which we set out, viz., self-limitation, and conde- 
 scension to our weakness. These conditions, of 
 course, limit the extent of the revelation. For 
 example, w^ cannot say that in the man Christ 
 Jesus there wsl£ any revelation of the omnipresence 
 of God. The self-limitation involved in the revela- 
 tion rendered that an impossibility. And in the 
 same way we can not say that the human weaknesses 
 of Jesus of Kazareth were a revelation of God. 
 These were a part of the necessary condescension 
 to meet our wants. The special character of the 
 revelation of God that comes to us through the 
 human life of Christ is a revelation of the mind 
 and heart of God, a revelation of law and love. 
 " Grace and truth came bv Jesus Christ." And 
 a human life was an abundantly adequate medium, 
 and not only so, but the best conceivable medium 
 for revealing these. 
 
 One word as to the charge of anthropomorphism, 
 i. e., the supposed error of constructing the idea of 
 God out ot human attributes. In order to keep 
 clear of danger iu this direction, we have only to 
 distinguish between the attributing to God of hu- 
 man imperfections and weaknesses, which Christian- 
 ity never does, and the attributing to Him of per- 
 fections which the human mind can conceive in- 
 
i »v 
 
 BEVELATION OF GOD IN A HUMAN LIFE. 73 
 
 deed, but cannot claim as properly its own. It is 
 quite true we must get our first ideas of power and 
 wisdom and love and all the rest, from our own 
 hearts; but far from its being unreasonable to 
 ascribe all these in their perfection to the Divine 
 Being, the very fact that we have the conception of 
 the infinite and the perfect in connection with theie, 
 points, as we have already seen, to One in whom all 
 these ideals are realized. And if, as our Bible tells 
 ufc, and as even reason itself suggests, we pre made 
 in the image of God, we have not only a justification, 
 but a rationale of the true, as distinguished from 
 the false, anthropomorphism. 
 
 We have devoted our attention entirely, in this lec- 
 ture, to proving that the revelation of God in a human 
 life, far from being the improbable and incredible 
 thing which so many infidels represent it to be, is 
 natural, reasonable, and probable in a high degree. 
 This, of course, does not prove that God is revealed 
 in Christ, but it prepares the way for it. And if 
 we find, as 1 am sure we shall, that the man Christ 
 Jesus, who certainly claimed to be a revelation of 
 God, gave all the evidence that we could ask of His 
 divine mission, it will be not only reasonable to ad- 
 mit His claim and receive Him as '^ God manifest 
 in the flesh," but highly unreasonable to reject it. 
 The credentials of Jesus of l!Tazaret}\, then, will be 
 our next subject. 
 
 
 >\ 
 
 m 
 
 
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 t = 
 
 
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 tl 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 CREDENTIALS 01 
 
 I IE OHRIST. 
 
 Let me remind you that up to the point we have 
 readied in our arguments, no use has been made 
 of any part of the Bible. Passages have been re- 
 ferred to from time to time, but only in the way of 
 illustration; no argument has been built upon any 
 of them. And in this way we have found abund- 
 ant and sufficient reasons for believina: in the exist- 
 ence and agency of God, and for expecting some 
 additional revelation to answer the questions which 
 we can not but raise about Him, and to meet wants of 
 our nature which can not othti wise be provided for; 
 and, furthermore, on principles of reason alone, 
 we have discovered that such a revelation can be 
 better given through the medium of a human life 
 than in any other conceivable way. 
 
 And now we are confronted with the fact that 
 one Jesus of Nazareth, who lived a little more than 
 eighteen centuries ago, claimed to bring us just such 
 a revelation; and we have to consider whether His 
 
 ('4) 
 
 V. 
 
CREDENTIALS OF THE CHRIST, 
 
 75 
 
 claim be such that wc can reasonably entertain it. 
 This brings ns uito the region of lii story, and leads 
 us '0 enqniic what information we can get concern- 
 in. <^ the life of the claimant. And here w^e Hud, 
 among Tnan_) inferior authors, four wlio undertake 
 tc tell us what we want to know about this life. 
 These four are Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. 
 They happen to be in our day bound up witli 'her 
 authors in a book which we call the Bible; buu , o 
 have nothing to do with that just now. Ou^ in- 
 quiry has not Ijd us yet to the inspiration <i the 
 Scriptures, so we make no use of that doci or; we 
 simply deal with these documents, as we do with 
 any other ancient writings that have boon handed 
 down to us. We know they could not have been 
 concocted in this centurv, for all throuo-h last cen- 
 tury there are books wdiich everybody knows to 
 have been written then, that refer to them, and 
 quote from them. And so with the century before; 
 and so back and back, till we come close to the 
 time when the}- profess to have been written, and 
 then the quotations and allusions cease. So we 
 know that these four books were WTitten by men 
 who lived at or near the time when the events are 
 said to have taken place. ISTow let us look into 
 them and see if we can find out wdiat kind of 
 men they were. Clearly they could not have been 
 
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76 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 bad men, for bad men could not have written if they 
 would, and would not have written if they could, 
 such books as these. They were evidently simple- 
 minded men; for, if ever there were simplicity and 
 straightforwardness in literature, it is there. They 
 manifestly were not fools, or there w^ould have been 
 some trace of folly in their books. It seems abund- 
 antly evident, and more and more so, the more we 
 examine their writings, that they were men w^ho in- 
 tended to tell the truth, who tried their best to tell 
 the truth, and who therefore are, in the main, to 
 be believed. They are certainly to be believed in 
 everything about which they had a fair opportu- 
 nity of judging. I'iiere mav be some things, as, for 
 instance, where one of them speaks about water be- 
 ing changed into wine, where it would be quite 
 reasonable to suppose, on mere historical grounds, 
 that the author might be mistaken; but, in the 
 main, and on all matters concerning which they had 
 both the ability and the opportunity to inform 
 themselves, we may give credit to what they say. 
 This is all we ask at present; and I do not believe 
 that there is a historical critic of any standing to- 
 day who does not accept the biographies of Matthew, 
 Mark, and Luke, at least, as in the main correct and 
 true. And remember, the witnesses are independ- 
 ent of one another, though of course they had com- 
 
 m 
 
CREDENTIALS OF THE CHRIST. 
 
 77 
 
 mon sources of information. No one who has the 
 least pretension to critical ability will say that it 
 was one man who wrote all the four, or even any 
 two of them. They all differ in style. A. id then 
 while there is thorough harmony in all essentials, 
 there are those constant variations in detail, which 
 prove that they did not even compare notes so as 
 to insure minute correspondence before issuing 
 their separate works. 
 
 Now, beyond all question, as a simple matter of 
 history, Jesus of Nazareth did claim to have come 
 to earth as the revealer of man's unseen God and 
 Father. We have already seen that it is not at all 
 unlikely that such an one as He claimed to be should 
 appear upon earth. But it remains to be seen 
 whether the life of Jesus was in all respects what 
 we shoald reasonably expect it to be, provided His 
 claim was well founded. Did He justify his claim 
 to be the Christ of God, or was it so little supported 
 by evidence that no reasonable man should pay the 
 slightest attention to it? That is the question for 
 us now; and if we find that He has given us all 
 the evidence we could reasonably expect for the 
 reality of His mission, surely every reasonable man 
 should be well satisfied. 
 
 Let us, then, proceed to the inqr.iry as to what 
 we might reasonably expect in the way of evidence 
 
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 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
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 on the part of such :ui one as Jesus of Nazareth 
 claimed to be. To Leujin witli, you wouUl uot ex- 
 pect anytliing remai'kablo in His personal appear- 
 ance. You would expect Ilini to be nothin<^ tnoro 
 nor less than atypical man — not one to be exhibited 
 or to exhibit himself as a curiosity, but one who 
 could go among his fellow men without exciting 
 attention by his appearance, or any more attention 
 than a remarkably good man might attract by the 
 observed benevolence of his countenance and the 
 calmness and dignity of his bearing. So you see it 
 would be quite possible for multitudes to see Ilim 
 without recognizing Ilim. In some pictures you 
 see the Christ distinguished from other men by a 
 halo around His head. Suppose He had actually 
 come with some such distinguishing halo, w^ould it 
 have been natural? What other emotion would it 
 have excited in the minds of the multitude than 
 the idlest of all curiosity? AVe might, indeed, 
 expect that on occasion something of the divine 
 glory should shine through; and there are not want- 
 ing indications that this was sometimes the case, as 
 notably on the occasion of tlie Transfiguration; but 
 as a rule, we should expect His appearance to have 
 been just that of a man, a typical man. 
 
 And the same considerations are applicable to 
 the length of His life. He lived just the average 
 
CEEDENTIALa OF THE CHRIST. 
 
 79 
 
 I i 
 
 lifetime of an ordinary generation. He mig-lit in- 
 deed have lived on till now. But would that have 
 been at all natural? "Would it not have been just as 
 much out of taste and out of reason that He should 
 live to a prodigious age, as that He should grow to 
 a prodigious stature? In either case He wo'ilJ not 
 have been a man, but only a ])rodigy. If He liad 
 either lived on, postponing His death till the end 
 of the ages, or had come back in human form after 
 His death to stay till the end of the world, there 
 would have been this small advantage: that in each 
 succeeding generation some rich people who could 
 afibrd to travel, would have had the opportunity of 
 seeing Him with their bodily eyes; but everything 
 else was against it, and especially this, that in either 
 case He would have ceased to be really and truly 
 and typically a man ; He could not have claimed 
 His favorite designation, " the Son of Man." The 
 fact that there was nothing peculiar either in the 
 appearance or stature or age of Jesus of Nazareth, 
 is not at all a_ainst His claim to be the Kevealer of 
 the Father. 
 
 How, then, is such an one to be recognized at all? 
 The answer seems easv. Thou2:li it is not natural 
 or reasonable to expect Him to be taller than oilier 
 men, it is natural to expect that He will exceed 
 them in wisdom and in power, and, though wc may 
 
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80 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 not reasonably expect that He will live a longer 
 life than other men, we do expect that He will live 
 a better one, even a perfectly holy life. These, 
 then, are the credentials we should reasonably 
 expect: superior wisdom, superior power, and 
 superior purity ; and all these so much superior that 
 it would not be reasonable to assign them to mere 
 human genius, human strength, and human virtue. 
 We shall take the last of these first, viz., the 
 cliaracter of Jesus of Nazareth. And here no man 
 of intelligence and candor will deny that we find 
 all that we could expect of such an one as He 
 claimed to be. You cannot think of a single excel- 
 lence of charact^^r that does not shine out in that 
 wonderful life. If you take single features sepa- 
 rately, you may be able to think of some of earth's 
 great ones whom you could put beside Him. But, 
 when you take the combination of them all, He 
 manifestly stands absolutely alone. Not only is 
 there not in all history one single person that can 
 stand beside him; but there is not in all fiction a 
 single ideal character that will bear comparison. 
 Even such distinguished character painters as 
 Shakspeare, for example, or George Eliot in our 
 own time, who have had all the advantage of His 
 character to model after, do not in their loftiest 
 creations approach to the elevation and grandeur of 
 
CREDENTIALS OF THE CHRIST. 
 
 81 
 
 the character of Jesus of Nazareth, as depicted in 
 the simple language of the four Evangelists. 
 
 Now consider for a moment what a strong posi- 
 tion we have here. We could even build an argu- 
 ment, apart from historical evidence, at this point. 
 There we have before us the life of Christ by 
 Matthew. However it came there, there it is. 
 That life was either a creation of Matthew, as 
 Hamlet was a creation of Shakspeare, or else it is 
 a true portraits le of what Christ actually was. If 
 it was a creation of Matthew's genius, then this 
 Matthew, who seems to have been quite an obscure 
 man, must have had a superhuman genius, so that 
 even Shakspeare himself could not compare with 
 him. Do you believe that? And even if you 
 could, the question would still remain: How could 
 it happen that there should be four men of such 
 transcendent genius at the same time, whose crea- 
 tive powers all led them to produce the same char- 
 acter from different points of view, and yet these 
 same men be all unknown to fame in any other 
 way? The idea is in the last degree absurd. No- 
 body believes it or can believe it. Since, then, the 
 character of Jesus of Nazareth was not, as it cer- 
 tainly could not be, the creation of these four men, 
 it follows that it is a true portraiture of what this 
 Jesus actually was. And if the very conception of 
 
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82 
 
 THE FOUNDATION'S. 
 
 sncli a character cannot be accounted for except on 
 the supposition of superhuman genius, how much 
 less can the actual living of such, a life be accounted 
 for on any other supposition, than that He wlio 
 lived it was indeed what He solemnly claimed to 
 be, "the Christ of God?" 
 
 The evidence of the divine mission of Jesus, 
 which His character furnishes, is one which grows 
 upon you more and more, the more you examine in- 
 to it. It is quite possible to rei d the four gospels 
 over and over again without discovering the won- 
 ders of the character which they depict. But let 
 any one make it a matter of earnest thought and care- 
 ful study, and he will continually discover new feat- 
 ures to admire, and new combinations of excellencies 
 that are never found in combination in other lives. 
 Kead Horace Bushnell's wonderful little monograph 
 on the character of Jesus (which first appeared as 
 one of the chapters in his book on " ISTature and the 
 Supernatural," but has since been published sepa- 
 rately), and see if you are not absolutely shut up to 
 the conclusion, which he draws, that the character 
 of Jesus alone forbids His possible classifict',tion 
 with men. Being such a man as Ho was. He must 
 have been more than man; He must have been 
 what He claimed to be. His character is, in the 
 highest degree, a credential of His claim. 
 
 eil 
 
CTtEDENTI ILS OF THE CHRIST. 
 
 83 
 
 ■ '■ \ 
 
 From His life we pass to His words. Claimins^, 
 as lie does, to be the Kevealer of God, we should 
 reasonably expect not only a superior character, 
 but superior wisdom. If what he says be poor, 
 empty, or of little consequence, or if it be only a 
 reflection of the mind of liisage, wutli all its errors 
 and imperfections traceable through it, then we may 
 set aside his claim, because his spoken words do not 
 bear it out. Eut is it so? Do not his spoken words 
 bear it out? Can it not be said with as great emphasis 
 as ever, after so many centuries of progress, " J^ever 
 man spake like this man % " Take the first discourse 
 we meet with as we turn the pages of the first evan- 
 gelist, the Sermon on the Mount. Is it feeble? Is 
 it poor? Does it savour of the age when it was 
 spoken ? Is it not as fresh as ever to-day ? Is there 
 anything in all literature that can be placed beside 
 it? Does not every line of it bear out His claim to 
 Bpea': in the name of God? Or take the last dis- 
 course in the upper room, beginning, " Let not 
 your heart be troubled." Where can you find any- 
 thing in all literature outside of the Bible, that has 
 been cherished as these words have been cherished, 
 or that has brought such consolation to millions of 
 troubled hearts? From first to last the words He 
 speaks amply justify His claim. 
 
 Think, too, how easily these words Oi. wisdom 
 
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 84 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
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 fall from II im. lie doc;s not retire to His study 
 (study He seems to have had none) and read what 
 the philosophers before Him had written, and pain- 
 fully think out a system of truth. lie stands on the 
 grassy plain or in the little boat beside the shore, or 
 anywhere, and pours out without the slightest effort, 
 though only turned thirty, such words of heavenly 
 wisdom, as the greatest of the philosophers, after a 
 long life given to study and meditation, or even all 
 the philosophers of the world together, after all 
 their labor, had never been able to equal. Does 
 not this, too, correspond with His claim? He 
 needs no stimulus of an appreciative at4.dience, even, 
 to draw out His powers. When He speaks to an ob- 
 scure woman, who has eome to draw water at the 
 well, where He is resting in the heat of the day, 
 His words are as full of tho-ught and heave^nly wis- 
 dom as when the great multitudes are thrr/nging 
 around Him. In fact, every time He opens His 
 mouth, He gives new evidence that He is what He 
 claims to be. 
 
 Here, again, the evidence grows upon you the 
 more you study it. There is far more in the words 
 of Jesus tluiD r^t ^^rt appears. They are germinal 
 words. They a; : full of seeds of richest thought. 
 They unfold li v lug principles. Ihe thouglit is often 
 the deepest v/ir n the form is the simplest. Hence 
 
CREDENTIALS OF THE CHRIST. 
 
 85 
 
 the necessity of attention and study, to be able to 
 appreciate the evidence which His words furnish of 
 His divine mission. Yet how few of the average 
 run of skeptics give a^.y attention at all to the 
 words of Christ; and even ihe great skeptical lead- 
 ers will find excuses for passing them by, without 
 any consideration. Do you liappen to know how 
 Mill steers clear of all the e\ idence we have been 
 considering? He does it very easily, indeed. He 
 disposes of it in a single sentence. Htjre it is: 
 " We cannot have conclusive reason for believing 
 that the human faculties ^v :;rc incompetent to find 
 out moral doctrines of whlv^.h the human faculties 
 can perceive and recognize the excellence." By 
 that single oracular utterance he disposes of all the 
 internal evidences of Christianity. It is positively 
 all the notice he takes (in his celebrated Essay on 
 Revelation) of the entire array of the internal i- 
 dences, the very presentation of which, in e^ i a 
 brief manner, would take a volume, Xow 1 us 
 look for a moment at the reason he gives f^r dis- 
 missing them so summarily, and find out, if re can, 
 what it amounts to. His idea seems to be, that 
 whatever a set of faculties can appreciate, that they 
 can produce. The very fact that the human mind 
 can appreciate the wisdom of the utterancvs of 
 Jesus of Nazareth proves that the human mind 
 
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 «?W*-i4«H«#->*S*ftl 
 
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86 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 1 
 
 co'ild have j)roclnced them. Do you tliink that a lair 
 inference? We are all so constituted that our pow- 
 ers of appreciation very largely exceed our powers 
 of oripjination. You, and I, and everybody can ap- 
 preciate a thousand things that we never could 
 have originated; and what is true of each individual 
 of the race cannot but be true of the race as a whole; 
 and therefore it is absurd to say that because the hu- 
 man mind can appreciate what Christ has revealed,^ 
 therefore the human mind could have originated it. 
 Do you think so acute a man would have set aside 
 the internal evidences in such a fashion, if he had 
 been r>\Ae fairly to deal with them? 
 
 And now we have seen, that the life of Jesus of 
 iS^azareth was such as fully to correspond with His 
 claim, and further, that the words which He sjDoke, 
 as well as the \v ay in which He spoke them, were 
 also in fullest harmony — the one exhibiting a char- 
 acter beyond the range of human virtue, and the 
 other a wisdom beyond the range of human genius. 
 Is there anvthino^ more? Is there anvthiui^ else 
 that such an one as He claimed to be could offer as 
 
 •It maybe said that in the department of " moral doctrines" our pow- 
 ers of appreciation are not so far removed from our powers of origina- 
 tion ; but it must be remembered that the internal evidences are not 
 confined to the superior ethics of the doctrine of Christ, and it does not 
 look very ingenuous to set them all aside by a carefully worded state- 
 ment applicable only to a part of the whole, and very doubtful even in 
 that limited application. 
 
 
 ;i 
 
CREDENTIALS OF THE CHRIST. 
 
 ^7 
 
 a credential of His claim? There is. lie might 
 exhibit superhuman power. lie might do things 
 which were clearly beyond the ability of ordinary 
 men. It will only then be in keeping with all the 
 rest, and in keeping with what we should expect of 
 One who came on such a mission as lie professed to 
 come on, if we find Him doing as w^ell as saying 
 extraordinary things. But this opens so large a 
 question that we must take it up separately. This 
 will give us then as our next subject; " The Mira- 
 cles of the Gospel." 
 
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 LECTUEE VL 
 
 MIRACLES^ OF THE GOSPEL. 
 
 It is generally felt in these days that the iniraclea 
 recorded in the gospels, instead of being a bulwark 
 to Christianity, are a burden to it. Instead of 
 being evidence for it, they are accepted as evidence 
 against it. And there are not a few who want no 
 other evidence against Christianity than this. They 
 say: "Look at th 3 fables in these books, stories 
 that nobody would ()elieve, if they were reported as 
 occurring now; we can not believe them, and, what 
 is more, we can not believe the men tliat would 
 tell such stories as these — the whole thing is fable." 
 And this position is greatly strengthened by the 
 idea which is so diligently fostered in much of the 
 
 *It ip important to remember that in this discussion It is not necessary 
 to give a scientific definition of miracle. It is enougli to know that 
 Christ put forth superhuman power. It is of no consequence wt ether 
 He used for the purpose some force of the spiritual world operating 
 according to spiritual law and order, or whether He used some physical 
 agency unknown to man, or whether He produced the effect by direct 
 volition without the intervention of any occult agency, whether phys- 
 ical or spiritual ; all that is essential is the superhun^an power manifest 
 in the result. It would tend very much to simplify this whole discus- 
 
 (88) 
 
MIRACLES OF THE GOSPEL. 
 
 89 
 
 current literature of the time, that this estimate of 
 the gospel miracles is due to superior enlighten- 
 ment. Lecky's " History of Rationalism" has done 
 good service here. He shows how the belief in 
 witchcmtl, and in the foolish miracles of mediseval 
 times, was not really argued out of existence, but 
 simply faded away, like mists before the rising sun 
 of general enlightenment; and it is generally 
 assumed and often stated, that the miracles of the 
 gospel are destined to a like fate in due course of 
 time ; from which it follows, that those who now re- 
 ject the miracles of the gospel are in the vanguard 
 of advancing thought, which is exceedingly flatter- 
 ing, of course, to those who occupy this high intel- 
 lectual position. It is not at all to be wondered at, 
 theuj that many should be eager to step up to an 
 eminence so easily attained. 
 
 Now, for the very reason that the whole tendency 
 and drift of the times is against belief in miracles 
 of any kind, it becomes us to see that we do not 
 merely drift with the tide, but look at the matter 
 for ourselves. If the miracles of the gospels must 
 be relegated to the limbo of witchcraft and mediaeval 
 
 sion, if, instead of attempting to defend some particular notion we may 
 have of the interior nature of a miracle, we would be content with the 
 simple way in which Christ Himself put it when He said, " If I had not 
 done among them the works that none other man did, they had not had 
 sin." The fact is, that many of the arguments supposed to lie against 
 miracles are only arguments against certain definitions of a mirtttie. 
 
 
i. 
 
 90 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 nonsense, let us at all events have an intelligent 
 knowledge of the reasons for so disposing of tliem. 
 It is not^ enough to say, "the great nineteenth cen- 
 tury says so, and therefore it must be." We object 
 to mere authority, even though it be supposed to be 
 the authority of a century; whole centuries have 
 been wrong before this time. We want reason. 
 Ard It iij to reason as against prejudice that we in- 
 tend to appeal in discussing this subject. 
 
 Let us first inquire how much of reason there is 
 in the almost irresistible prejudice against miracles, 
 which is so widely diffused in these days. We 
 speak of it as a prejudice, not to call it a bad name, 
 but simply to characterize it with philosophical ac- 
 curacy. It 18 a prejudice, as all intelligent and 
 candid skeptics will themselves admit. By this we 
 mean that the miraculous facts of the gospel are not 
 rejected because, on examination of the evidence 
 presented, it is found insufficient; but because they 
 are judged beforehand. They are represented as 
 simply incredible. As we said in a former lecture, 
 no intelligent skeptic with any pretension to be 
 considered a historical critic, denies the credibility 
 of the evangelists when they testify to ordinary oc- 
 currences; but when the same persons testily as 
 clearly and assuredly to any supernatural fact, even 
 though it be of such a. nature that they could not 
 
MIRACLES OF THE GOSPEL. 
 
 91 
 
 possibly bo inistaken, they aro immediately dls- 
 credited. Why? Obviously because the super- 
 natural is prejudiced. It is disbelieved, not because 
 the witness is untrustworthy, but because the fact 
 to which he witnesses is supernatural. It is a 
 prejudice, therefore, strictly speaking. 
 
 But a prejudice may be founded on reason. And 
 this one is, to some extent. It is quite reasonable 
 to ask more evidence for a wonderful and unheard- 
 of occurrence, than for something which we are 
 quite accustomed to see. It is right that we should 
 approach the reputed miraculous with a prejudice 
 against it. If I had told you that I had crossed 
 Lake Geneva in a steamer last summer, I should 
 have reason to be offended if you did not believe 
 me. But suppose I told you I had crossed it on 
 foot, I should then have no reason to find fault with 
 you for refusing ine credit. We admit, then, not 
 only that a prejudice may be reasonable, but that 
 the prejudice against the miraculous is reasonable 
 to a certain extent. 
 
 But to what extent? This is the great question. 
 And we maintain, and intend to prove, that the mi- 
 racles of the gospel cannot be rejected without car- 
 rying this prejudice to an unreasonable extent. 
 
 Let us look into some of the forms which this 
 prejudice takes, and inquire into their reasonable- 
 ness. 
 
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92 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 There is, first, the position taken by many that 
 miracles are impossible, and that, therefore, no 
 amount of evidence whatever could certify to any- 
 thing supernatural. This is reasonable ground for 
 atheists, and for atheists only. If there be a God 
 who made us. He can surely heal a sick man without 
 going through any process known to medical art. 
 Our position on the subject of miracles is founded on 
 belief in God; a belief for which we have already 
 given abundant and sufficient reason. It is custom- 
 ary at this stage to deal with Hume's celebrated 
 argument against miracles. But as this has been so 
 often answered, and as John Stuart Mill himself is 
 one of those who show its invalidity on principles 
 of Theism, ("Essays on Eeligion:" H. Holt & Co., 
 p. 232,) we need not take up time with it. 
 
 Again, there are those who say that miracles are 
 to be uiterly discredited, because they are an inter- 
 ference with the order of nature. But what if it be 
 rather an interference with disorder? Was it not 
 more orderly, in the highest sense of the term, that 
 a blind man should receive sight, than that he should 
 remain blind? The order of nature, be it remem- 
 bered, is not the only order in the universe. There 
 is a spiritual order to which we spiritual beings be- 
 long. As a rule, the spiritual order requires that 
 the liAtural order be regular, uniform, invariable. 
 
MIRACLES OF THE GOSPEL. 
 
 93 
 
 If it were not, there could be no science, and there 
 could be no guarantee for any enterprise in which 
 free agents might embark. But what if, on occa- 
 sion, the spiritual order demanded some variation 
 from the customary order of nature? The variation 
 would not be a variation of disorder in that case, 
 but of higher order. This was precisely the case 
 with regard to the miracles of the gospels. It will 
 be found, upon examination, that the miracles said 
 to have been wrought by Clirist were never arbi- 
 trary, but always in obedience to some higher law. 
 I think it was Jean Paul Richter who said: "Mira- 
 cles on earth are nature in heaven." 
 
 Another reason for summarily dismissing all 
 miracles whatever is, that to admit a miracle at all 
 is to dishonor God, as if His universe needed mend- 
 ing. To this some have replied by referring to such 
 a machine as Babbage's calculator, for the purpose 
 of showing that, though at given times numbers 
 appear out of all previous order, it does not follow 
 that everything was not arranged beforehand, the 
 exceptions as well as the regularities ; and so God 
 may have had the exceptional miracles in His en- 
 tire plan as well as all that was manifestly regular 
 and orderly. But we prefer a shorter and more di- 
 rect answer, viz., this: That though the universe 
 may need no mending, we men do. Do we not? 
 
 (I 
 
94 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 i 
 
 Is there no such thing as vice or crime? Do you 
 believe in sin, as an altogether proper and orderly 
 thing? Is there no mending needed there? If you 
 are perfectly satisfied with things as they are, with 
 State street on a Saturday night for example, then 
 you may say that there is no call for divine inter- 
 ference, and no need of divine help. But if you 
 think that men do need mending, and that possibly 
 some of us respectable people would be the better 
 for some mending too, then do not urge this as a 
 reason for putting out of court, without a hearing, 
 those works of healing which the Christ of God 
 wrought for poor, sinning, suffering man. 
 
 We come now to the fourth and most prevalent 
 reason for summarily dismissing the miracles of 
 the gospel. It is because all our experience is 
 against them. Now this may be and ought to be a 
 reason for special care in considering the question, 
 but it is no reason for dismissing it without a hear- 
 ing. When a child brought up in the tropics is 
 first told of the beautiful white crystals that fall 
 from the heavens In northern climes, it is quite 
 reasonable that he should be skeptical about it. But 
 when the difference of the conditions is explained, 
 not only is the original improbability removed, but 
 the way is prepared for seeing that it may be, nay, 
 that it must be so. And in the same way, when we 
 
t\ 
 
 MIRACLES OF THE GOSPEL. 
 
 95 
 
 hear of miracles occurring as mere prodigies, with- 
 out any reason for expecting them, we ought to be 
 extremely skeptical. But if it can bo shown that 
 at any time in the world's history there was occasion 
 for them and reason to expect them, the way is 
 prepared for at least considering, whether the state- 
 ments of those who affirm the very miracles which 
 reason would lead us to expect at such a time, may 
 not be true. 
 
 "We fully admit that a miracle is an improbable 
 thing in itself. This can not be denied. If it were 
 not improbable, it would not be a miracle at all. 
 But that which is improbable in itself may lose very 
 much or all of its improbability by its attendant 
 circumstances. The improbability of miracles is 
 often dealt with as if it were a constant quantity. 
 The gospel miracles are cast into one common heap 
 with all sorts of mediaeval rubbish, and then they 
 are all set aside as alike improbable and unworthy 
 of consideration. Is that honest? Is it reasonable ? 
 
 The honest and reasonable way to do is, fairly to 
 estimate the probability or improbability attaching 
 to the gospel miracles, and then to deal with the 
 subject on its merits or demerits, as the case may 
 be. "We have already admitted that improbability 
 is a reasonable ground for a certain degree of sus- 
 picion and incredulity. But it is manifestly unfair 
 
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 I 61 
 
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96 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 to take the improbability attaching to one thing — 
 a medioeval miracle, for instance — and make it the 
 measure of suspicion with wliich we regard another 
 thing — a miracle of Christ, for example. 
 
 We have said that what is improbable in it- 
 self may lose much, or even all, of its improbability 
 by attending circumstances. That which is violent- 
 ly improbable to a limited view of the facts of the 
 case, as when an inhabitant of the tropics disbe- 
 lieves in snow, may be quite probable to wider ac- 
 quaintance with the facts, as when the same person 
 learns something of the different conditions of the 
 temperate and frigid zones. N"ow we main tain that, 
 not only do the circumstances connected with the 
 gospel miracles reduce the improbability which 
 they have in themselves, but they actually turn the 
 scale on the other side. Let us endeavor to make 
 this plain. 
 
 We have seen (Lecture TV) that it was highly 
 probable that God should give to man a revelation 
 in addition to that which nature affords, that it was 
 in the highest degree probable that such revelation 
 should be given through the medium of a human life; 
 and further, that it was surely to be expected, that 
 any one sent on such a mission should exhibit, as 
 credentials of his mission, superhuman excellence of 
 character, superhuman wisdom, and superhuman 
 
 !■ 
 
MIRACLES OF THE GOSPEL. 
 
 97 
 
 ■ 
 
 power. And now, when we find One — the only 
 one in all history who answers to these conditions 
 — One who, in the first place, claims to come in the 
 name of God, and then accredits this claim bj just 
 the character and the teaching we should expect, 
 is it, I ask, unreasonable to think that such an One 
 as He should do things that no one else can do? 
 On the contrary, it would be unreasonable to sup- 
 pose that he should not. Why, then, in the name 
 of reason, should the miracles of the gospel be con- 
 sidered as evidence against it? If such an one as 
 I, whom you know to be no better or greater than 
 other men, were to claim to heal the sick by a word, 
 it would be an incredible claim, and it would 
 be quite proper to dismiss it without any consid- 
 eration. But is it not entirely different when He 
 who makes the claim is One who shows Himself 
 to be superluiman in all other respects, and espec- 
 ially since He is One who claims to bring a revela- 
 tion from heaven, which, according to one of the 
 greatest infidels of modern times (Mill on " Revela- 
 tion," p. 4), *' cannot be proved divine, . . . un- 
 less by the exhibition of supernatural facts?" 
 But is it not a most contradictory position to take 
 — first, to say that a revelation cannot be proved 
 divine except by the exhibition of supernatural 
 facts, and then to say that the exhibition of super- 
 7 
 
 
ii 
 
 I 
 
 I I 
 
 98 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 natural facts is the very thing that kills it? Yet 
 that is continually done by the infidelity of the 
 day. 
 
 Suppose, now, for a moment, that, after Jesus of 
 Nazareth had announced Himself as the Christ, a 
 poor leper had come running up to Him with the 
 request, " Lord, if Thou wilt. Thou canst make me 
 clean;" and, instead of saying as our gospels repre- 
 sent, " I will, be thou clean," Pie had said, " I can 
 do nothing to help you," would it not have discred- 
 ited His mission? Would it not have been reason- 
 able to argue thus: if He cannot help a leper 
 out of his leprosy, what reason have we for sup- 
 posing that He can help a sinner out of his sin? 
 Yet such is the unreasonableness of modern infi- 
 delity, that He is actually discredited because He is 
 reported to have done the very thing which it would 
 have discredited Him not to have done. 
 
 It is abundantly evident, then, that reason de- 
 mands a fair hearing for the miracles recorded in 
 the gospels. And that is all we ask. Give them a 
 fair hearing, and there can be only one result, us 
 we shall presently see. And herein modern infi- 
 delity shows its wisdom in taking its stand on the 
 threshold, putting the whole case out of court, and 
 refusing to consider it on its merits. If the case of 
 the gospel miracles had been a weak one, it would 
 
 I 
 
MIRACLES OF THE GOSPEL. 
 
 90 
 
 not have been necessary to resort to so m any- 
 learned arguments to prove tnat the idea of mira- 
 cles ought not to be entertained at all. If the evi- 
 dence had not been of a very superior kind, it would 
 not have been necessary for the acutestof the oppo- 
 sition to maintain so earnestly, tliat miracles are so 
 improbable that no amount of evidence should bo 
 accepted as sufficient. 
 
 In the first place it can be shown, on examina- 
 tion of the miracles, that the hypothesis of the wit- 
 nesses being mistaken is quite out of the question. 
 As we have said, we could have seen room for mis- 
 take in such a miracle as the changing of water 
 into wine, if it had stood alone, but the great ma- 
 jority of the gospel miracles are not of that descrip- 
 tion. Attempts have been made to show how the 
 reports might have been due to similar mistakes 
 all through, but they have utterly failed, as the 
 great German infidel Strauss has conclusively shown, 
 and certainly he ought to be good authority on that 
 subject. 
 
 And when the same Strauss, acknowledging the 
 defeat of rationalism in one quarter, runs up the 
 standard in another, by propounding and advocat- 
 ing his famous mythical theory, according to which 
 the reports of the first witnesses have been cum- 
 bered up with fables that in the course of years 
 
r 
 
 i^ 
 
 ! . 
 
 100 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 have grown np around tlie original narrative; not 
 only is all historical evidence against it, but the 
 miracles themselves refute it. An examination of 
 them shows that, instead of being excrescences 
 which have been added to the original history, they 
 are all of a piece with it, exhibiting the same eleva- 
 tion of character and the same wealth of instruction 
 which the discourses do. If the miracles had been 
 spurious and the discourses genuine, would not the 
 difference between the two have been apparent? 
 Can you see it ? Read Trench on the Parables, and 
 then read the same author on the Miracles, and see 
 if it be not evident, first, that the miracles are as full 
 of meaning as the parables, and, next, that they are 
 full of the same meaning as the parables. And 
 then, after you have read and studied the miracles 
 of the gospel, take a look at the really fabulous mir- 
 acles, such as are found in " the Gospel of the In- 
 fancy" for instance, or the mediaeval miracles, or 
 the wonders of modern spiritualism ; and you will 
 see that the genuine are as different from the spur- 
 ious as day is from night. The miracles of the 
 gospel are most appropriately spoken of by Christ 
 and by the evangelists as " signs of the kingdom of 
 heaven," and certainly they do bear the sign man- 
 ual of heaven upon them; whereas the miracles 
 with which in ignorance they are often confounded 
 
 ;| 
 
 ■ I 
 
 ii 
 
MIRACLES OF THE GOSPEL. 
 
 101 
 
 bear the si<2;n manual of folly and fanaticism, mira- 
 cles, of childish petulance in the Gospel of the In- 
 fancy, winking Madonnas of the middle ages, table- 
 turning and spirit-rappings in modern times. It is 
 only by refusing to look at the gospel miracles that 
 the contrast can be missed. It is apparent, even on 
 slight examination ; and as it was with the character 
 of Christ, and as it was with the words of Christ, 
 so here, the evidence of genuineness and heavenli- 
 ness grows on you more and more, the more you 
 study the subject. 
 
 And remember in this connection, that it is quite 
 enough for tlie purpose to show that the great ma- 
 jority of the miracles of the gospel have the sign- 
 manual of heaven upon them; for surely it need 
 not be wondered at, if among the many there should 
 be some, the meaning of which is not so readily 
 apparent; just as there are so many things in Na- 
 ture, the meaning of which it is hard to see. The 
 great majority are works of healing, than which 
 nothing could have been more appropriate. And 
 if you have greater difficulty in understanding such 
 a miracle as the multiplying of the loaves and 
 fishes, consider how much light is thrown upon it 
 by the discourse that immediately follows it. And 
 if you are told, that it would have been much 
 grander to have simply pointed the multitude to 
 
 
 if 
 
102 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 y 
 
 I 1 
 
 tlio harvests whitening on the fields, and reminded 
 tliem of the small quantity of seed from which they 
 spran/y, as an evidence of what great things God 
 could do, remember that the very value of the In- 
 carnation, as a revelation, was its bringing into small 
 compass the tokens of the divine agency, so that the 
 connection between them could be readily seen; and 
 in tlie same way, the miracle of the multiplication 
 of the loaves was just the bringing into small com- 
 pass and exhibiting, so that the multitude could 
 not fail to see it, the very marvel which the great 
 God is working in nature every year, when from a 
 few small seeds He evolves by natural agencies those 
 great harvests which cover the fields of autumn 
 with their golden robe. The same considerations 
 are clearly applicable to the changing of the 
 water into wine. The God of nature was doing it 
 every year in the vineyards with which every hill- 
 side was clothed ; but the process was so slow, that 
 the dull mind could not readily follow it, till as in 
 a picture the great Kevealer set it before them. 
 But we cannot take up the miracles in detail. 
 Enough to say, that the vast majority of the miracles 
 of the gospel, if not the whole of them, bear on 
 themselves the sign manual of heaven, and are evi- 
 dently, both on literary and on spiritual grounds, 
 of a piece with the Life and Words; and, therefore, 
 
MIRACLKS OF THE GOSPEL. 
 
 IOC 
 
 we can not reasonably suppose them to bo the ex- 
 crescences of fable pieced on to tlie confessedly 
 heavenly life and words. And then, beside all, it 
 is as certain as any fact in history that Christ 
 claimed to work miracles; so that you have not 
 only to explain the miracles away, but you have to 
 explain the claim away, before you can account for 
 the facts of the case in any other way than on the 
 supposition that the miracles were actually wrought. 
 
 And now it might be desirable to take some 
 single miracle, and look more directly at the evi- 
 dence by which it is sustained. For this purpose 
 we shall take the Resurrection, as being the crown- 
 ing miracle of all, for our next subject of study. 
 
 Meantime, we are sure that enough has been said 
 to show, that it is certainly not superior enlighten- 
 ment which condemns Christianity as untrue, 
 because He who lived as never man lived, and spake 
 as never man spake, is also said to have done the 
 works that never man did. 
 

 r 
 
 LEOTUKE VII. 
 
 THE KESURRECTION. 
 
 So far, we have been considering the miracles of 
 the Gospel in a general way; and we have found 
 that they come before ns in such a manner as to 
 merit a candid and unprejudiced hearing. Wliile 
 fully admitting the improbability of isolated mar- 
 vels or of wonderful stories connected with names 
 entitled to no especial consideration, we contend 
 that it is entirely different with the deeds of mercy 
 attributed to Jesus of Nazareth, — that it is not only 
 not improbable, but in the highest degree to be ex- 
 pected, that such an One as He claimed to be, 
 especially since His claim is so fully borne out by the 
 transcendent excellence of His character and unap- 
 proachable wisdom of His teaching, should exhibit 
 superhuman powers in action as well as in word. 
 Therefore, we ought by all means to approach the 
 evidence which is furnished for the miracles in de- 
 tail, without that overwhelming prejudice against it 
 which would be justifiable, if the person in whose 
 
 (104) 
 
 
 hi 
 

 THE KESUERECTION. 
 
 105 
 
 favor it was adduced was either a weak or wicked, 
 or even a quite ordinary man. "We ask no preju- 
 dice in favor of the claim; but we do think it is but 
 right that prejudice against it should be dismissed. 
 Having time only to take up one of the miracles, 
 we ^choose the Eesurrection, chiefly because it is 
 universally accepted as the seal of all the rest. 
 Once believe that Jesus rose from the dead Himself, 
 and it will not be hard to believe that He did almost 
 any other wonderful thing. "We might, indeed, 
 conceive of a person who was thoroughly convinced 
 of the resurrection, hesitating or suspending his 
 judgment in relation to one or two of the miruoles 
 recorded in the Gospels, — the cursing of the fig- 
 tree, for instance, or the destruction of the swine 
 in the region of Gadara; but the great mass of the 
 miracles, the healing of the sick, giving sight to 
 the blind, hearing to the deaf, strength to the pal- 
 sied, and even life to the dead, would seem so nat- 
 ural on the part of One who was manifestly the 
 conqueror of death, as to present no diflaculty at all. 
 Connected with its importance, there is another 
 advantage in singling out the resurrection. Inas- 
 much as it is felt to be the citadel, it has been more 
 desperately assailed than any other. Ingenuity has 
 exhausted itself in efforts to undermine its evidences; 
 and accordingly here, if anywhere, we know tliat 
 
 
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106 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
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 ii 
 
 the very worst that can be said (against us has been 
 said. 
 
 At the outset we are confronted with the unques- 
 tionable fact of the unanimous testimony of the 
 Apostles and early Christians. There was no divis- 
 ion among the Christians in this regard. They all 
 united in thio testimony, and some of them main- 
 tained it through the severest persecution, and at 
 last sealed it with their blood. It may be well to 
 notice at this stasje the unfair use that is sometimes 
 made of the doubts which many of the disciples 
 had at the first. Remarking on the statement in 
 Matt, xxviii, 17, that " some doubted," a recent 
 lecturer before the " Philosophical Society " is re- 
 ported to have said : *• Who and how many doubted? 
 What did they doubt? Why did they doubt? If 
 the chosen disciples doubted what they saw with 
 their own eyes, as stated by this writer, may we 
 not be pardoned for doubting?" In answer to the 
 question, ''Why did they doubt?" we have only 
 to say, that it was because they were not the credu- 
 lous people that the same critic, in another part of 
 his lectur?, represents them as being. They doubted 
 at first, as any reasonable being would, until he 
 had examined the evidence. These doubts quali- 
 fied them all the better for examining the evidence 
 thoroughly. And it was only after the evidence 
 
 
THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 107 
 
 was such as to overcome all their doubts, that they 
 yielded and believed. Will any one pretend to say 
 that they continued doubters? All the disciples 
 were doubters at the first. Bat they were all con- 
 vinced in the end. And the very fact that it was 
 so hard to convince them, when they were first con- 
 fronted with so unexpected a thing as the Resurrec- 
 tion, gives largely increased value to their unwaver- 
 ing certainty ever afterwards, through labors, and 
 privations, and sufierings, and death itself. We 
 have, then, the unanimous testimony of all the 
 Apostles and early Christians, confirmed by the 
 knowledge that their convictions were reached only 
 after serious and, on the part of some more skepti- 
 cal ones, even obstinate doubts and questionings. 
 
 Now manifestly these people either believed what 
 they said or they did not. Formerly the infidel 
 position was that they did not, that they were a set 
 of impostors and liars who manufactured these 
 stories, and, knowing them to be false, palmed them 
 oif upon the world. But no intelligent infidel holds 
 that position now. It was found impossible to 
 maintain it, and so it was abandoned. We need 
 not, then, take up time in arguing a point which 
 is low so universally conceded. Only let us 
 remember that this idea of imposture and false- 
 hood is given up and dismissed, so that it can- 
 
 liV 
 
 v\ 
 
 Ui 
 
 
 
 4 
 
 i 1 i 
 
 II 
 
108 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 ? 
 
 not be taken np again as a refuge. When once 
 the idea of intentional falsehood is dismissed, everv- 
 thing that is said on the one side or the other must 
 of course be consistent with the admitted fact, that 
 these men believed themselves what thej said. 
 
 The hypothesis of fraud being excluded, only two 
 distinct suppositions remain, — viz.: reality and 
 imagination. If not a fraud, the Resurrection must 
 have been either a fact or a fancy. We are trying, 
 if we can, to get away from the fact of it. Let us, 
 then, try whether fancy will account for it. Could 
 it have been a hallucination? 
 
 To test this snpposition, consider, iirst, how many 
 must have been under the same hallucination. One 
 person may think he sees something, while what he 
 sees is only in his imagination. But is it usual to 
 find two persons whose halhicinations shall so ex- 
 actly correspond that their testimony will agree as 
 to what they saw? Did you ever hear of twelve 
 persons that were so deceived by their senses all at 
 the same time and exactly in the same manner? 
 And yet there must have been far more than tweh^e 
 so deluded, for there were the women besides, and 
 the other disciples, of whom there were 120 in Jeru- 
 salem, to say nothing of the 500 (probably of the 
 Galilean disciples) to whom the Apostle Paul re- 
 fers in his letter to the Corinthians. ^ • ■ 
 
THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 109 
 
 Consider next what sort of people tliey were. 
 We have the writings of some of them, and we 
 have such information about others as gives us some 
 insight into their character. Eead Matthew's Gos- 
 pel, and see if you think him a visionary kind of 
 man. Study the characters of Peter, James, John, 
 and Thomas^ and see if you think them just the 
 kind of people to surrender themselves to a foolish 
 delusion. 
 
 Consider next in what state of mind they were. 
 Were they expecting a resurrection? Not one of 
 them. Even the faithful women did not expect it. 
 And as for the Twelve, they had all forsaken Him 
 and fled when He was crucified, and when they talk- 
 ed to one another about Him, it was in this wise: 
 " We trusted that it had been He that should have 
 redeemed Israel, but" — (He is dead and buried, and 
 it is all over.) Evidently not one of them was in 
 a state of mind favorable to hallucination. 
 
 Consider, finally, what must have been the extent 
 of the hallucination, and you will find that it would 
 be almost incredible that even a single person, how- 
 ever visionary and however wrought up with ex- 
 pectation, should be the subject of it. For it was 
 not only a single sight of Him, or a single inter- 
 view. There was repeated intercourse for the space 
 of forty days. During that time every conceivable 
 
 •SI 
 
 
 m 
 
110 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 confirmation was given. They saw Ilim, tliej 
 heard Ilim, they touched Him, they walked with 
 Him, they talked with Him, they ate with Him, 
 they reported and recorded the very words He said ; 
 and these words are just as much marked by 
 heavenly wisdom and grace as His recorded words 
 before His death. Can you conceive of any fuller 
 evidence that could have been given of the fact of 
 His resurrection ? 
 
 Remember here, that it will not do to say we have 
 only their own statements for all this, for that is 
 to take refuge in the exploded supposition of fraud. 
 It is a very common thing for an infidel to give up 
 a supposition like this when argued out of it, and 
 then quietly resort to it again, when pr .cjsed in 
 another quarter. Consider, then, I say, not only 
 the number of persons, and the kind of persons, and 
 the state of mind in which they were at the time, 
 but the extraordinary extent of the hallucination, 
 and then say, if it does not require tenfold more 
 credulity to believe in the theory of hallucination 
 than in the fact of the resurrection. If we had had 
 only the testimony of Mary, we might have sup- 
 posed it was only the gardener after all. Or, if a 
 few of them had only professed to have seen Him 
 once, there might have been room for mistake. But 
 when they not only saw Him, but conversed with 
 
THE EESURRECTION. 
 
 Ill 
 
 hd 
 re 
 
 til 
 
 Him, and ate with Him, and verified His identity 
 when doubts came over them, the conviction grows 
 upon you, that tliey could not possibly have been 
 all mistaken every time — in the upper chamber, on 
 the road, at the table, by the side of the lake, in 
 broad daylight — for the space of forty days. The 
 more you examine, the more you will see how vain 
 it is to attempt to explain the facts of the case by 
 hallucination. 
 
 Does this conclude the case for the Eesurrection ? 
 It could not have been fraud; it could not have been 
 fancv; must it not then have been fact? It would 
 seem so. And yet, in all fairness, it must be con- 
 ceded that modern infidelity does not allow these 
 three to include all supposable cases. A fourth 
 alternative has been devised, which is neither fraud, 
 nor fact, nor fancy; but a mixture of fact and fancy, 
 with perhaps a little grain of fraud in it to help its 
 plausibility. We refer to the mj'thical theory. 
 "We have already seen reasons for rejecting it, as 
 applied to the miracles in general. But it may be 
 well also to consider how it applies to the resurrec- 
 tion in particular. 
 
 Let us first get a clear conception of how it dif- 
 fers from the disproved theories of fraud and of 
 fancy. The idea is this, that those who were con- 
 versant with the original facts, without any inten- 
 
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 HI 
 
 

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 M 
 
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 112 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 tion of deceiving, simply exaggenited them a little, 
 ti8 enthusiastic disciples are likely to do. And 
 when the story came to be told to the next genera- 
 tion, it would be considerably larger than it 
 was at first; and so on, and on, till in a perfectly 
 natural way, without any intentional fraud, but 
 simply by the process of quite natural development, 
 all the wonders of the resurrection story came 
 to the front. Now, it is true that wonderful stories 
 have developed in thi« way in the early agos of the 
 world, especially in the infancy of nations, and in 
 prehistoric times. Every one knows, of course, 
 that the Jewish nation was not by any means in its 
 infancy, that the times were not prehistoric, and 
 that the conditions in general were not favorable to 
 the growth of myths, least of all of such a myth as 
 the resurrection, seeing that one of the two great 
 parties who alternately held the reins of power (the 
 Sadducees, I mean) had as a principal part of their 
 "platform" the denial of any resurrection, and 
 would, of course, see to it that any such myth in 
 the process of formation was promptly exploded. 
 But leaving these considerations, and many others, 
 let me simply call j^our attention to one circum- 
 stance which renders the mythical explanation of 
 the resurrection story incredible, which absolutely 
 proves that it did not grow up by gradual accre- 
 
 I I 
 
THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 113 
 
 tions, from generation to generation, but was 
 firmly believed and fully taught by Christian 
 teachers while many of the original witnesses 
 were still living. When first the mythical the- 
 ory was propounded, the attempt was made to 
 push the Gospels far down into the second century, 
 so as to leave considerable number of intervening 
 generations, and afford time for the myths to 
 grow. These attempts have failed. But, even 
 apart from the question as to the precise date of the 
 Gospels, we have conclusive proof that the fact of 
 the resurrection was believed, and asserted, and in- 
 corporated into the Christian doctrine, while 3'^et 
 many of the original witnesses were still alive. The 
 First Epistle to the Corinthians is one, the genuine- 
 ness and antiquity of which even the most de- 
 structive of the literary critics of Germany have not 
 been able to doubt. It is as certain as anything of 
 the kind could be that Paul was the author of it, 
 and that it was written at no longer interval from 
 the death of Christ than twenty to twenty-five years. 
 Now, with the knowledge of this fact, read the fif- 
 teenth chapter of the Epistle, — that magnificent 
 passage which is so familiar to our ears in the 
 funeral services of all the churches. Now, we know 
 that John was living at that time, and others of the 
 original witnesses. In fact the Apostle himself as- 
 8 
 
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 VI 
 
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114 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 ■ 
 
 I 
 
 • 
 
 Berts that the greater part of them were living still. 
 Does no^ this utterly explode the mythical theory 
 BO far as the resurrection is concerned? If the 
 original witnesses were still alive, how was it 
 possible for such an extraordinary story to 
 have grown up in the gradual and imperceptible 
 way which the mythical theory supposes? Is it not 
 evident that the very existence of such a story un- 
 contradicted, while several of the original witnesses 
 were still alive and in frequent communication with 
 BO prominent a teacher of it as the Apostle Paul, 
 proves that we must dismiss this mythical idea 
 which so conveniently mixes fact and fancy, as 
 another of the many vain attempts to explain away 
 the evidence of the Eesurrection? We might have 
 made the case a great deal stronger by taking the 
 evidence which the "Acts of the Apostles" fur- 
 nishes, that the Resurrection was the main substance 
 of apostolic teaching from the day of Pentecost on- 
 ward, but we preferred to take the epistle for the 
 reason above given, that the most destructive of the 
 critics have not been able to cast the slightest doubt 
 on its antiquity or genuineness, while they have 
 labored hard, though we believe qnite unsuccess- 
 fully, to do this for the Acts of the Apostles. 
 
 We thus find that the story of the resurrection 
 cannot be resolred into frauds nor into fancy^ nor 
 
 11 
 
THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 115 
 
 into that ingenious mixture of the different ele- 
 ments which enter into the mythical theory. What 
 else, then, can it bo but fact ? 
 
 But are there not difficulties on this supposition, 
 too ? It is alleged that there are. There is, first 
 and mainly, the improbability of the thing. This 
 we have dealt with already, and wo have one word 
 more to say about it before we are done. The other 
 is, the alleged discrepancies in the statements of the 
 different witnesses. It is quite evident that there 
 is not time to go into these in detail. SuflSce it to 
 say, that they are just such variations as are always 
 expected when independent witnesses give separate 
 accounts, without any attempt to bring them into 
 verbal harmony. Each of the witnesses gi ^^es a very 
 brief account of the occurrences of forty days, and, 
 of course, one leaves out what another puts in, 
 one mentions a circumstance that struck him, 
 another refers to quite different particulars that 
 impressed themselves on his mind, and so on. But 
 in no case has any clear contradiction been estab- 
 lished. 
 
 Perhaps the most satisfactory way of dealing with 
 this matter in a sentence, is to refer to the fact, 
 which many may not know, that the highest auth- 
 ority on evidence, perhaps, that ever lived, has 
 thoroughly sifted this evidence on the same prin* 
 
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 If 
 
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116 
 
 TUE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 •I 
 
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 ciples as are applied in courts of law, and come to 
 the decided conclusion that it is impossible by any 
 justiiiable process of legal criticism to invalidate 
 these testimonies. I refer to Greenleaf's work, 
 entitled "The Testimony of the Evangelists Exam- 
 ined by the Kules of Evidence Administered in 
 Courts of Justice." Now, this is no other than the 
 famous Greenleaf, whose work on Evidence has been 
 a standard ever since it was issued, not only in 
 America, but on the other side of the Atlantic. 
 The London Law Journal^ referring toGreenleafs 
 work, says : " Upon the existing law of evidence 
 more light has shone from the New World than 
 from all the lawyers who adorn the courts of 
 Europe." And the North American Beview 
 spoke of him before his death as " an able and pro- 
 found lawyer, — a man who has grown grey in the 
 halls of justice and the schools of jurisprudence, — 
 a writer of the highest authority on legal subjects, 
 whose life has been spent in weighing testimony 
 and sifting evidence, and whose published opinions 
 on the rules of evidence are received as authori- 
 tative in all the English and American tribunals." 
 It is doubtful, in fact, if there ever lived a man 
 better qualified for sifting evidence. Well, this 
 man bent his energies to the sifting of the testi- 
 mony of the evangelists all through the Gospels, 
 
THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 117 
 
 and especially their testimony in relation to the 
 trial and death and resurrection of JesuA, and the 
 result will appear from the following quotation : 
 " Let the witnesses," he says, " bo compared with 
 themselves, with each other, and with surrounding 
 facts and circumstances ; and let their testimony 
 be sifted as if it were given in a court of justice on 
 the side of the adverse party, the witnesses being 
 subjected to a rigorous cross examination. The re- 
 sult, it is confidently believed, will be an undoubt- 
 ing conviction of their integrity, ability, and truth. 
 In the course of such an examination the undesign- 
 ed coincidences will multiply upon us at every step 
 in our progress; the probability of the veracity of 
 the witnesses and of the reality of the occurrences 
 which they relate will increase until it acquires, for 
 all practical purposes, the value and force of demon- 
 stration." 
 
 The more you examine it fairly, the more you will 
 be convinced that the evidence is so overwhelming 
 that you cannot get away from it without the most 
 desperate expedients. When, in the olden time, 
 a far-off claimant for a throne would make good his 
 illegal pretensions, he must wade through seas of 
 blood to it, he must put to death the heir apparent 
 and the heir presumptive, and as many others as 
 lay between him and the coveted possessiouk Simiw 
 
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 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
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 lar is the task which modern infidelity has to per- 
 form before it can erect its usurping throne on the 
 empty grave of Jesus. It must make havoc of all 
 the four Gospels, reducing them mainly to a tissue 
 of lies. It must destroy the historic credibility of 
 the Acts of the Apostles. It must get rid in some 
 fashion of the first epistle to the Corinthians. It 
 must make havoc of every scrap of writing that re- 
 mains from the first century, which refers to the 
 Resurrection. It must despoil the character of 
 Matthew and Mark, Luke and John, Paul and 
 Peter. It must crucify again the Lord Himself, 
 for again and again while He was alive He said 
 that He would rise again. It must dispose even 
 of Christianity itself, with its fifty-two commem- 
 orations of the Resurrection every ./ear, and show 
 how it was possible that such an institution was 
 founded on a lie. It must, in fact, murder history, 
 and murder character, and murder truth. And 
 why? All because the great nineteenth century is 
 supposed to have settled unalterably that it is a 
 thing incredible that God should raise the dead. 
 But may we not, with all due respect even to so 
 great an abstraction as the nineteenth century, 
 ask again the old question: "Why should it be 
 thought a thing iiicredible that God should raise 
 the dead?" What a wonderful resurrection does 
 
 ( I' 
 
THE KESURRECTION. 
 
 119 
 
 He work every year in those very weeks that en- 
 circle the glad Easter dayl He makes the dead 
 trees and dead flowers to live again, and shall it be 
 said that He cannot raise to life a dead man ? True 
 it is that we do not see men raised from the dead 
 nowadays; but neither do we see men lijke Jesus 
 the Christ nowadays. If he had been only an ordi- 
 nary man, it would have seemed well-nigh incredi- 
 ble that God should rais^ him from tlie dead. 
 But He was no ordinary man. And when you think 
 what sort of a man He was, the probability is shift- 
 ed to the other side. It was not a mere miracle. 
 When profoundly looked at, it was no marvel at all. 
 The Apostle Peter puts it in the right light in his 
 first sermon after Pentecost: "Whom God hath 
 raised up, having loosed the bands of death, because 
 it was not possible that he should be holden of it." 
 O my friends, if we would only acquaint ourselves 
 with Jesus Christ; if we would drink in His words; 
 if we would enter into sympathy with the plan and 
 purpose and tenor of His life, if we would gaze on 
 the beauty of His face and fill our hearts with the 
 admiration which is due to the immortal loveliness 
 of His character; if we would get really and truly 
 acquainted with Him, instead of thinking it a thing 
 incredible that God should raise Him from the 
 dead, — we should think it a thing incredible that 
 
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 120 
 
 THE FOTTNDATIONS. 
 
 God slioiild not do it. We should enter into the 
 true and deep philosophy of the Apostle when he 
 said, " God raised Him, because it was not possible 
 that such an one as He should be holden of death." 
 "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ," who has not mocked us with a myth 
 when our beloved dead lie cold and beautiful be- 
 neath our anguished gaze, but, " who, according to 
 His abundant mercy, hath begotten us again unto a 
 lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from 
 the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and unde- 
 filed, and that fadeth not away." 
 
 : * 
 
THIRD PART. 
 
 THE COMPLETED FOUNDATION, 
 Soil in (tf)Kl»t, i«»lre Itnoton ts 
 
 '4i 
 
 I 
 
 '1 
 
 / 
 
LECTUEE VIII. 
 
 REVELATION BY THE SPIRIT. 
 
 Our feet are now firmly planted on " the Eock of 
 Ages," wliicli rests securely on the great nnderlyin^^ 
 rock-system of the Divine Existence. We may 
 thankfully accept, as a firm foundf^tion on which to 
 build, the revelation of God in Christ, now fully certi- 
 fied to us. We have seen, first, that it was in the 
 highest degree probable that such a revelation as was 
 suited to our wants should be given ; next, that the 
 best conceivable medium for giving it was a human 
 life, and finally that the Lord Jesus Christ, who 
 claimed to bring just such a revelation, gave every 
 credential of his claim that a reasonable man could 
 desire, exhibiting superhuman excellence of charac- 
 ter, superhuman wisdom, and superhuman power, 
 and that, to crown all, the seal of God was put 
 upon the earthly life of this " Holy One of Israel," 
 by His resurrection from the dead. Thus is fully 
 justified the claim of Jesus of Nazareth to be the 
 Christ of God, the Savior of the world. 
 
 (123) 
 
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124 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 ), ! 
 
 
 Let us pause a moment at this point, and see how 
 far we have reached without the sh'ghtest use of the 
 doctrine of the inspiration of the Scriptures, and, in 
 fact, without using even as common history any 
 other books than the four Gospels, and the First 
 Epistle to the Corinthians. We have already a 
 sufficient basis for belief of the Gospel, belief, 
 that is, of the great fact, that "God so loved 
 the world that He gave His only begotten Son," 
 that "God was in Christ, reconciling the world 
 unto Himself." There is much of vast importance 
 which we have not reached yet, and even something 
 essential to the gospel in its application to human- 
 ity at large, as we shall presently see; but the great 
 facts of the gospel, historically considered, are fixed 
 on a sure basis before we make any use of the Bible 
 as such, and before we even open the Old Testament 
 at all. And yet there are those who will try to 
 make everything stand or fall, with our ability to 
 verify the accuracy of some difficult or obscure pas- 
 sage or passages in some of the many books of the 
 Old Testament — books that have come down to us 
 from such hoar antiquity that it seems almost a mir- 
 acle we have them at all! ^ 
 
 Eemembering, then, how much is made sure be- 
 fore we enter upon its consideration, let us pass to 
 the third part of our general subject. It is the 
 
 
REVELATION BY THE SPIRIT. 
 
 125 
 
 revelation of God in Christ hy the Holy Spirit. 
 And first let us see the necessity for it. 
 
 Let us here recall what has been said (Lect. TV) as 
 to the necessary conditions of God's revealing Him- 
 self to man. We found self-limitation to be one of 
 them. And accordingly, while a human life was 
 unquestionably the best conceivable medium of a 
 divine revelation, it of necessity involved limita- 
 tions — such limitations in particular as are im- 
 posed by space and time. The revelation must be 
 given within a limited time in the world's history, 
 and within a limited space on the world's surface. 
 There are those who have made this a ground of 
 objection to Christianity; but a moment's thought 
 would have shown them, that these limitations of 
 which they complain were necessities arising from 
 the nature of the case. 
 
 But while these limitations were unavoidable 
 from the nature of the case, we might reasonably 
 inquire whether there might not be any way of 
 overcoming the disadvantage arising from them, so 
 that those, who had no opportunity of holding per- 
 sonal intercourse with the Christ of God, might 
 have their wants provided for. And to such an in- 
 quiry there is a perfectly satisfactory answer. 
 "While the^ man Christ Jesus in His earthly life 
 was subject to the usual limitations of humanity, 
 
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 126 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 in time and space, the Divine Spirit in communion 
 with whom He lived, in whose name He spoke, 
 and by whose power He did His wonderful works 
 of love and mercy, was not so limited ; and herein 
 lies the possibility of such an extension of the rev- 
 elation as is suitable to meet the wants of the whole 
 race. "We do not here profess to enter into the dif- 
 ficult subject of the Trinity, or to state, far less ex- 
 plain, the interior nature of the Deity. Let trans-, 
 cendental theology deal with that subject if it can; 
 but it does not belong to the humbler and much 
 easier department of the Christian evidences. And 
 accordingly we here go no further than the safe 
 statement, that in the freedom of the divine Spirit 
 from the human limitations which attached to the 
 man Christ Jesus, lies the possibility of such an ex- 
 tension of the revelation as shall meet the wants of 
 the whole world. 
 
 So much for possibility; let us now inquire what 
 the probabilities of the case may be. There is one 
 quite simple and natural way in which the benefits 
 of the revelation, given in the life of the man Christ 
 Jesus, might have been extended beyond the time 
 and the country to which He belonged. I refer to 
 the method of publication through the ordinary 
 channels. The extension of His influence beyond 
 the sphere of His life might have been left entirely, 
 
EEVELATION BY THE SPIRIT. 
 
 127 
 
 as in the case of ordinary men, to the spontaneous 
 efforts of those who thought His life and sayings 
 worth preserving. "Well, suppose for a moment wo 
 had nothing more than this; that this was all that 
 could be said of the Gospels and Acts and Epistles, 
 that they were tha honest attempts of men who 
 had been powerfully influenced, by the life and 
 words of Jesus, to give the benefit of them to the 
 world. Would that prove that these books were 
 of little or no value? Consider what good oppor- 
 tunity we should have, even in that case, of becom- 
 ing truly and savingly acquainted with the Lord 
 Jesus. "We have, first, four biographies of Him, 
 written by men who had exceptionally good oppor- 
 tunities of becoming acquainted with the facts of 
 the case. "We have a large number of His sayings 
 and discourses, evidently recorded and preserved 
 with the greatest care. We have an account of the 
 infiuence which His life and teachings had upon 
 such men as Peter, John, and Paul. And we have 
 the teachings of those men when they attempted to 
 set forth, each in his own way and from his own 
 point of view, the doctrines of their Master. Is all 
 this of little value? We contend not onlv that 
 it is of unspeakable value, but that it is enough to 
 give a solid basis for a truly Christian faith and life. 
 There would, indeed, be serious disadvantages, 
 
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 128 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 and in particular this: that those who take this po- 
 sition could never certainly know how much the 
 original teaching of the Lord Himself had been 
 colored by the views of His reporters. But though 
 such persons could never take an isolated state- 
 ment as absolute proof of anything, and must ever 
 be more or less in the dark as to the whole amount 
 of the divine teaching, yet if they are honest (and 
 we are presuming them to be so), they may receive 
 and believe enough to give them perfect confidence 
 in the Lord Jesus Christ as a divine teacher and 
 Savior. I say they may, not that they will. The 
 tendency of what are called loose views of inspiration 
 is in the direction of neglect and general unbelief 
 and indifference; but this is not a necessary ten- 
 dency. We believe not only that there may be, 
 but that there are, not a few who do not believe in 
 plenary inspiration, and yet have a more living and 
 earnest faith in Christ — the Christ of the Gospels, 
 the Acts, the Epistles and Eevelation — and a great- 
 er devotion to Him and to His cause, than a large 
 number of people who are quite orthodox in their 
 belief. Far be it from us, then, to denounce as in- 
 fidels those who are hindered by difficulties from 
 accepting what we may regard as the truth on the 
 subject of aspiration, so long as they receive the 
 testimony of the evangelists and apostles bo far as 
 
REVELATION BY THE SPIRIT. 
 
 129 
 
 to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and do their 
 best to follow in the way which lie points out to 
 them as the way of life. And for the same reason 
 we ought not to allow the genuine infidel, or the 
 unwise and nnscriptural apologist, to treat the 
 claims of Christ and of Ciiristianity as identical 
 with the question of the literal and verbal infalli- 
 bility of all the books which are bound together in 
 covers, on which the name " Holy Bible," however 
 appropriately, is inscribed. 
 
 But, while we admit that Christianity can well 
 stand its ground and maintain its claim on the alle- 
 giance of men, apart from the doctrine of special 
 inspiration, we do not believe that the publication 
 of the glad tidings to the world has been left in 
 this loose and uncertain way. We believe it to be 
 extremely probable that our Father God, who gave 
 the revelation of Himself in the human life of Je- 
 sus of Nazareth, would use some means to make 
 that revelation widely known, without the danger 
 of mistake which must necessarily attach to all or- 
 dinary means of publication ; and further, that He 
 would take into consideration the case of those 
 whom the ordinary channels of publication could 
 not reach, those who lived before the Son of God 
 came to earth, and those who, by reason of distance 
 or for any other cause, were not reached by the or- 
 9 
 
 i'U 
 
130 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 dinary channels. Take this in connection with 
 what has been advanced before, and we reach the 
 probability that use would be made of the a<^ency 
 of the omnipresent and eternal Spirit, to make the 
 revelation known beyond the narrow bounds in 
 w^hich, from the nature of the case, it had to be 
 given. 
 
 And now, when we turn to the life and words of 
 Jesus as ^iven by the evangelists, we find that lie 
 speaks again and again of this very agency in mak- 
 ing known the revelation which was given through 
 Himself. The passages are so numerous that wo 
 can only refer to one or two as specimens. Speak- 
 ing of the work of the '* Spirit of truth" after He 
 Himself should have left the world, He says (John 
 xvi, 14): " He shall glorify Me, for He shall receive 
 of Mine and shall show it ur/'^ you;" and again 
 He says, after His death and resurrection (Acts i, 
 8): "Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy 
 Ghost is come upon you, and ye shall be witnesses 
 unto Me." And not only does He refer to the 
 Spirit's witness after His departure from the world, 
 but again and again He refers to His testimony in 
 the earlier ages of the world before His advent, as 
 where we are told (Luke xxiv, 27): "Beginning at 
 Moses and all the prophets, He expounded unto 
 them in all the scriptures the things concerning 
 Himself" 
 
REVELATION BY THE SPIRIT. 
 
 131 
 
 with 
 I the 
 ;ency 
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 ds in 
 to be 
 
 els of 
 it lie 
 mak- 
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 \ct8 i, 
 Holy 
 nesses 
 to the 
 world, 
 [)iiy in 
 jnt, as 
 ing at 
 i unto 
 erning 
 
 "We have, then, the authority of tlio Lord Him- 
 self for the inspiration of the prophets of the Old 
 Testament and the apostles of the New. Hitherto 
 we liave been restricting ourselves to the claim of 
 Christ Himself to speak in the name of God. But 
 now, you observe, that claim is enlarged, so i^ to 
 take in the prophets and apostles in a certain sense. 
 In a certain sense, we say, because no one will claim 
 that apostles and prophets stood in precisely the 
 same relation either to God or to man, as Cln'ist 
 Himself did. He was the revealer of the Father 
 and Savior of the world. They occupied a much 
 liumbler position — viz., that of witnesses to Him 
 and to His truth. But the claim is now advanced 
 for them that they were inspired witnesses, so that 
 when we listen to them we are listening not to ordi- 
 nary men, but to ambassadors of God. 
 
 It would now be in order to examine this claim. 
 To do it thoroughly would be manifestly a vain at- 
 tempt in so brief a course as this must be. 
 
 Suffice it only to say that, for the prophets of the 
 Old Testament, we have as guarantees of their in- 
 spiration — first, their own credentials, to be deter- 
 mined by examining each separately,'^ and next, the 
 
 *It should never be forgotten that the claim of Christ to be the reveal- 
 er of God and Saviour of the world is not involved in this question of 
 details. It is true that He affixes His seal to the testimony of the apos- 
 tles and prophets, especially con.ceriiing Himself; but He nowhere de- 
 
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 ■'I. . 
 
132 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 t J 
 
 seal of Christ Himself, in the references wliich He 
 makes to them. And for the apostles of tlie "New 
 Testament, we have as guarantees — first, tlie prom- 
 ise of special guidance, which Christ made to them 
 before His death, and next, the evidence which we 
 have at Pentecost, and from their subsequent lives 
 
 fines the nat ire or extent of their inspiration. He nowhere speaks of 
 them as qualified to teach science, or called to reveal scientific truth, 
 unknown and undiscovered in their day. He never even claims, on 
 their behalf, that tliey were so raised by their inspiration above the rest 
 of mankind, as to be quite free from popular errors and misconceptions 
 on subjects which do not form part of the moral and spiritual revela- 
 tion they were commissioned to unfold. There is one passage which 
 looks a little like this, where Christ says: "He will guide you into all 
 truth ;" but when we look at the original Greek, we find that It is not 
 eU truth, but " all the truth," i. e. the truth in regard to things moral 
 and spiritual; specially, as the context clearly shows, the truth in regard 
 to Himself. While, then, we do expect from those who were under the 
 guidance of the Spirit of God authoritative declarations on everything 
 that pertains to "the great salvation," we do not expect them to throw 
 in here some information on astronomy, there some anticipation of geo- 
 logical discovery, again to propound some advanced theories on politics 
 and government, and further on to show how to divide the electric light 
 and how to construct the phonograph and telephone ! When you keep 
 this in view you will see that a great many of the current objections of 
 the day, which are supposed to lie against Christianity, are really only 
 objections to certain theories of inspiration. Take the so-calied " Mis- 
 takes of Moses," for instance. I am one of those who believe that it is 
 not Moses but his critics who are mistaken. But what if Moses were 
 proved to have made some mistakes ? What if he were proved to be 
 xT.istaken in his geological views? Would the fact, that he knew no 
 more of science than the learning of the Egyptian!? could give him, 
 militate against his claim to be a prophet of God ? Who ever said that 
 one of the necessary credentials of a prophet of the Lord was omnis- 
 cience? I can not find any such claim in the words of Christ, or indeed 
 in any part of the Bible. How absurd, then, is it to make the claims of 
 Christ to be the revealer of the Father turn on the question whether 
 Moses knew all about geology ? • 
 
REVELATION BY THE SPIRIT. 
 
 133 
 
 :h He 
 New 
 )rom- 
 them 
 3I1 we 
 . lives 
 
 teaks of 
 c truth, 
 lims, on 
 the rest 
 2eptions 
 revela- 
 ! which 
 into all 
 it is not 
 :s moral 
 a regard 
 ader the 
 srything 
 to throw 
 1 of geo- 
 politics 
 ;ric light 
 ou keep 
 itions of 
 lily only 
 5d " Mis- 
 that it is 
 ses were 
 ed to be 
 knew no 
 ve him, 
 said that 
 s omnis- 
 r indeed 
 ilaims of 
 whether 
 
 and teachings, that the promise was fulfilled. This 
 double guarantee ought surely to afford us sufficient 
 confidence in the teaching of these men on all sub- 
 jects which come within the range of their high 
 commission. 
 
 Thus, you see, the revelations which came from 
 the Spirit of God through the prophets, not only 
 prepared the way for the coming of Christ, in tlie 
 fulness of time, but provided for the spiritual wants 
 of those who lived in the early ages of the world ; 
 and the unfoldings of divine truth, which the 
 apostles have furnished, come to us with the guar- 
 antee that what they taught was not their own un- 
 aided conception of that gospel which their Master 
 had preached, but such views of it as were the re- 
 sult of the guidance of that heavenly Instructor, 
 whom their Master promised to send from the 
 Father, to guide them into all the truth. Thus was 
 guaranteed, to all who should come after, a certain- 
 ty concerning these all-important matters, which 
 could not have been enjoyed, if the promulgation 
 of the truth had been left entirely to the ordinary 
 channek of publication. 
 
 The question still remains, of course, as to what 
 guarantee we have that these scriptures in our hands 
 faithfully represent the teachings, first, of Christ 
 Himself, and then, of the prophets and apostles 
 
J 3 J: 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 whose qualifications He guarantees to us. The 
 consideration of this question will come under the 
 next head — viz.: The Scriptures of the Oil and 
 New Testaments. 
 
 Meantime let me only notice, in conclusion, that 
 this doctrine of the Spirit's agency has an applica- 
 tion beyond the inspiration of the prophets and 
 apostles. The Spirit of God and of Christ is rep- 
 resented, as not only inspiring prophets and apos- 
 tles, but as dealing with all men, and ready to 
 guide all who are ready to accept His guidance. 
 Thus a way is provided by which even those may 
 be reached who never had the opportunity of hear- 
 ing the testimony of prophets and apostles, or of 
 those who learned the vnxj of life through them. It 
 is true that the testimony of those who have them- 
 selves received the truth is the great means which 
 God has appointed for the salvation of the world, 
 and accordingly the disciples of Christ are enjoined 
 to " go into all the world and preach the gospel to 
 every creature." But, while these are the appointed 
 means, we know that God can reach the hearts of 
 men independently of appointed means; and thus, 
 while firmly holding that the gospel is the power 
 of God unto salvation, we can at the same time 
 hold fast the assurance that " God is no respecter 
 of persons, but in every nation he that feareth Him 
 
 ..-^ 
 
REVELATION BY THE SPIRIT. 
 
 135 
 
 I 
 
 that 
 
 and worketh rigliteoiisness is accepted with Him." 
 (Acts X, 34, 35). God can " fulfil Himself in many 
 ways." Tliough limitation was necessary in order 
 to manifest Himself in the flesh, all limitations are 
 transcended in the revelation by the Spirit. As 
 human, Christ was limited and circumscribed; but 
 as divine, no pent-up ^Nazareth or Palestine con- 
 fined His powers. And of this He was fully con- 
 scious, even in His earthly life. Looking back to 
 the past, He said: "Before Abraham was, I am." 
 Looking forward to the future, He gave the j)romise: 
 " Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the 
 world." And, casting His eye outward to tlie far- 
 thest limits of the earth's population, He made the 
 marvelous declaration: "Wherever two or three 
 are gathered together in My name, there am I in 
 the midst of them." 
 
 Well, then, may the great apostle of the Gentiles 
 say, and well may his words go out to the utter- 
 most ends of the earth: "Now, therefore, ye (Gen- 
 tile nations) are no more strangers and foreigners, 
 but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the house- 
 hold of God; and are built upon the foundation of 
 the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himbclf be- 
 ing the chief corner-stone, in whom all the building, 
 fitly framed together, groweth unto a holy temple 
 in the Lord, in whom ye also are builded together 
 for a habitation of God through the Spirit." 
 
 il' 
 
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 I ,; . 
 
LECTURE IX. 
 
 THE SIXTY-SIX BOOKS. 
 
 We have seen that, not only did the Lord Jesus 
 give the most satisfactory credentials of His exalted 
 mission, but that the prophets wlio preceded Him 
 and the apostles who followed Him had His guar- 
 antee, in addition to any credentials of their own, for 
 the accuracy and authority of their teaching of 
 " the truth as it is in Jesus." And now we have to 
 consider the question, as to what means we have of 
 access to the teaching of these apostles and prophets 
 and of Christ Himself, and what guarantee we have, 
 that what has come down to us is indeed the very 
 truth which they taught when they were here on 
 earth. The answer to this question will bring us at 
 last to what so many unfortunately are inclined to 
 take first, viz.: the Holy Scriptures as an inspired 
 record of the revelation which God has given to 
 man. 
 
 And here we have first to deal with the extraor- 
 dinary perversity and unfairness, so common in our 
 
 (136) 
 
 J .1 
 
THE SIXTY-SIX LOOKS. 
 
 137 
 
 day, of treating the scriptures as if the whole mass 
 were only one book. Of all the unfair devices for 
 weakening the evidences of Christianity this is per- 
 haps the very worst. And the strangest thing 
 about it is, that so many good Christians allow it 
 and even insist upon it. So great is the mischief 
 arising from this that it would almost seem a pity, 
 that, even for convenience' sake, the sixty-six books 
 were so constantly bound together in one volume. 
 For not only is there the unhaj^py result of reduc- 
 ing tlie many witnesses to one, in the minds of un- 
 thinking people, but even of silencing and put- 
 ting out of court that one. For such unreasoning 
 suspicion is abroad about the Bible, that there are 
 multitudes of people, and even some good Chris- 
 tian people, who would attach a great deal more 
 importance to the statement of almost any author 
 outside the Bible, than of any number of authors 
 inside of it. Show them a fact attested by Matthew, 
 Mark, Luke, and John, Paul and Peter, and they 
 Mill say: "O that is all in the Bible; give us some- 
 thing outside of the Bible and we will believe it." 
 The Bible, in the first place, stands to them for a 
 single author; and in the second place for a preju- 
 diced author, one who has his own cause to bolster 
 up; and accordingly a hundred confirmations within 
 its covers are not so good as one from the outside 
 
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 11 
 
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 138 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 would be. Is it not unreasonable in the extreme? 
 Let me suppose a case, in order to put the mon- 
 strous injustice in a clear light. SupjDOse that, very 
 soon after the invention of printing, some enterpris- 
 ing publisher had collected all the original mate- 
 rials of any value in regard to the history of the Ro- 
 man republic and bound them together into one 
 volume, which he issued to the world under the 
 title of " The History of the Roman Republic;" and 
 suppose further that it became so popular, that it 
 was circulated first by hundreds, then by thousands, 
 then by hundreds of thousands, and finally by the 
 million, so that it came into almost everybody's 
 hands. But in course of time, after all the world 
 had become so accustomed to it in its form of a 
 single volume, there sprang up a fashion of skepti- 
 cism on the whole subject, and everything in the 
 volume was regarded with suspicion; and accord- 
 ingly the whole history of the Roman republic was 
 called into question. Those who believed it called 
 attention to the manv difierent authorities who cor- 
 roborated each other. " Here is Livv, who writes 
 about it in Latin. Here is Dio Cassius, who writes 
 about the same thing in Greek. Here are speeches 
 of Cicero that relate to the same events. And here are 
 poems of Horace that could not have been written 
 unless these facts were so." But they were imme- 
 
THE SIXTY-SIX BOOKS. 
 
 139 
 
 Ko- 
 
 diately put down, by triumphantly pointing out that 
 all these diiferent authorities were no authorities at 
 all. Why not? Because that publisher and that 
 bookbinder of the fifteenth century had published 
 and bound them up together! That of course set- 
 tled the question. In the first place it disposed of 
 all the separate witnesses, of Li^^y, and Dio, and 
 Cicero, and all the rest; for were they not all bound 
 together in the same volume? And in the second 
 place it disposed even of the single witness of the 
 bound book, because it was the credibilitv of the 
 book itself, which w^as in question, and, therefore, 
 all that was in the book must be ruled out as the 
 testimony of an interested party. And so it came 
 to pass that, from the single unfortunate circum- 
 stance of the scattered materials having been con- 
 sidered by this publisher to be worth collecting and 
 publishing together, the evidence for the history of 
 the Roman republic was actually wiped out of ex- 
 istence. It is to be hoped that what may remain of 
 the archives of the first century of American history 
 may never be bound up in one volume, however 
 large, or perhaps the people of the great future, the 
 twenty-ninth century, for example, may not believe 
 we ever had any history at all ! 
 
 Let us then by all means remember, when we are 
 dealing with the subject of the Scriptures, that we are 
 
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 140 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 dealing, not with one book, but with sixty-six; not 
 with a single volume, but with a library. Kemem- 
 ber, further, that these sixty-six books are not links, 
 but strands of evidence. There is, indeed, a golden 
 chain of sacred history from Genesis to Kevelation, 
 so that, in a historical point of view, many of the 
 books of the Bible are links. But, so fa ?.a the evi- 
 dences of Christianity are concerned, they are not 
 links but strr nds. This can be proved in a mo- 
 ment. The strength of a chain is the strength of 
 its weakest link; and if a single link be gone, the 
 ^ whole is useless. !N"ow will any one pretend to say 
 that, if it were proved that the book of Esther had 
 no divine authority, we should have to give up the 
 gospel of Matthew? Would there be no evidence 
 for the divine authority of Christ if the Lamenta- 
 tions of Jeremiah had happened to have been lost? 
 Why, there would be enough to establish the divine 
 authority of Christ if we had nothing more than 
 the four evangelists, as we have already shown; and 
 whatever of confirmation or elucidation comes from 
 the sixty- two other books is just so much in ad- 
 dition. The Bible is not a chain of sixty-six links; 
 it is a cable of sixty-six strands; and if there is such 
 strength as we have found in four of them, what 
 shall we say of the united strength of all the sixty- 
 six? 
 
THE SIXTY-SIX BOOKS. 
 
 141 
 
 After delivering the lecture on the "Miracles of 
 the Gospel," I had a courteous, though anonymous, 
 letter, ridiculing the story related in the book of 
 Daniel, of the three Hebrew youths in the fiery fur- 
 nace, and asking how I could believe any of the 
 miracles of Christ, seeing they rested on precisely 
 the same ground, i. e. the same ground historically, 
 for vou will remember that no use whatever was 
 made of tlio doctrine of inspiration. The letter was 
 evidently that of an intelligent man, and it was ap- 
 parently the production of a fair-minded man. And 
 yet he said that the miracle of the fiery furnace re- 
 corded in Daniel, and that of the healing of the 
 leper recorded by Matthew, were on the same 
 ground, though the authors that speak of the one 
 and of the other were six hundred years apart ! 
 Think of it ! If it had not happened that Daniel and 
 Matthew had been bound together in ©ne volume 
 for so long a time, it would never have occurred to 
 this good man to say such a thing. Kemember, we 
 do not meai to say that a very good case could not 
 be made out for the miraculous rescue of the three 
 Hebrew captives, if that were before us; but to say 
 that our ability to prove, as a matter of history, that 
 the Lord Jesus healed a leper with a word, or fed 
 live thousand people with a few loaves, depends on 
 our ability to prove the reality of a rescue reported 
 
 ' 
 
 . 
 
 
 I' 
 
il 
 
 i U 
 
 M i 
 
 i i J 
 
 1^ it" 
 
 ij r ♦ 
 
 142 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 six hundred years before, is certainly very re- 
 markable logic. 
 
 We do not deny, indeed, that in a very important 
 sense the Scriptures form one book, but only on the 
 supposition of their divine origin. He who ques- 
 tions their divine authority has no right to deal 
 with them as one book. The very thing the skeptic 
 sets out to disprove is the unity of authorship. He 
 wishes to prove that it is only human, and this he 
 cannot possibly do, if he holds on to the unity of 
 authorship, for no one in his senses can believe that 
 all these books were the production of one man. 
 (How many centuries would such a man have had 
 to live?) Suppose, for example, my critic, just re- 
 ferred to, should undertake to prove that the miracle 
 in Daniel, and that in Matthew, are on the same 
 ground; how could he doit? He could only do it 
 by showing that both were by the same author, 
 which is the very thing that he denies, and which 
 he must deny to sustain his position ; for if they 
 were both by the same author, that author must 
 have been God, and therefore, both of them true. 
 The spiritual unity of the sixty-six books will come 
 before us in due time and in its proper place; but, 
 unless we would beg the whole question, we must 
 start with the human authorship in its multiplicity, 
 and see whether we can, by legitimate means, reach 
 
THE SIXTY-SIX BOOKS. 
 
 143 
 
 tlie divine autliorsliip in its unity. Meantime what 
 we have to do, is to see whether these numerous 
 hooks, which are bound together into one volume 
 {\nd called the Bible, really come to us with the pu- 
 thority of those prophets and apostlos v/ho .« ..e 
 saw in our.last lecture) were divinely commissioned 
 and inspired to teach men the way of salvation. 
 
 Now, inasmuch as we cannot in a single lecture 
 take up all the sixty-six books and examine them 
 in detail, to find out whether each of them comes 
 with apostolic or with prophetic authority, we shall 
 have to content ourselves with indicating, in a gen- 
 eral way, the nature of the evidence. And, first, we 
 shall look at the twenty- seven books which make 
 up the New Testament. It is a common idea that 
 the authority of these twenty-seven books rests up- 
 on the decree of some council as far down as the 
 fourth or fifth centur}". At all events, this idea is 
 industriously circulated on the part of those opposed 
 to Christianity; but 1 have yet to find the first 
 Christian author, among the Protestant churches, 
 at least, who puts it on this ground. The author- 
 ity on which the books of the New Testament are 
 accepted is the authority of the apostles; and the 
 authority of the apostles (as we have seen) rests up- 
 on the authority of Christ. Tliis makes the ques- 
 tion a simple one concerning those books which 
 
fl"! 
 hi 
 
 
 |. i; ' 
 
 U4: 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 were the work of the apostles themselves; as the 
 gospels of Matthew and John, and the epistles of 
 Paul and Peter. It becomes, in the case of these, 
 simply a question of their genuineness. As to the 
 other books, as the gospels of Mark and Luke, the 
 Acts of the Apostles, and the anonymous epistle to 
 the Hebrews (which may, however, have been 
 written by Paul) there is good evidence that they 
 were all sanctioned by the apostles, if not produced 
 under their superintendence. Tlu apostolic author- 
 ity of the books which afterwar 1 were bound to- 
 gether as the New Testament, was carefully guarded 
 from the very earliest times, long before the first 
 council met. Much has been made of the fact that 
 there were disputes as to the authority of certain 
 books; but this only shows that the claim to apos- 
 tolic authority was not received without good evi- 
 dence. And these disputes in the early history of 
 the church were only in reference to five of the 
 shortest and least important epistles. From the 
 beginning, twenty-two books were allowed by all 
 to be certainly of apostolic authority; and though 
 afterward there was some debate about the epistle 
 to the Hebrews on account of its being anonymous, 
 and the book of Revelation on the supposition that 
 it might have been some other John than the 
 apostle of that name who wrote it, the very debate 
 
THE SIXTY-SIX BOOKS. 
 
 145 
 
 about these books had tlie effect of brhiffinnr out 
 Buch a mass of evidence in favor of their apostolic 
 authority, that tlie question was set finally at rest. 
 And thus, after careful examination and sifting, the 
 conclusion was reached that the twenty-seven books, 
 now bound together as the New Testament, had 
 the sanction of the apostles, and therefore ultimately 
 of Christ Himself. 
 
 But then we have not the original manuscripts. 
 Certainly not; no more than we have of Yirgil, or 
 Juvenal, or Senecn, or any of those who WTote in 
 these times. What evidence, then, have we that 
 our copies are correct? The very same kind of evi- 
 dence that we have in the case of the classical 
 authors, only ten-fold stronger — for this reason, that 
 the number of copies is so very much greater. We 
 do not pretend that there was any infallibility in 
 the copyists. But, on the whole, the copies must 
 have been wonderfully correct; because among such 
 a multitude there is so much agreement, and the 
 differences are in such little things. Suppose that 
 \^ou had fifty to one hundred fairly good copies of 
 some document, could you not very easily make 
 sure of a correct copy? Even though each one of 
 the fifty made mistakes, they would not all make 
 the same mistakes. If, for example, you found that 
 one of them left out a word, v/hile the othier fOrty- 
 10 
 
146 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 iil:^' 
 
 i0\ '■ 
 
 nine put it in, you would have no doubt whatever 
 that it ought to go in. On the other hand, if one 
 inserted a sentence which the other forty-nine left 
 out, you would be inclined to think that sen- 
 tence did not belong to the original document. 
 And it is evident, that just in proportion to the 
 number and independence of the different copies 
 would be the certainty that, after comparing them 
 wisely together, you had a correct reproduction of 
 the original. 
 
 "When, more than one hundred and fifty years 
 ago, it was first made known to the world that the 
 manuscript copies of the Scriptures did not agree in 
 every letter and word, there was a feeling of alarm 
 throusch all Christendom, and the infidels of the 
 time loudly proclaimed that the end had come, and 
 very soon the last would be heard of the Christians' 
 Bible. It was all corrupt, they said, and there was 
 no guarantee that the manuscripts remaining were 
 at all the same as the apostolic originals. Then 
 followed the tremendous labor of comparing the 
 manuscripts. " Thirteen to fifteen hundred Greek 
 manuscripts" (I quote from Gaussen), " sought out 
 from all the libraries of Europe and Asia, were 
 carefully compared with one another, word by 
 word, letter by letter, by modern criticism, and 
 compared, too, with all the ancient versions, Latin, 
 
THE SIXTY-SIX BOOKS. 
 
 147 
 
 
 Armenian, Syriac, Sahidic, Coptic, Etliiopic, Arabic, 
 Sclavonian, Gothic, and Persian, ind with all the 
 quotations made from the New Testament bj the 
 ancient fathers in their innumerable writings." 
 And with what result? Tlie firm establishment of 
 a genuine text, so that still, " over all the w^orld 
 you will see all the sects of Christians, even the 
 most opposite, give us the same Greek Testament, 
 without the various readings having been able to 
 form among them t\vo distinct schools." Thus the 
 very criticism which was expected utterly to de- 
 molish the text of the l^ew Testament scriptures 
 has established it upon an immovable basis. There 
 are, as was to be expected, a few doubtful passages; 
 but these are so few and of such slight importance, 
 that they really do not affect our assurance as to 
 the genuine apostolic teaching. If every doubtful 
 passage should be left out, the truth as it is in Jesus 
 would be just the same as it was before. And thus 
 it has come to pass that after this verbal and criti- 
 cal comparison h2,s said its last word, we have assu- 
 rance made doubly sure. "We have, then, the very 
 best reasons for accepting as authoritative and gen- 
 uine all the twenty-seven books of the IN'ew Testa- 
 ment. 
 
 And then, besides all, the internal evidence cor- 
 roborates the external. Compare the four apostolic 
 
 ^ f 
 
 1' ■ 
 
148 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 1. 1'l 
 
 gospels witli similar productions that were issued 
 without apostolic sanction, and what a difference! 
 The merest tyro in literary criticism can see it at 
 once. And so, too, when you compare the epistles 
 of Paul with those of Clement, for instance. Though 
 it is evident that Clement is a good man, he falls so 
 far short in originality and strength of all the scrip- 
 ture writers, that you recognize him at once as an 
 ordinary man. Let any one, of even moderate in- 
 telligence, compare the books of the Kew Testa- 
 ment with the private productions of even the best 
 of men in the infancy of the church, and he will 
 readily see the clear line of demarcation which sep- 
 arates that which is apostolic from that which is 
 private. 
 
 The evidence for the prophetic authority of the 
 thirty-nine books of the Old Testament is so nearly 
 the same, that it is not necessary to >jo over the 
 ground. There is, of course, the disadvantage of 
 the greater antiquity of the books, which is, how- 
 ever, to a large extent counterbalanced by the scru- 
 pulous and even superstitious care which was taken 
 by all the Hebrew copyists, and the marvelous 
 unanimity of the most opposite sects and parties 
 among the Jews in regard to the text of the Scrip- 
 tures; and, on the otier hand, there is the sanction 
 which Christ Himself and His apostles gave by 
 
THE SIXTY-SIX BOOKS. 
 
 149 
 
 frequent quotation, and bj the unvarying habit of 
 referring to those Scriptures as the oracles of God. 
 The result of the whole is, to use the words of one 
 who has made the transmission of ancient books 
 to modern times a special study (Isaac Taylor), the 
 Scriptures have come down to us "with an evidence 
 of their genuineness and integrity ten-fold more 
 various, copious, and conclusive than can be ad- 
 duced in support of any other ancient writing." 
 And thus, without any use of any decree of any 
 council, is satisfactorily answered the question, as to 
 what means we have of access to the teachinors of 
 the apostles and of Christ Himself, and what guar- 
 antee we have that- what has come down to us is 
 indeed the very truth which they taught when here 
 on earth. 
 
 ]^ow would be the time for discussing the nature 
 and degree of that inspiration which those prophets 
 and apostles enjoyed, on whom the authority of the 
 sixtv-six books of the Old and 'New Testaments rests. 
 The importance of the question can not be denied. 
 But we hold that it has been very much exaggerated, 
 and that much mischief has been done by pressing 
 particular theories of inspiration, and insisting upon 
 making Christ and Christianity responsible for 
 them. How muny, for example, have been led, by 
 popular representations of inspiration, to regard the 
 
 
 i 
 ■I 
 
 t 
 
 . 
 
 ft' t 
 
I 
 
 
 M 
 
 .>'i nt 
 
 III! 
 
 if ' . 
 
 :r 
 
 
 '■'t 
 
 150 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 prophets and apostles as mere machines, mere 
 amanuenses, mere pens in the hand of God; where- 
 as it is quite evident that, whatever the nature and 
 degree of divine influence may have been, it did 
 not destroy their individuality or reduce their mani- 
 fold witness. We have already seen how unscriptu- 
 ral it is to suppose that apostles and prophets must 
 have been omniscient because they were inspired. 
 It would seem, however, that any view of inspira- 
 tion was practically worthless, which admits of 
 errors in setting forth the very facts and truths 
 which they were commissioned to make known. 
 For how then should we be able to distinguish that 
 which comes to us with divine authority from that 
 which was only a matter of opinion ? 
 
 On the other hand, we do not think it necessary 
 or wise to insist on infallibility in regard to all 
 subjects incidentally touched. Who would think, 
 for example, that it would have been suitable to 
 have departed from current modes of thought and 
 speech, in reference to the stability of the earth, so 
 as to bring the words into agreement with the astro- 
 nomic reality of the case? We do not think it 
 necessary even yet to do so, and we yery properly 
 set down as pedantic those who try it. How much 
 more pedantic and absurd would it have been, when 
 all the world was ignorant of the true facts of the 
 case. 
 
THE SIXTY-SIX BOOKS. 
 
 151 
 
 Take the language used about creation as an ex- 
 ample. We take it because it is more criticised and 
 objected to than anything else in the scriptures. 
 Kow, on the supposition that it was necessary to 
 give men some idea of the divine agency in all the 
 wide domain of creation, there were three suppos- 
 able ways in which it might have been done. First, 
 all wrong scientific notions might have been cor- 
 rected. This would have necessitated a long treat- 
 ise on astronomy, another on geology, another on 
 natural history, with perhaps a lengthy chapter 
 on evolution, long before the world was prepared 
 for anything of the kind. This is what many of 
 the scientific objectors of tlie day seem to think 
 there ought to have been; but is it not absurd? 
 
 Or again, the truth might have been taught con- 
 cerning God's relation to the different parts of crea- 
 tion, in such a way as to conform to the ordinary 
 notions which were current at the time, the object 
 being, not to correct the science of the period, 
 but to set men right on the religious aspects of the 
 case. This is the view taken by many, and we do 
 not think it especially objectionable. A moment's 
 thought will show that it would have been a much 
 more reasonable and less pedantic course than the 
 other, which so many unthinking people suppose 
 ought to have been taken. 
 
 i : 
 
152 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 m '\ ^!i 
 
 But there is a third way; and we think that some- 
 wiiere in this direction lies the true account of 
 the matter. The language may have been chosen, 
 so as to conflict neither with the ideas then preva- 
 lent, nor with the actual verities of the case. The 
 result would be, that the people who lived during 
 the fifty-live centuries, more or less, before Coper- 
 nicus, would have some chance to understand it, 
 though of course they would understand it in con- 
 formity with their own ideas on scientific subjects; 
 that is to say, tliey would get true religious ideas 
 from it, but their scientific notions would remain 
 unchanged. Tn such a case, however, when the 
 scientific truth w^as at last discovered, there would 
 at first be an impression, that the Bible was on the 
 side of the old ideas; but, on close examination, it 
 would be found that, while nothiiig had been said to 
 disturb the minds of men when there was no occasion 
 for it,, and only harm could result from it, the 
 langTiage used was really such as to be in harmony 
 with the actual facts of the case. 
 
 This view of the case I am disposed to take, 
 not because I think the second a dangerous or 
 unworthy view, but because I can not otherwise ac- 
 count for the many wonderful harmonies with sci- 
 ence, which careful investigation has brought out. 
 Let any one read tlie works of such eminent scien- 
 
 f 
 
some- 
 unt of 
 ihosen, 
 preva- 
 The 
 during 
 Coper- 
 md it, 
 n con- 
 bjects; 
 J ideas 
 'emain 
 Bn the 
 would 
 on the 
 tion, it 
 said to 
 3casion 
 it, the 
 ,rmonv 
 
 D take, 
 •oiis or 
 nse ac- 
 ith sci- 
 ht out. 
 t scien- 
 
 THE SIXTY-SIX BOOKS. 
 
 153 
 
 tific men as Dawson or Dana, which bring out the 
 wonderful harmonies of that old record with mod- 
 ern science, and he will see reason for believing 
 that, however little the original author of the first 
 chapter of Genesis may have known of science, he 
 was so guided by some heavenly inspiration as to 
 ''build better than he knew." This illustration 
 may serve to show, that the relation of inspiration 
 to the science of the time, when the different scrip- 
 tures were produced, may well be left an open ques- 
 tion, so long as the plenary view is held in relation 
 to the great subjects and objects of revelation, as set 
 forth in that passage of scripture which is more 
 explicit than any other on the subject: "Tlie holy 
 scriptures are able to malve thee wise unto salva- 
 tion, through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All 
 scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is 
 profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, 
 for instruction in righteousness: that the man of 
 God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished" — not 
 unto all scientific disquisitions — but "unto all 
 
 good works. 
 
 j> 
 
 1 
 
LECTUEE X. 
 
 THE ONE BOOK. 
 
 In dealing with ths scrij ,nres as ordinary pro- 
 ductions, so as to ascertain their vahie and credibil- 
 ity, historically considered, we have seen that it is 
 unfair to treat them as if the whole formed only 
 one book. Hemember that there is no question as 
 to the human authorship. A.nd so long as we are 
 dealing with these books as the productions of hu- 
 man authors, it is manifestly unjust to disregard 
 the confluence of testimony from so many different 
 points. But, while we never dream of denying the 
 human authorship, we maintain that this is not 
 the whole account of the matter, that there is a di- 
 vine element running through them all, and that, 
 therefore, the boards of the book binder are not the 
 only bond which binds these different books to- 
 gether into unity. The multiplicity of the books 
 is a patfjnt fact, which every one can see who has 
 only common sense enough not to confound together 
 
 (154) 
 
THE ONE BOOlC. 
 
 155 
 
 authorship and Look-binding, and which would 
 never be forgotten, if it were not convenient some- 
 times to do so, in order to weaken the historical basis 
 of Christianity. But the unity of the books is some- 
 thing which lies deeper, and which requires some 
 power of appreciating spiritual and divine things to 
 recognize; but when once it is recognized, it adds so 
 immensely to the strength of the historical argument 
 as to give perfect repose to tho&e who are fai, \y 
 brought face to face with it. "VVe can as usual only 
 indicate in briefest outline the nature of the evi- 
 dence, which ic so copious, that almost every page 
 of the Bible is lighted up with it, for those who 
 have eyes to see. 
 
 Keeping in mind the evidence we have from his- 
 tory that these scriptures now in our hands have 
 come to us with the aut^ority of the prophets and 
 apostles, guaranteed by Christ Himself, it is now in 
 order to look into them, and see if their contents cor- 
 respond with what we should expect of writings so 
 highly authenticated. You will see that we are now 
 in the same attitude in which we found ourselves 
 in dealing with the second part of our whole argu- 
 ment, After satisfying ourselves that the claim 
 was distinctly made, on behalf of Jesus of ]!^aza- 
 reth, that He was the Messiah sent to reveal the 
 Father, we inquired how His life and words bore 
 
 f 
 
 ' '-If 
 
 8 ' 
 
 I t 
 
156 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 !'^ i 
 
 hi- ■ 
 
 out the claim. Kow, in this third part of the argu- 
 ment, having satisfied ourselves that these hooks 
 before us are the very books which come to us with 
 prophetic and apostolic authority, we now proceed 
 to inquire how far an inspection of their contents 
 bears out their claim. And here again we shall 
 follow the same method. We shall raise the ques- 
 tion as to what we should reasonably expect of such 
 books; and if we find all reasonable expectations 
 realized, surely it will be but fair to grant that the 
 claim is established. 
 
 "What, then, may we reasonably expect of these 
 books, if it be true that they come to us, not as 
 mere private productions, but by inspiration of 
 God? 
 
 1. We should expect that, amid all diversity of 
 matter and of form, there would be unity of spirit. 
 And is it not so? Think for a moment how appro- 
 priate is the name " Holy Bible " as a title of the 
 entire collection. Matthew Arnold has shown how 
 the idea of righteousness is the central idea of the 
 Old Testament, and he is correct as far as he goes; 
 and it is well worth pondering how I'ar this single 
 fact may go toward proving the presence of a di- 
 vine element throughout. But the fact is much 
 stronger than as Arnold puts it, for it is not right- 
 eousness in the common acceptation of the word, 
 
 III 
 
THE ONE BOOK. 
 
 157 
 
 wliicli might readily be supposed to cover only those 
 virtues, which the common conscience of mankind, 
 always and everywhere, more or less demands; but 
 it is holiness, something much higher, purer, and 
 more comprehensive, which is the keynote of the 
 Bible from beginning to end. Even in the rude 
 Mosaic age, wlien tlie state of society was such, that 
 many things far from ideally right had to be al- 
 lowed " for the hardness of their iiearts," when 
 many of the political regulations reflected the im- 
 perfect spirit of the times, dealing as such regula- 
 tions ought always to deal, with the practicable 
 rather than the ideal, — even then we see, shining on 
 the mitre of the high priest, the plate of pure gold 
 with this inscription: "Holiness to the Lord." 
 And the attentive student iinds the conviction 
 growing upon him that, while the external history 
 was very much what would be expected of the age, 
 and the political regulations hp-d to a certain extent 
 to conform thereto, yet, " the law " proper, both the 
 moral and ceremonial branches of it, held up, as an 
 ideal before the people, nothing short of perfect 
 holiness. And the keynote struck by the law is 
 followed out by all the prophets, taken up in a ten- 
 derer, sweeter strain by Christ Himself, and pro- 
 longed by the holy apostles, until at the close of 
 the book of Revelation, we are introduced into the 
 
 : i 
 
 If 
 

 158 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 holy city, " whore there shall in no wise enter any- 
 thing that defileth,'' but over wliich reigns thc^ 
 "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty." Can 
 you fail to recognize the unity here? And, observe, 
 it is not mere unity, but a unity of the most ele- 
 vated kind, having the divine signet upon it; for, 
 indeed, it is a question whether this idea, which 
 runs like a golden thread through all the scriptures 
 of the Old and New Testaments, ever entered into 
 the minds of the most cultivated nations of the 
 ancient world, or into the mind of man at all from 
 any other source. 
 
 Again, there is not only one purpose, the loftiest, 
 and purest, and noblest that could be conceived, 
 running through all the scriptures, but there is one 
 plan for the realizing of this purpose. When we 
 look at the means provided for leading men to holi- 
 ness, we £nd, not a great many different sugges- 
 tions from different minds, as we should expect 
 from authors so diverse in their talents, tempera- 
 ments, education, and surroundings, and so far sep- 
 arated from each other in time; but one consistent 
 plan of a kingdom of God, the standard of which is 
 holiness, and its method mercy, — mercy and truth 
 meeting together, righteousness and peace embrac- 
 ing each other, as it is put in the expressive lan- 
 guage of the 85th Psalm. This wonderful unity is 
 
THE ONE BOOK. 
 
 150 
 
 OHO wliicli would require volumes to develop, but 
 wo can only suggest it here. 
 
 And in the same way it will be found, that all the 
 main thoughts which are expressed by the different 
 authors on the great subject of revelation, such as 
 God, man, duty, goodness, sin, salvation, instead of 
 presenting that conflict wliich you always find, when 
 human pliilosophy without special divine aid at- 
 tempts to discuss such questions, are so fully in ac- 
 cord that, as we have seen, it is difficult, even for 
 those who deny the divine element in the scriptures, 
 to avoid treating the whole as if it were the produc- 
 tion of one man. 
 
 Finally, there is that most wonderful unity of 
 all, referred to by our Lord himself, which appears 
 when you recognize the great fact, tliat all th^^ man- 
 ifold witness of the books converges on Ciirist„ 
 Here, again, the field is too wide to enter upon; 
 but those who examine it will find it a most fruit- 
 ful field of investigation. And so conclusive is the 
 argument based upon it, that the only thing infidel- 
 ity can do in the matter is to take up, in succes- 
 sion, the most striking passages which set forth the 
 hope of a coming Savior, and explain them away as 
 best it can — a task wliich must remain forever hope- 
 less, for this most weighty reason, that the ancient 
 Jews themselves understood them in their Messianic 
 
 n 
 
 .a>i»e'.--»--*^jwn 
 
160 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 ill 
 
 
 sense. (For a full and learned presentation of this 
 subject, see Westcott's " Introduction to the study 
 of the Gospels," Chap. 11.) And it only shows tiie 
 desperate straits to which infidelity is reduced in 
 dealing with this subject, when its advocates are 
 constrained to impose a forced and unnatural mean- 
 ing on a whole series of passages in different books 
 of the Old Testament, though the testimony of thoso 
 who lived nearest the time is against them, and 
 though Christ Himself, whom they profess to re- 
 gard as the most intelligent Jew of his age, under- 
 stood and expounded them as applying to Himself. 
 As for the modern Jews who reject Christ, they of 
 course join with the infidels in getting rid of those 
 passages, for the very good reason that it is only in 
 this way that they can reject the ^ew Testament 
 while retaining the Old. Thus, all through the Old 
 Testament, there is a convergence of hope, looking 
 for the coming Christ, and all through the "New 
 there is a convergence of faith, resting on the Christ 
 who has c<^me and fulfilled " the hope of Israel," — 
 a unity which fully harmonizes with the claim the 
 apostle Peter advances on behalf of the prophets, 
 when he speaks of them as "searching what or what 
 manner of time the spirit of Christ, which was in 
 them, did signify, when it testified beforehand of 
 the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should 
 follow." 
 
THE ONE BOOK. 
 
 161 
 
 Thus, in every way, the unity of spirit, which the 
 theory of inspiration calls for, is fully borne out by 
 a careful inspection of the numerous books of the 
 Old and New Testaments. 
 
 2. Another thing we should expect, if the claim 
 of inspiration is well-founded; that, though the 
 authors, as men, must necessarily have been moulded 
 and controlled by their times and surroundings, yet 
 their productions would have a large element of 
 universal adaptation in them. And is it not so? Is 
 it not so, to a degree that is altogether unaccount- 
 able, apart from some influence of the Spirit of God? 
 
 Think, first, how every part of our complex nature 
 is powerfully appealed to: the conscience, the intel- 
 lect, the affections, the imagination, the will. Eead 
 Dr. Hopkins' fifth lecture on the "Evidences," if 
 you wish to see how much there is in this one thing, 
 which we can only mention in passing. 
 
 Think, next, of the adaptation to different classes 
 of men. Have not the most cultured and the most 
 simple-minded, the highest and the lowest, the rich- 
 est and the poorest, found here, as nowhere else, a 
 satisfaction for the wants of their natures? It is to 
 no purpose to point to any number of cultured per- 
 sons who reject the Bible, and speak slightingly of 
 it; for the mere fact that they reject it is a sufficient 
 reason why they can not be expected to appreciate 
 11 " 
 
 ' i V,, 
 
 * r 
 
 1 
 
hi lii! » 
 
 n 
 
 i!1 
 
 M P, 
 
 162 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 it. The question is not, what satisfaction it gives to 
 those who will have nothing to do with it, but ho\," 
 it meets the wants of those who put it to the proof, 
 who take it as a lamp to their feet and a light to their 
 path ; and it can not be denied that, while one of the 
 glories of the gospel is, that it is preached specially 
 to the poor, and another is, that even the little chil- 
 dren have their portion in it, and quite a large one 
 too, as our Sunday-school experience fully shows, 
 many of the most scholarly and highly-cultivated 
 of men have confessed its unrivaled adaptation to 
 the wants of their own natures. 
 
 Think, further, of its adaptation to all the differ- 
 ent circumstances of life. All experienced Chris- 
 tians can set their seal to the following testimony 
 of Archbishop Trench, in his lecture on the inex- 
 haustibility of Scripture: "What an interpreter of 
 scripture is affliction! How many stars in its 
 Heaven shine out brightly in the night of sorrow 
 or of pain. . . . What an enlarger of scrip- 
 ture is any other outer or inner event which stirs 
 the deeps of our hearts; which touches us near to 
 the core and centre of our lives. Trouble of spirit, 
 condemnation of conscience, pain of body, sudden 
 danger, strong temptation — when any of these 
 overtakes us, what veils do they take away that we 
 may see what hitherto we saw not; what new do- 
 
THE ONE BOOK. 
 
 163 
 
 mains of God's word do they bring within our 
 spiritual ken! How do promises, which once fell 
 flat upon our ears, become precious now, psahns 
 become our own, our heritage forever, which before 
 were aloof from us! . . . How much, again, 
 do we see in our riper age which in youth we 
 missed or passed over. And thus, on these accounts 
 also, the Scripture is well fitted to be our compan- 
 ion and do us good all the years of our life." 
 " Let us still further think of its adaptation to 
 different nations and races of men. Our religion 
 is really the only catholic religion, our Bible the 
 only collection of sacred books, that has proved its 
 adaptation to peoples the most widely separated 
 frorii each other. "No two civilizations could be 
 more widely separated than the Oriental civiliza- 
 tion, out of the bosom of which the books of the 
 Bible sprang, and . hat Western civilization, which 
 is founded on it and has grown out of it. And it 
 lias been proved to be adapted not only to the most 
 diverse civilizations, but even to barbarism itself; 
 for some of the most wonderful trophies of the el- 
 evating, purifying, exalting influences of the Bible 
 have been found among the most degraded races on 
 the face of the earth. The more you investigate the 
 matter, the more you will be convinced that, while 
 it was indeed true that Christ "came unto His 
 
 
 '■ ;3 
 
164 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 r. M 
 
 own and His own received Him not," and though 
 many of every nation to whom He has come have 
 received Him not, yet "as many as received Him," 
 of whatever nation, kindred, people or tongue, " to 
 them gave He power to become the sons of God." 
 The wild Hottentot, if only he receives Christ, be- 
 comes so elevated and purified thereby, as lo be in 
 a position to vindicate his claim to be a son of God, 
 as well as the best of us. 
 
 The adaptation of the Bible to all successive ages 
 of the world's history might close this series, were 
 it not that it introduces us to a new feature w^hich 
 deserves separate consideration, viz.: 
 
 3. The progressiveness of the Bible. The unity 
 of tone and tenor, of purpose and spirit and plan, 
 which we find throughout the Bible, is not a dead 
 but a living unity. It is a unity of progress, of de- 
 velopment. There was evidently an educational de- 
 velopment along the line of the Scnpture history, 
 the study of which is both interesting and instruc- 
 tive. There was also a germinating and springing, 
 a budding and blossoming of that hope of Israel 
 which found its fruitage in " the fulness of the 
 time," when God sent His Son into the world. 
 There was development of doctrine, too, not only 
 throughout the long ages of the Old Testament, but 
 even in tlie brief compass of the ^ew, as is most 
 
THE ONE BOOK. 
 
 165 
 
 beautifiillj and convincingly shown by 'Bernard, in 
 the Bampton Lectures for 1867. 
 
 And then, though the canon has been so long 
 complete, it is a remarkable fact that, as progress 
 is made in other things, we are making fresh dis- 
 coveries in the inexhaustible mine of Scripture. 
 Just as in Nature many things continue hidden 
 from the ages and generations, until the appointed 
 time comes round, and a Newton or an Edison 
 makes patent what has long been latent; so is 
 it in Scripture, And thus it comes to pass, that 
 the Bible is always in advance of the age, just as 
 Nature is always in advance of the science of the 
 age. What more characteristic of the advance of 
 religious thought in the present century, than the 
 development of that charity and liberality, which 
 for many centuries was so conspicuously absent. 
 But when we open the Bible, lo! there is a charity 
 and liberality, shining on the face of it, so brightly, 
 that it is almost incredible that centuries should 
 have passed, before it was recognized. It has been 
 beautifully suggested, that much of the truth which 
 the Bible contains has been written, as it were, with 
 sympathetic ink, invisible until ;he time should 
 come, when the world was ready to receive a new 
 heritage of truth. Tiiis wonderful progressiveness 
 in the Bible leads us to a fourth j)oint, viz.: 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ '■. 
 
 ' : \t 
 
i'l 11 .1 
 
 'W 
 
 !i,i r 
 
 166 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 4. "What* the Bible has to say about the future. 
 And here we miglit reasonably expect, that there 
 would be some provision to meet that want of our 
 njiture, which yearns to know something of what 
 lies \» ithin the veil. On the other hand, we should 
 not reasonably expect that such a revelation of the 
 future would be given, as to satisfy an idle curiosity. 
 Revelation with reticence, then, is what we should 
 expect. And is it not even so? The prophetic ele- 
 ment of scripture has for its consistent aim from 
 beginning to end, not the gratification of a prying 
 curiosity, but the practical object of warning, guid- 
 ing and comforting those to whom it was given, and 
 supplying them with motives to personal holiness 
 and ardent devotion to the best interests of their fel- 
 low-men. Hence an intentional vagueness and in- 
 detiniteness in prophetic language. But, notwith- 
 standing this, there has been already such a marked 
 fulfilment of a large number of prophecies, that 
 strong arguments have been founded on this alone, 
 for the inspiration of the Scriptures. The constant 
 attempt of unbelievers has been, to bring down the 
 date of the prophecies so as to give plausibility to the 
 supposition that the fulfilment came before the 
 prophecy, or else to explain the correspondence by 
 the notion of shrewd guesses or far-sighted prog- 
 nostication ; but let any one study the subject can- 
 
THE ONE BOOK. 
 
 167 
 
 can- 
 
 didly and thoroughly, and he will see that, after all 
 doubtful cases are set aside, there remain a suffi- 
 cient number of unmistakable prophecies, which 
 
 could not possibly have been written after the event, 
 to support the claim of inspiration. 
 
 But the special point now before us has to do 
 rather with that which is still in the future, and 
 especially with those revelations of the world be- 
 yond the grave, which we find in scanty measure, 
 but in growing clearness, till, in tlie end, we rest 
 with delight on the glowing imagery of the closing 
 chapters of the Apocalypse. Now if any one will 
 contrast these reticent and reserved un veilings of 
 the future with the corresponding teachings of the 
 Koran, for instance, or the Buddhist sacred books, 
 the vast diiference will be very apparent. Here, 
 as everywhere in the Scriptures, the moral impres- 
 sion is everything ; the gratification of curiosity, 
 or of sensual desire, nothing. 
 
 The subject is really exhaustless. As we said at 
 the outset, it requires some powers of appreciation 
 to begin with; but, given tliese powers of apprecia- 
 tion, and we are confident that, the longer the sub- 
 ject is studied, the more will the evidences throng 
 around from every side, that tliis is more than a 
 collection of ordinary books bound together; that 
 they are indeed w^hat they claim to be — the work 
 
 ' 1,1 
 
 f t 
 
168 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 )»: 
 
 of " lioly men of old, who spake as they were moved 
 by the Holy Ghost." 
 
 And now what is there to he said on the other side ? 
 "What can the infidel bring forward, to counterbal- 
 ance the mass of evidence which we have only hint- 
 ed at in the ^rie^" t vay? A string of objections 
 and difilcultiis, lovinded on particular passages, and 
 most of them a: pea'^'ig to our ignorance. Now, 
 we do not say that these objections and difficulties 
 are all paltry. Far from it. Many of them are. 
 Still, a considerable number are undoubtedly hard 
 to deal with. But what of that ? Is it not just 
 what was to have been expected? 
 
 Is Nature free from difficulties ? And jet does 
 the presence of these difficulties prove that it is not 
 divine in its origin ? There is a superficial rough- 
 ness and ruggedness in many parts of the Bible, but 
 that does not prove that there are not mines of 
 wealth under t' ? surface, any more than the rough- 
 ness of Colorado proves it to be a God-forsaken 
 country, as some represented it to be, before its 
 hidden riches w^ere disclosed. Just as in the investi- 
 gation of Nature, so in the study of the Bible, labor 
 is needed, patience is needed, sympathy is needed; 
 but, when these are present, difficulties rapidly dis- 
 appear, and if any still remain hard and insoluble, 
 yet having so very much to build a solid faith upon, 
 
THE ONE BOOK. 
 
 109 
 
 moved 
 
 r side ? 
 terbal- 
 Y huit- 
 Bctions 
 es, and 
 Now, 
 cultiea 
 m are. 
 y hard 
 at just 
 
 3t does 
 ; is not 
 roagli- 
 )le, but 
 les of 
 rough- 
 rsaken 
 )re its 
 ivesti- 
 , labor 
 eeded; 
 ly dis- 
 Dluble, 
 I upon, 
 
 we can well afford to wait, to suspend our judgment 
 on soiiie points if need be, feeling fully assured 
 that what we k.iow not now we shall know hen. 
 after. 
 
 Our treatment of so wide a subject in limits so 
 narrow must necessarily be exceedingly inadequate; 
 but even little as we have said, we think we have 
 said enough to show that, difficulties included, we 
 find these books of the Old and Is ^\^ Testaments to 
 be just what we should reasonal y t .pect them to 
 be as inspired productions; uiu- :herefore, to the 
 strons: external evidence bro ^grht out in former 
 lectures must be added the stiii stronger internal 
 evidence, that these Scriptures are in verv deed the 
 oracles of God. 
 
 It 
 
 \ : 
 
 i ! 
 
 '^^■t\: 
 
i. ,i'» 
 
 - \ 
 
 u 
 
CONCLUDING CONTRAST 
 
 ! 
 
 5r!)C ^tuo Strongijolirs. • 
 
 1 f 
 
 I t 
 
 '■M 
 
LECTUEE XI. 
 
 THE STRONGHOLD OP UNBELIEF. 
 
 Having finished our brief review of the evidences 
 by which our belief in the inspiration of the Scrip- 
 tures is sustained, we might take up next the evi- 
 dence furnished for the truth of Christianity by its 
 influence, as observed and experienced. This would 
 introduce us into an entirely new field, where again 
 we should find innumerable confirmations of the 
 divine origin of our holy religion. But, though 
 the field is a very inviting one, our narrow limits 
 will not permit us to enter it, covering, as it does, 
 the broad ground of modern history. We may get 
 some idea of how much there is in it, by reading 
 such a book as the recent work of Uhlhorn on the 
 Conflict of Christianity with Heathenism in the 
 first three centuries. 
 
 We feel constrained, therefore, to dismiss the sub- 
 ject with one caution. It has betu the fashion of 
 late years to ransack history, for tiie purpose of find- 
 ing, and bringing out into the boldest relief, every- 
 
 (173) 
 
til- ■;! 
 
 
 
 174 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 thing that can be made to tell against the influence 
 of Christianity. I need not remind you how the 
 imprisonment of Galileo, the martyrdom of Gior- 
 dano Bruno, and the burning of Servetus, have be- 
 come the best known events in history; so much so 
 that it seems strange, that many distinguished wri- 
 ters and speakers should still see the necessity of 
 rehearsing the same stories for the ten- thousandth 
 time. The burning: of witches must of course be 
 added to the catalogue, and a few other historical 
 items of the same kind. It does not take many to 
 make up a complete stock in trade. The caution I 
 mean to interpose is this, that we be careful to dis- 
 tinguish between what is really due to Christ and 
 Christianity, and what is due to entirely different, 
 not to say antipodal causes, such as ecclesiasticism, 
 sectarian bigotry, and " science, falsely so called," 
 not to speak of the depravity of human nature, 
 which will manifest itself inside the church as well 
 as outside of it. It is easy for a Draper, after de- 
 fining Christianity as synonymous with the Roman 
 church, to fasten some very strong imputations 
 upon it. It is e^s}^ to array Religion against Sci- 
 ence, if, by " Religion," you mean the scholastic 
 philosophy in league with the Ptolemaic system of 
 astronomy. Will any one dare to say that Christ 
 would have imprisoned Galileo, or that Bruno was 
 
THE STRONGIIOLi^ OF UNBELIEF. 
 
 175 
 
 put to death because Christianity demanded it? 
 Will any one dare to say that the burning of Ser- 
 vetus, whosesoever fault it was, was in accord with 
 the spirit of Christianity, as taught by Christ Him- 
 self and His apostles? Is our civilization to be 
 credited with all the murders that are committed 
 within its pale? Is the republican form of govern- 
 ment to be held responsible for all the corruptions 
 which disgrace it, when it is put in operation 
 p. uong men like ourselves who, though we belong 
 to the most enlightened nineteenth century, are, 
 nevertheless, still as liable as ever to abuse the best 
 of things ? Why then should Christianity be held 
 responsible for all the abuses which, though done 
 in its name, have been in direct opposition to its 
 spirit and teachings? 
 
 The experimental argument is also a very tempt- 
 in jr one, and the most conclusive of all to those who 
 have actually made the experiment. But we pass 
 this by also, only remarking that, while it is abso- 
 lutely conclusive only to those who have tested it 
 themselves, it nevertheless ought to have great force 
 with all, in consideration of the vast multitude of 
 examples of the elevating and sanctifying power of 
 Christianity. When the advocate of a purely secu- 
 lar morality can say that " the appearance of but a 
 single example proves the adequacy of the belief" 
 
 / 
 
 ■■a 
 
 -^' 
 
 
1 i 3 
 
 I 
 
 I'-l 
 
 I S3 Hi, 
 
 1 11' i 
 
 ■ m' 
 
 1 
 
 
 i!' i! ■.! 
 
 \:rl 
 
 
 ^i 
 
 
 
 
 .11 
 
 1 
 
 1 HI 
 
 ', 1,1 : ' 
 
 '« a'M 
 
 nil!. 
 
 ■ 
 
 \ 
 
 
 IF" 
 
 176 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 (See " Is Life Worth Livingrp. 82), while we think 
 he id putting it too iitrongly, and we should never 
 think of insisting on the adequacy of our belief, if 
 it had only one or £> f jw examples to sustain it, yet, 
 surely, it may be allowed us to say, that the ap- 
 pearance of such an innumerable array of examples 
 furnishes a verj? strong confirmation of the adequacy 
 of a belief, which is at the same time vouched for 
 by a vast accumulation of evidence from other and 
 independent sources. 
 
 Dismissing, then, the argument from history, 
 and from experience, we propose to deal now with 
 a difficulty which may lie in many minds, and 
 which is rather increased than diminished by a pre- 
 sentation of the many converging lines of evidence. 
 It is this: If the evidence is so abundant and satis- 
 factory, why do so many remain unconvinced ? The 
 difficulty would not indeed be great, if the unbelief 
 could be traced in all cases, as it can in a great 
 many, to dislike of the truth, or to carelessness and 
 inattention, or even to stupidity. But the skepti- 
 cisni of the age is not so easilj explained. After 
 you have deducted the large number who love dark- 
 ness rather than light, ond the still larger number 
 who are so little interested in the subject that they 
 do not care to give it any attention, there still re- 
 
THE STKONGHOLD OF UNBELIEF. 
 
 177 
 
 
 mains a sufficiently formidable array of nnbeliev- 
 ers of good moral character, of decided intellectual 
 ability, and with all the appearance of candor, who 
 claim to have examined tlie evidences of Christiani- 
 ty and found them insufficient. Is tliere any ex- 
 planation to be given of this, in harmony with what 
 we have said as to the strength of our position ? 
 
 We might, indeed, in regar 1 to a large part of 
 this moral and cultured infidelity, that which may 
 be called the scientific skepticism of the age, call 
 attention to the influence of theone-sidedness of the 
 scientific culture, which is not balanced b^^ a corres- 
 ponding spiritual development. If the exclusive 
 study of theology unfits a man, as it certainly does, 
 for appreciating the methods of scientific demonstra- 
 tion, why should we shut our eyes to the fact, that 
 the exclusive study of science unfits a man for ap- 
 preciating the methods of spiritual demonstration? 
 But not only is there a tendency towards material- 
 istic conceptions of the universe, on the part of those 
 v/ho are continually occupied with things material, 
 corresponding to the tendency in the other direction 
 of the specialist in theology; but the former is 
 much the stronger tendency of the two, because it 
 is reinforced by the natural preference which men 
 in general have for that which ministers to the 
 specially urgent wants of the'owerpart of their na- 
 12 
 
178 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Ml 
 
 ' 
 
 \ 
 
 
 
 : 
 
 
 
 
 ' 
 
 ili "' , 
 fc ■ 
 
 jit i- 
 
 
 
 h ,v. 
 
 : 
 
 1 ii 
 
 %s 
 
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 ^ 
 
 
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 Htt 
 
 ture. The theologian may neglect science, but he 
 has a body ^-'hich he neglects at his peril, and those 
 dependent on him have claims which cannot be set 
 aside; and accordingly perforce a large portion of 
 his attention must be directed toward things ma- 
 terial. But the scientific man may neglect his spirit- 
 ual nature utterly without dying a death which any 
 one can see; he may live day after day and year af- 
 ter year, without cultivating in the slightest dt-gree 
 those faculties, by which he is related to God and 
 the realities of the spiritual sphere, and yet neither 
 himself nor family visibly suffers on account of the 
 neglect; and so it comes to pass that the one-sided- 
 ness of the scientific big</t is much more thorough 
 than the one-sidedness of tl>e theologic bigot can 
 possibly be. In this direction we are convinced lies 
 the explanation of a large part of the scientific in- 
 fidelity of the time. 
 
 But this consideration, we readily admit, does 
 not appiy with the same force to the historians, and 
 still less to the theologians, who are found in our 
 day in the ranks of the unbelieving. As to the 
 theologians, it must be borne in mind that, when 
 church and state are so closely allied as they are on 
 (Ve .'Oiitinent of Europe, it does not follow that the 
 ocv..:|>ants of theological chairs are truly repre^sent- 
 e tn ''sn Chri-^lanity of the land. Many of the 
 
 U'i ) 
 
I 
 
 but he 
 id those 
 t be set 
 tion of 
 gs ma- 
 
 spirit- 
 ich any 
 )^ear af- 
 dfgree 
 od and 
 neither 
 of the 
 -sided- 
 :)rough 
 ot can 
 ied lies 
 iic in- 
 
 % does 
 IS, and 
 in our 
 to the 
 , when 
 are on 
 lat the 
 'e^ent- 
 of the 
 
 
 THE STRONGHOLD OF UNBELIEF. 
 
 179 
 
 utterances from the theological chairs have not been 
 fiom a spiritual, but from a purely philosophical 
 standpoint — a fact which must be borne in mind 
 in estimating their significance as signs of the times. 
 But whatever discount we may have to make from 
 the spiritual insight of such men, we cannot deny 
 their competency as literary and historic critics; 
 and how is it that they can examine so thor- 
 oughly as they seem to do. the historic foundations 
 of Christianity, and yei: come to the conclusion 
 that what we receive as facta are only myths and 
 legends? 
 
 The answer to this question will introduce us to 
 the present stionghold of infidelity; and, strange to 
 say, it is a do£ ma, a dictum, an oracular utterance 
 of certain men. The dogma is this, that there can 
 be no such thing as a power above nature made 
 known to man. The supernatural must be got rid 
 of at all hazards, and if facts seen to stand in tlie 
 way, so much the worse for the acts, that is all. 
 It is laid down as a foundation rinciple, that no 
 amount of evidence can be ao< pted as proof of 
 anything supernatural. Let l e present a few quo- 
 tations to make the dogmatism of these skeptics 
 apparent. Strauss, in his Life o^ Jesus for the Ger- 
 man people, under the head of "Considerations 
 preparatory to the following Investigation," says 
 
 ^r 
 
 I 
 
 fi 
 
 < I 
 
Till 
 
 li 
 
 180 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 (§23): "The miraculous is a foreign element in the 
 gospel narratives of Jesus, which resists all histori- 
 cal treatment, and the conception of the myth is 
 the means wherehy we eliminate it from our sub- 
 ject." Further on, under head of "Plan of the 
 work," he says: " Over and above this peculiar ap- 
 paratus for causing miracles to evaporate in 
 myths^ criticism will avail itself of all means," &c. 
 (The italics are not in the original). You see from 
 this, that ii was not on historical but on anti -super- 
 natural grounds that Strauss based his famous myth- 
 ical theory. He had to get rid of the miracles so as 
 to keep his dogma, and he used the mythical theory as 
 the best .means of getting rid of them. Kenan, in his 
 " Apostles" (Carleton, N". Y. p. 37), says : " The 
 first twelve chapters of the Acts are one tissue of 
 miracles. !N'ow one absolute rule of criticism, is 
 liut to allow any place among historical accounts to 
 any miraculous stories." Kow I ask in all fairness, 
 is this criticism, or is it dogmatism? It is true that 
 he adds: "nor is this owing to a metaphysical sys- 
 tem, for it is simply the dictate of observation." 
 Here he falls back on the oft refuted sophism of 
 Hume, that miracles are contrary to all expe- 
 rience, which is a simple begging of the question, 
 for it is the very point at issue. We say, that 
 miracles are not contrary to all experience, and we 
 
 I ' \ 
 
 i 
 
THE STRONGHOLD OF UNBELIEF. 
 
 181 
 
 point to the experience of Matthew, Mark, Luke, 
 John, and others who lived at that time. But 
 all this is quietly laid aside. On what grounds ? 
 On the grounds of historical criticism ? ISTot at all. 
 But simply by the repetition of the assertion that 
 miracles are contrary to all experience. If that is 
 not dogmatism, what is it ? 
 
 And as it is with the great leaders of the German 
 and French schools of so-called criticism, so has it 
 been in England on the part of those who have fol- 
 lowed in the wake of their continental leaders. 
 Take Baden Powell, who may be considered to have 
 struck the first clear note * '■■ England on the sub- 
 ject. He says, in his essay on the study of the evi- 
 dences of Christianity, (" Essays and Reviews," p. 
 150): " In an age of physical research like the 
 present, all highly cultivated minds and duly ad- 
 vanced intellects have imbibed more or less the 
 lessons of the inductive philosophy, and have, at 
 least in some measure, learned to appreciate the 
 grand foundation conception of universal law — to 
 recognize the impossibility ... of any mod- 
 ification whatsoever in the existing conditions of 
 material agents, unless through the invariable 
 operation of a series of eternally-impressed conse- 
 quences, following in some necessary chain of 
 orderly connection, however imperfectly known to 
 
 , i] 
 

 « Si'll 
 
 ?;■ Sit,'; 
 
 ]||!k! 
 
 18:^ 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 US. So clear and indisputable indeed has this great 
 truth become, so deeply seated has it been now ad- 
 mitted to be in the essential nature of sensible 
 things and of the external world, that all philo- 
 sophical inquirers adopt it as a primary principle 
 and guiding maxim of all their researches." There 
 it is, you see, quite honestly expressed: they all 
 ''adopt it as a primary principle and guiding 
 maxim of all their researches'^ so that, as a matter 
 of course, every one can predict beforehand what 
 the result of these researches must be. The 
 primary principle and guiding maxim of all their 
 researches is that the thing they are investigating 
 can not be true. Any clear-headed man can esti- 
 mate the value of these researches, so far as the main 
 poim rt issue is concerned. Only it is hard to avoid 
 raising the question : Why any researches at all, 
 since the very point in dispute is settled before the 
 researches are begun ? But this would be scarcely 
 a fair way of putting it, for these men really are not 
 investigating whether Evangelical Christianity be 
 true or false. They have decided its falsehood be- 
 fore they began; and the real object of their re- 
 searches is simply to determine v^hich of the many 
 hypotheses of falsehood will be least at variance 
 with those facts, which can not be got rid of by any 
 method of " elimination," however ingenious. It 
 
 
THE STRONGHOLD OF UNBELIEF. 
 
 183 
 
 would be a great mistake, for instance, to suppose 
 that when such men as Strauss and Paulus are ar- 
 rayed against each other, the one is arguing for tlie 
 truth and the other for tlie falsehood of evangelical 
 Christianity. Both the one and the other has de- 
 cided its falsehood before he began his researches; 
 and the only dispute between them is as to what 
 theory of falsehood will appear the more plausible. 
 These remarks will not a])ply, however, to such a 
 book as " Supernatural Keligion," which does ad- 
 dress itself apparently with great thoroughness to 
 the question of truth or falsehood; but it is a sig- 
 nificant fact that though historical investigation 
 fills a large part of the work, it is not entered upon 
 until many pages have been devoted to building 
 up the strongest prejudice against the entertaining 
 of the idea of the supernatural. And thus it will 
 be found that, whether it is so expressed or not, the 
 real reason for rejecting the facts of the gospel is 
 the dogma, that miracle^x can not be admitted on 
 any consideration, howeve/ strong the evidence be. 
 I say " whether expressed or not," because it is now 
 getting to be the fashion to say nothing about it, 
 but simply to take it for granted as an axiom that 
 no one will ever dream of questioning. This is the 
 method adopted in the latest productions of the 
 Leyden school of skepticism, which may be con- 
 
 k 
 
184 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 sidered as the consummation of rationalistic doir- 
 matiom, for their new edition of the Bible, pre- 
 pared for young people, who above all others ouglit 
 not to be so imposed upon, does not even suggest 
 the idea that there is any question on the sub- 
 ject, but throughout speaks of the legends and 
 falsehoods of every part of the Bible, from Genesis 
 to Bevelation, just as if there were no longer ai.y 
 who believed ev^en so well-attested a fact as the 
 Kesurrection of the Lord 1 
 
 • It may be of serf ice to give a single illustration 
 of the way in which the dogma controls the re- 
 searches. Take, for instance, the question as to the 
 date of Luke's gospel. Alford examines the ques- 
 tion (and every one who is acquainted with his works 
 knows how painstaking he is and how scrupulously 
 honest in putting things in the worst light for his 
 own cause), and decides "A. D. 50-58 as the limits 
 within which it was probable that the gospel was 
 published." He examines the question separately 
 as to the date of the Acts, and decides for A. D. 63. 
 Renan, on the other hand, fixes the date of the Acts 
 about 71 or 72. On what ground? Because it was 
 evidently written after Luke, and Luke must have 
 been written after A. D. 70. But why must Luke 
 have been written after 70? Because it contains a 
 prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem, and 
 
THE STRONGHOLD OF UNBELIEF. 
 
 185 
 
 pre- 
 
 tlierefore must have been written after the event ! 
 The reason of the difference between Alford and 
 Renan is very apparent. Alford examines on liis- 
 torical grounds. Eenan lias a dogma which lie 
 irinst maintain at all hazards. If a genuine 
 prophecy were admitted, it would overthrow liis 
 dogma, and accordingly, to save his dogma, he 
 sacriHces everything that stands in his way. He 
 has adopted the impossibility of anything super- 
 human, either in knowledge or power, as " the 
 primary principle and guiding maxim of all his re- 
 searches," and as a matter of course he reaches liis 
 foregone conclusion. This illustration of the way 
 in which prophecy is dealt with, together with those 
 which have been given from Strauss and others, of 
 the way in which miracles are dealt with, will serve 
 to show what is the real worth of all this manipu- 
 lation which goes by the name of " the higher 
 criticism." Its strength is found in the dogmatic 
 assertion that nothing can by any means be credited 
 which demands superhuman power or knowledge to 
 account for it. ' 
 
 "We are willing to submit everything to criticism. 
 There have been those who have planted themselves 
 on the dogma of inspiration, and refused to listen to 
 any critical examination of its foundations; but the 
 numbfer has bebu small at all times among intelligGut 
 
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186 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 Christians, and is smaller still than ever. "We open 
 up everything to criticism, because we have nothing 
 to conceal. But our opponents, while professing to 
 be the advocates of universal criticism, nevertheless 
 refuse to subject to the criticism of reason that 
 dogma on which their whole system rests. They 
 disallow entirely the critical question, "TFAy should 
 it be thought a thing incredible that God should 
 raise the dead?" They plant themselves on a 
 dogma, which begs the whole question at issue, and 
 then, following it as a guiding maxim, go on with 
 their " researches." And herein there is furnished 
 a quite sufficient reason why, with all their learning, 
 and all their ability, and even all their candor, they 
 can not accept the evidences of Christianity. If 
 once they would surrender their dogma, and listen 
 to the facts and arguments without being controlled 
 by it, they would no doubt feel the force of them, 
 as other candid and intelligent men do, who are free 
 from bondage. Bi^f, being bound hand and foot 
 with the inexorable necessity of eliminating the 
 supernatural, they are compelled to choose among 
 the various forms of unbelief. 
 
 The truth is that skeptical theology is always 
 ruled by skeptical philosophy. It was the Panthe- 
 istic philofiophy which ruled the speculations of the 
 great German infidels of the last generation; it is 
 
Vx 
 
 THE STRONGHOLD OF UNBELIEF. 
 
 187 
 
 tlie philosophy of naturalistic evolution which rules 
 the speculations of Kuenen and his followers to-day; 
 and, so long as men will bind themselves over to 
 be the uncompromising advocates of any human 
 philosophy, it is not to be expected that they will 
 be in an attitude of mind for receiving at all favor- 
 ably " the truth as it is in Jesus," in its simplicity, 
 purity and beauty. We have much sympathy with 
 those who stumble at the hard doctrines and meta- 
 physical subtleties which have been often advanced 
 in the name of Christianity; but we have none 
 whatever with those who, because they are ordered 
 to do so by a ready-made physical or metaphysical 
 system, take the position that no amount of evi- 
 dence can prove that such an one as Jesus of !N"az- 
 areth did anything beyond the power of ordinary 
 humanity. We feel sure that the progress of en- 
 lightenment will, in due time, sweep away this 
 shallow dogmatism from the face of the earth. 
 
 The trouble with the skepticism of the age is 
 that it is not thorough enough. It questions ev- 
 erything but its own foundations. If it would only 
 question these, the result would appear, and we have 
 no doubt the day is at hand when it will be clearly 
 shown, that there is no logical halting place between 
 absolute atheism on the one hand, and the belief in 
 Christ and the great facts and truths of Christianity 
 
 
 ;i 
 
 
188 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 on the other. And, as soon as this issue is fairly 
 joined, we have no fear of the outcome, for the sim- 
 ple reason that we have too much faith in human- 
 ity, to estimate at any large aggregate the number 
 of the fools who will be content to say, even in 
 their hearts, " There is no God." When people gen- 
 erally discover, as sooner or later they are sure to 
 do, that to give up the possibility of the manifesta- 
 tion of Divine agency in the universe, is to give up 
 the idea of a Father in Heaven, all that remains in 
 them of goodness, and nobility, and hopefulness as 
 well, will rise up in indignation, and scatter to the 
 winds both the physical and the metaphysical dog- 
 mas on which alone atheism can rest for support. 
 
fairly 
 Q sim- 
 aman- 
 imber 
 en in 
 e gen- 
 are to 
 ifesta- 
 ive up 
 ins in 
 ess as 
 to the 
 I dog- 
 ort. 
 
 LECTUEE XII. 
 
 THE STRONGHOLD OF FAITH. 
 
 " Their rock is not as our Eock, even our ene- 
 mies themselves being judges." This will be clear- 
 ly seen when we pass from the stronghold of un- 
 belief to the stronghold of faith. "We have seen 
 that the stronghold of the unbelief of the time is a 
 dogma, while, as will presently appear, the Christian 
 stronghold is in facts. Unbelievers, it is true, deal 
 largely in facts, but when you trace their arguments 
 to their ultimate foundation you find dogma at the 
 bottom. On the other hand, while we admit that 
 Christians deal largely in dogmas, it is found that 
 w>en you trace these dogmas to their ultimate 
 foundation, you strike the bed-rock of hard facts 
 that can not be denied. For example, inspiration 
 is a dogma; and if we rested everything on inspira- 
 tion, our position would be no better than that of 
 the infidel, who rests everything on the dogmatic 
 assertion, that there can be no power above nature 
 which can by any possibility be made known to 
 
 (189) 
 
 ■]>t 
 
 ^ ^a 
 
 
 
 , 
 
 i J\ 
 
190 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 man. But we do not rest upon the dogma of in- 
 spiration as our foundation, nor upon any dogma 
 whatever, but upon the Christ of history, a person 
 whose existence and work, and superiority of char- 
 acter, and commanding influence in the world's 
 history no one can deny. And herein we follow 
 Christ Himself, who said, in words which would 
 have been ridiculous from the lips of any other man 
 that ever lived upon the earth, " I am the truth." 
 Confucius, Zoroaster, Plato, might, without the im- 
 putation of being fantastic or fanatical, have said, 
 " I teach the truth," but only One could say, with- 
 out stultifying Himself by the utterance, "I am 
 the truth." 
 
 The vast accumulation of evidence for Christ- 
 ian belief has, to a large extent, hindered even 
 Christians themselves from recognizing where their 
 greatest strength lies. Inasmuch as nine-tenths of 
 all the attacks that are made on Christianity are 
 attacks on the Bible, the attention of Christian 
 apologists has been almost exclusively directed to 
 its defense. And their success has been so great, 
 that comparatively few have felt it necessary to go 
 back of it. The Bible is such a wonderful book 
 that, even if we could give it no place in history at 
 all, it would commend itself to the careful consid- 
 eration of every thoughtful man. Even though it 
 
THE STRONGHOLD OF FAITH. 
 
 191 
 
 set up no claim to inspiration, and could show as 
 little connection with any remarkable name in his- 
 tory as the Book of Mormon can, it would be hard 
 to explain it without some superhuman theory of 
 its origin. If the defense of the Bible, as a whole, 
 against infidel attacks had been more difficult or 
 less successful than it has been, there would have 
 been greater disposition to fall back on the founda- 
 tions on which the Bible itself rests. iNow it is 
 true that, so far as internal evidence is concerned, 
 the position of the defenders of the Scriptures is 
 stronger than ever. The objections against partic- 
 ular passages are for the most part the old ob- 
 jections that have done duty in every generation 
 from the beginning till now, while deeper and more 
 comprehensive study has brought out new beauties 
 and glories, new adaptations and correspondencies. 
 But inasmuch as the inspiration of the Scriptures 
 is now called in question even by those who admit 
 the wonderful adaptation of the Bible to the spirit- 
 ual wants of man, it is necessary, especially in 
 these days, to make it evident that while we hold 
 as strongly as ever that the Bible is its own wit- 
 ness, we decline to admit that it is its only witness; 
 we maintain that, if i:he witness of the Bible to 
 itself is challenged, we can fall back upon a Wit- 
 ness nobler still — One who stands acknowledged, 
 
 ■'f 
 
 I 
 
 { n 
 
 ? I 
 
 Vi 
 
 
192 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 
 even by the enemies of the Bible, as the culmination 
 of earth's greatness, goodness, and nobilitj. 
 
 There is evidence to show that some even of the 
 acutest and most learned of the opponents of Christ- 
 ianity have not really estimated the true strength 
 of our position. Take the following passage from 
 the introductory chapter of " Supernatural Kelig- 
 ion" as an illustration ; " Orthodox Christians at 
 the present day may be divided into two broad 
 classes, one of which professes to base the Church 
 upon the Bible, and the other the Bible upon the 
 Church. The one party assert that the Bible is fully 
 and absolutely inspired; that it contains God's rev- 
 elation to man, and that it is the only and sufficient 
 ground for all religious belief." Now this is an 
 entire misunderstanding and misrepresentation of 
 our position. It is a confounding of the question 
 as to the limits of inspiration with the question as 
 to the grounds of inspiration. "We are all familiar 
 with the standing controversy as to whether the 
 Church rests on the Bible or the Bible on the 
 Church. The latter is the Eoman Catholic view, 
 while the Protestant theologians have taken the 
 position that the Church derives her authority from 
 the Bible, not the Bible from the Church. Hence 
 the famous watchword (originated by Chilling- 
 worth, I believe), « The Bible and the Bibte alone, 
 
THE STRONGHOLD OF FAITH. 193 
 
 nation 
 
 of the 
 Dlirist- 
 rength 
 5 from 
 Relig- 
 aus at 
 broad 
 yhurch 
 on the 
 is fully 
 I's rev- 
 fficient 
 ; is an 
 ion of 
 lestion 
 ion as 
 miliar 
 er the 
 l>n the^ 
 view, 
 m the 
 f from 
 Hence 
 illing- 
 alone, 
 
 the religion of Protestants." Now we are quite 
 willing to stand by the motto, "The Bible and 
 the Bible alone," when the question is as to the 
 limits of that which is authoritative, when the con- 
 troversy is with those who wish to impose decrees 
 of councils and ecclesiastical dogmas and traditions 
 as of equal authority with the Holy Scriptures; but 
 it is quite a different thing, when tlie question is as 
 to the foundation of our faith, and the controversy 
 is with those who would take it away from us alto- 
 gether. We do say that the Church rests upon the 
 Bible, but we utterly deny that " the Bible is the 
 only ground for all religious belief." We do say 
 that " we (the church) are built upon the founda- 
 tion of the apostles and prophets" (the Bible); but 
 we do not stop there. With the apostle we go on 
 and say, "Jesus Christ Himself being the chief 
 corner-stone." And it is satisfactory to know that, 
 while "the foundation of the apostles and prophets" 
 is so strong tliat it has resisted all attempts to un- 
 dermine it for more than seventeen centuries, the 
 corner-stone is so immovable that it not only stands 
 secure in the estimation of all the friends of Christ- 
 ianity, but " even our enemies themselves being 
 judges." There never was or well could be a more 
 uncompromising opponent of Christianity than 
 John Stuart Mill, and yet he must (p. 254) " place 
 13 
 
 
 it¥i 
 
 
 
 
 i V'l 
 
194 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 the Prophet of Nazareth, even iu the estimation of 
 those who liave no belief in his inspiration, in the 
 very first rank of tlie men of sublime genius of 
 whom our species can boast;" and iurther on lie 
 says " that to the conception of the rational skeptic 
 it remains a possibility, that Christ actually was 
 what lie supposed Himself to be," that He was " a 
 man charged with a special, express, and unique 
 commission Irom God to lead mankind to truth and 
 virtue." You may think it strange that any one 
 who would go so far should refuse or hesitate to 
 go further; but there is always some reason which, 
 if we only knew it, would explain all; and in this 
 case there happens to be something in the very 
 same paragraph which is sufficient to explain it. 
 He has occasion to refer to the gospel of John, which 
 he does in terms implying the greatest contempt; 
 and he actually says, in regard to those lovely fare- 
 well words at the last supper, recorded in the four- 
 teenth and following chapters, and finishing with 
 the intercessory prayer — words which have charmed 
 the hearts of spiritual men in all ages beyond any- 
 thing else that was ever written or read: "The 
 east was full of men who could have ntolen any 
 quantity of this poor stuff !" What more conclu- 
 sive proof could be had, that the great logician had 
 starved his spiritual nature to death? And it only 
 
TliE STRONGHOLD OF FAITH. 
 
 195 
 
 the 
 
 i of 
 
 1 ho 
 
 ptic 
 
 was 
 
 ,8 "a 
 
 iique 
 
 land 
 one 
 
 te to 
 
 hicli, 
 
 \ this 
 very 
 
 in it. 
 
 ^hicli 
 mpt; 
 fare- 
 fonr- 
 witli 
 
 irmed 
 any- 
 "The 
 any 
 nclu- 
 nhad 
 only 
 
 shows how strong " our Kock" is, that a man witli 
 60 little power to appreciate spiritual things as this 
 would indicate, should feel constrained to speak in 
 such exalted terms as he elsewhere uses in reirard to 
 Him in whom our confidence is ultimately placed. 
 
 "Even our enemies themselves heing judges." 
 I believe it would be very easy, by gathering to- 
 gether the concessions made by the great leaders 
 of the opposition to supernatural Christianity, to 
 rear the entire structure which they are trying to 
 demolish. It has been often shown, how those dis- 
 cussing the subject from different points of view, 
 use arguments which are mutually destructive; and 
 thus the enemies of the truth devour one another, 
 and leave the Christ of history standing in the 
 midst; and we can well imagine Him there, looking 
 down with ineifable tenderness and compassion on 
 the scene, while from ti ine to time those loving 
 eyes of His are lifted up, as the earnest prayer ascends 
 to heaven, " Father, forgive them, for they know not 
 what they do." But it would be interesting to show, 
 not only how by their hostile arguments they 
 destroy one another, but how by their various con- 
 cessions they grant all that is needed for a solid 
 foundation of faith. 
 
 If, as we have seen, one uncompromising op- 
 ponent of Christianity speaks of the gospel of John 
 
 U 
 
 V|i 
 
 ,'■7 rl 
 
196 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 !^' 
 
 1; 
 ill 
 
 
 as " poor stuff," which could bo stolen by the 
 bushel, another, who as stoutly denies the authen- 
 ticity of that gospel and the credibility of its author, 
 is yet constrained to write in this way about him 
 and it: " The disciple whom Jesus loved has reached 
 a point of development which not only stands out 
 from that of the old Catholic church as the ideal 
 over against a miserably defective reality, but also 
 far transcends anything which the Christianity of 
 to-day, as a whole, has as yet attained to; and 
 within the New Testament the fourth gospel must 
 be regarded as the ripest and fairest fruit of the 
 spirit of Jesus." (Bible for Learners, p. 692.) And 
 if you ask how a man, who can speak in sucli lofty 
 terms of the fourth gospel, can nevertheless believe 
 that in substance it is false from beginning to end, 
 we can only remind you that he is one of those who 
 has adopted the anti-supernatural dogma as " a pri- 
 mary principle and guiding maxim of all his re- 
 searches," so that he is obliged to discredit its truth 
 while he cannot deny its beauty, or shut his eyes to 
 its superlative excellence and elevation. So much 
 for the theologian, who has some spiritual insight, 
 but is entirely astray on account of the Lad logic of 
 his guiding maxim. 
 
 On the other hand, the great logician who, be- 
 cause he is wanting in spiritual insight, calls tlie 
 
THE STllONGIIOLD OF FAITH. 
 
 197 
 
 ►ri- 
 re- 
 luth 
 to 
 
 ;ht, 
 of 
 
 Ibe- 
 tlie 
 
 gos])el "poor stuff," yet cannot but admit that tlio 
 gui(lin*i: maxim of the other is illogical, for he says 
 (in his essay on Theism) : " Once admit a God, and 
 the production by His direct volition of an effect, 
 which in any case owed its origin to His creative 
 will, is no longer a purely arbitrary hypothesis to 
 account for the fact, but must be reckoned with as a 
 serious possibility." Now, if only Dr. IlooykaaH 
 had logic enough to see the force of what Mill says 
 about the supernatural, his difficulties about the 
 credibility of the gospels would disappear. On the 
 other hand, if Mill had had the S])iritual insight of 
 Dr. Hooykaas, he could not have rested in the con- 
 ception of the mere possibility of Christ being a 
 man charged with a special, exj)ress, and unique 
 commission from God. Thus the logic of the 
 strong logician is on our side, and the spiritual in- 
 sight of the skeptical theologian is on our side; and 
 all that infidelity really has to build upon, so far as 
 these two representative men are Cv/ncerned, is the 
 weak spirituality of the logician and the weak logic 
 of the theologian. And so I believe it would be 
 found, if we were to make a diligent and thorough 
 search all through the ranks of the opponents of the 
 gospel. With the concessions of the strong scien- 
 tific men, the strong historians, the strong literary 
 critics, the strong logicians, of the opposition, we 
 
 11 
 
/^ 
 
 198 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 could construct a sufficient foundation for evangeli- 
 cal Christianity, and crown it with this motto: 
 " Our Rock is not as their rock, even our enemies 
 themselves being judges." 
 
 When Christ is presented as the truth, it is very 
 hard to gainsay or resist. And it is important to 
 remember that, all through the "New Testament, it 
 is the personal historic Christ who is presented as 
 the object of faith. It is " believe on the Lord 
 Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved." It is true 
 that faith in Christ, if it be genuine, will lead to 
 belief of the Bible; but in many cases a very great 
 deal depends on what is presented first. A very in- 
 telligent man of my acquaintance lately expressed 
 his shrinking from Christianity by saying: " You 
 would make me begin at the iirst of Genesis and 
 take it right straight through." IS'ow this is not 
 the pobition of evangelical Christianity. It is the 
 gospel that we insist upon, the gospel of Jesus the 
 Christ. And many a man that stumbles at many 
 hard things in the Bible would find no excuse for 
 rejecting Christ and His gospel. The simplicity 
 of the truth as it is in Jesus will commend itself 
 more or less to all honest and earnest minds. And 
 then there is not only the simplicity but the vital- 
 ity of the faith which attaches itself to the person 
 Df Jesus, and which therefore shows itself to be not 
 
/^ 
 
 THE STRONGHOLD OF FAITH. 
 
 199 
 
 a matter of creed, but of life. Many men shrink 
 from systems ready-made. Our systems of theology 
 may be able to make a very good defense of them- 
 selves, and. it would be easy to show that many of 
 those who are the mofet bitter against systems of 
 theology have yielded a blind allegiance to ready- 
 made systems of philosophy. But it is important 
 to know that we are under no obligation, in dealing 
 with the foundations, to defend any system of the- 
 ology. The faith which is necessary to begin with 
 in every case is simple confidence in Christ. It may 
 begin with an idea no higher than Mill's, of Christ 
 as "a man charged with a special, express, and 
 unique commission trom God." It seems very evi- 
 dent that the first disciples commenced with no high- 
 er idea of Him than this. Even Peter, James and 
 John, were no further on, when they began their 
 Christian career. And if the beginner in the Chris- 
 tian life now will only follow in the footsteps of the 
 man Christ Jesus, and honestly try to profit by His 
 instructions, and keep His words as these disciples 
 did, the result will be the same. In due time, to the 
 question, '* Whom say ye that I am?" will come the 
 unhesitating answer, " Thou art the Christ, the Son 
 of the living Gml." We have such confidence in 
 " our Eock," that we have no fear for any tliat will 
 only surrender themselves to His guidance. Just 
 
 ^ 
 •-.\ 
 
 i'i-'. 
 
200 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 as He is able and willing to pardon and restore the 
 greatest sinner who will only truly repent, bo is He 
 able and willing to guide into all truth those who 
 are farthest astray in their conceptions of divine 
 things, if only they are willing to be led by Him. 
 Let any man, whatever his preconceived opinions 
 be, only take up the yoke of the Christ of the gos- 
 pels and learn of Him; let him take these words 
 and that example of His and live by them day by day, 
 and in due time he will be as orthodox as he need 
 be on the Bible question, on all questions of theol- 
 ogy, on everything that is of any consequence. 
 " If any man will do His will, he shall know of the 
 doctrine." 
 
 In concluding these lectures I shall only throw 
 out a suggestion, on which a volume might profit- 
 ably be written. We referred in the introductory 
 lecture to the cumulative! nature of the Christian 
 evidence, and showed how unfair it was to repre- 
 sent its strength as that of a chain which is no strong- 
 er than its weakest link. Now that we have been 
 speaking of the stronghold of Christianity, it is im- 
 portant to remind you that the strength of our po- 
 sition is not even measured by the strength of our 
 strongest argument. Strong as our position is 
 when we plant our feet simply on the " Rock of 
 Ages,'' and take our stand upon the unquestionable 
 
THE STRONGHOLD OP FAITH. 
 
 201 
 
 facts of the life of the Christ of history, it is yet 
 very much strengthened by the convergen'^-^, of evi- 
 dence from every other point to the central Kock 
 on which our fee' are planted ; and the special suo-- 
 gestion we have to throw out is, the remarkable 
 contrast between the infidel rock and the Christian 
 rock, as regards their relation to all thr outlying 
 field. The conception of Christ as a divine Savior 
 adapts itself to all the facts and phenomena as they 
 are presented to us in history and experience. The 
 anti-supernatural dogma of the opposition is so ill 
 adapted to any of them, that the only way in which 
 it can be maintained is by the "reconstruction" of 
 everything. The Christ of the gospels does not 
 suit it, and so there must be a reconstruction of the 
 life of Christ to match, and we are asked to take the 
 Christ of Strauss', or Kenan's, or Keim's imagining, 
 instead of the Christ of history. The Bible does not 
 suit it in any part, and so it must all be reconstructed, 
 from Moses up to John ; and so imperative has the 
 necessity become, that we have, as the latest pro- 
 duction of the infidel school, a bible according to 
 Oort and Hooykaas, assisted by Kuenen, to take the 
 place of the old Bible of history. And in the same 
 way Baur and others have been laboring to recon- 
 struct the history of the church. And even that is 
 not sufiScient, for the very universe itself is found to 
 
 9 ii 
 
 i 
 
'•*-^ 
 
 202 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 be in need of reconstruction, to harmonize with the 
 anti-supernatural dogma, and, accordingly, not only 
 are evil spirits and angels ruled out of existence, 
 but even God Himself is banished from His uni- 
 verse; and not only so, but the spiritual nature of 
 man is resolved into mere vibrations of the brain 
 and nervous system. And the reconstruction pro- 
 cess does not stop even here; for those moral dis- 
 tinctions which were supposed to lie in tlie nature 
 of things are included in the all embracing mater- 
 ial development, and we must have new " Data of 
 Ethics" from the fertile brain of Herbert Spencer 
 to take the place of the discarded Law of God; 
 and thus everything, everything is reconstructed on 
 the basis of the barest materialism. Kow, does not 
 the necessity for such wholesale reconstruction of 
 everything render that dogma of the infidel, which 
 calls for it all, just a little suspicious? 
 
 On the other hand, take the Christian conception. 
 It harmonizes, as we have seen, with our own human 
 nature in all its complexity; it harmonizes with 
 those thoughts of God which the best of men have 
 had in all ages; it harmonizes with what we cannot 
 but believe as to the immovable foundations of 
 right and wrong; it harmonizes with the gospels as 
 we find them, without any manipulation like that 
 which is resorted to by our imaginative reconstructs 
 
THE STRONGHOLD OF FAITH. 
 
 203 
 
 ors ; it harmonizes with the Bible as it has come down 
 to us from the past; it harmonizes with the great 
 facts of the history of Christianity in the world; 
 it harmonizes with individual Christian experience; 
 it harmonizes with those hopes and aspirations of 
 which the best of men are conscious in their best 
 and purest moments And is not all this a mighty 
 confirmation of its truth ? Let us then by all means 
 cast aside that miserable dogma, which begins by 
 "eliminating" the superhuman element from the 
 Life of Jesus, and ends by destroying the very 
 foundations of morality; and, with our feet securely 
 planted on the " Kock of Ages," let us still raise to 
 highest heaven the song: 
 
 ** All hail the power of Jesus' name, 
 Let angels prostrate fall, 
 Bring forth the royal diadem 
 And crown Him Lord of all." 
 
 In the book of Isaiah (xxviii, 16,) we find this re- 
 markable prophecy: "Thus saith the Lord God, 
 Behold, I lay in Zion, for a foundation, a stone, a 
 tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure founda- 
 tion : he that believeth shall not make haste." This 
 prophecy is quoted by the apostle Peter in his epis- 
 tle, and applied to Christ in these terms: "To 
 w^iom coming, as unto a Living Stone, disallowed 
 indeed of men, but chosen of God, and precious, ye 
 
 M 
 
204 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house." 
 In the focus between these two lights, the one cast- 
 ing its rays forward and the other backward on the 
 spot, lies the much controverted passage, which 
 records the answer of the Master to this same apos- 
 tle, immediately after he has for the first time ex- 
 pressed his faith in Him as "the Christ, the Son 
 of the Living God ": " Thou art Peter, and upon 
 THIS ROCK I will build my Church: and the gates 
 of hell shall not prevail against it", (Matt, xvi, 18). 
 This is the Christian stronghold ; and it is the only 
 Stronghold for Eternity. " Other foundation can 
 no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ." 
 
PUBLISHED BY JANSEN, McCLURG db CO. 
 
 house." 
 me cast- 
 i on the 
 , which 
 le apos- 
 ime ex- 
 the Son 
 id upon 
 le gates 
 tvi, IS). 
 he only 
 ion can 
 Jhbist." 
 
 IngersoU and Moses : a replt. 
 
 By Rev. Samuel Ives Curtiss, D. D., author of " The 
 
 Levitical Priests," etc. 12mo. Price, $1.25. 
 
 " There is nothing dogmatical or violent in the style of this reply. 
 
 It is calm, dignified, scholarly and fair throughout."— 77^ Tribune. 
 
 " Dr. Curtiss has done his work well, and has shown his opponent to 
 be equally destitute of scholarship and fairness."— GoseM^, Cindnnati. 
 
 *' The author has done very thorough work, and no fair minded 
 reader, even if opposed to Christianity, can deny its candor, accuracy 
 or comp\eteuesaJ'*—Congregationali8t, Boston. 
 
 " Prof. Curtiss, of Chicago Theological Seminary, with his superb 
 stores of learning, has lately subjected himself, by answering IngersoU, 
 to the charge of using howitzers to shoot sparrows. He has shown most 
 conclusively, what no ma& of even moderate intelligence has ever 
 doubted, that this man is a blunderer of the most irredeemable kind, 
 not advanced beyond poor outgrown Paine in his knowledge of the 
 methods by which Christianity can be attacked."— JS^v. Joseph Cook, 
 Boston. 
 
 Sent by mail, postpaid, on receipt of price by the Publishers, 
 
 Motives of Life : by peop. david swing. 
 
 Author of " Truths for To-day." 16mo. Price, $1.00. 
 
 " Remarkable for its simplicity, eloquence, earnest thoughts and sin- 
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 ture, earnestness of aim, fitness of illustration, and lofty views of human 
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 Tales of Ancient Greece. 
 
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