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 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION
 
 THE 
 
 CHRISTIAN RELIGION 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE PARK FISHER, D.D.,LL.D. 
 
 PROFESSOR 
 OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY IX YAIE COLLEGE 
 
 NEW YOEK 
 THE CHAUTAUQUA PEESS 
 
 C. Jj. S. C. DEPAKTMEXT 
 
 805 Broadway 
 1886
 
 COPYRIGHT BY 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER's SONS 
 
 1882, 1886 
 
 GRANT & FAIRES 
 PHILADELPHIA
 
 CO 
 
 en 
 
 DO 
 UJ 
 U. 
 
 
 
 i^ *,* The required books of the C. L. S. C. are recommended by 
 
 CO , 
 
 cr> a council of six. It must, hoxoever, be understood that recommendation 
 does not involve an approval by the Council, or by any member of it, 
 ^^ of every principle cr doctrine contained in the book recommended. 
 
 234-3'?4
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 I SHALL not enter the lists as a combatant against 
 any of the recent assailants of the Christian Reli- 
 gion. Religious controversy is some- Religious 
 
 contro- 
 
 tiraes necessary : it is often useful ; but versy. 
 it is always exposed to disadvantages. It is very 
 apt to draw about it a multitude of readers whose 
 interest in it is akin to that which animates the 
 spectators of a cock-fight. It easily degenerates 
 into a game of fence, where the vivacity and 
 expertness of the competitors in the duel are of 
 more consequence than the justice of the cause. 
 Christianity is a large matter ; the Bible is a large 
 book, or rather collection of books forming a con- 
 nected whole. It is easy for an ingenious mind to 
 bring forward objections, suggest difficulties of 
 greater or less weight, and propound mistaken or
 
 4 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 half-mistaken assertions. Of all warfare, guerilla- 
 fighting is the least satisfactory. It is proverbial 
 that a question respecting any system, however 
 well founded, may be asked in one line, Avhich 
 it may require pages to answer. To reply to 
 a medley of such objections one by one is like 
 the business of jiicking up pins ; and, even when 
 the work is really done, the impression left is 
 that made by an apology, according to the fine 
 old maxim, "Qui s^ excuse s'aecuse"^ Most of 
 the popular objections are not in the least novel. 
 A critical attack, peculiar in its character, has 
 been made on Christianity in recent times in 
 Germany by Strauss and Baur. It has been re- 
 oid newed in France in a modified form by 
 
 objections 
 
 renewed. Reuan. Materialism, either in a bald 
 shape or in its agnostic dress, has made itself a prom- 
 inent antagonist. But assailants of Christianity in 
 American journals frequently take up last-century 
 weapons which have been cast aside by adversaries 
 of the gospel who are abreast of the times. To 
 
 ^ He who excuses himself accuses himself.
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 5 
 
 confute attacks of this sort, such as were common 
 in the old dcistical controversy, would be to beat 
 straw already well thrashed. In truth, it is re- 
 markable how many of these objections were made 
 by Celsus as early as the close of the second cen- 
 tury, — for example, the objection from alleged dis- 
 crepancies in the Gospels, — and were successfully 
 disposed of by Origen, the great Christian scholar 
 of that day. 
 
 I prefer a more positive method of handling the 
 subject. As there is a variety of topics to be 
 touched upon, it will be convenient to separate 
 them by numerical designations. 
 
 1. Christianity is not a new thing. It is not 
 contending for a foothold on the earth. Its roots are 
 deep in the soil. It is a e-reat, lono:-es- 
 
 ^ b J C3 Power and 
 
 tablished, wide-spread, and still advanc- of^chWs-^ 
 ing religion. It is the faith of the '^"^^" "^ 
 enlightened nations, incorporated in them at the 
 beginning of their existence, helping to create them, 
 presiding over their growth. It has moulded to a 
 great extent their political and social institutions, 
 their sentiments and usages, and leavened their
 
 6 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 literature and laws. It has entered into their very 
 blood and marrow. To dislodge Christianity as 
 a supernatural religion, were it possible, from the 
 convictions and life of the European nations and 
 their offshoots, would be a revolution the magni- 
 tude and terrible effect of which, as I believe, it is 
 impossible to conceive. The old Gr£eco-Romau 
 religion fell, but it fell by the expulsive power of 
 a new and better faith. Had it been swept away 
 by mere unbelief, with nothing but atheism, or the 
 indistinct and fluctuating creed of natural religion, 
 to stand in the room of it, who can doubt that there 
 would have been a ruin without a recovery ? But 
 the principal thing which I wish to say under this 
 head is, that the burden of disproving Christianity 
 and demonstrating that it rests on a false founda- 
 tion properly falls on the assailing party; and, 
 further, to intimate that the task is not a light one. 
 2. It should be understood, at the outset, that 
 no one claims that the system of Christianity is 
 Mysteries free from difficulties, which may, here 
 
 in Chris- in i • i 
 
 tianity. and there, be of a perplexing character. 
 
 This is no more than is admitted by everybody.
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 7 
 
 except narrow partisans, in the case of every 
 science. The same tiling is true, I believe, of the 
 law of gravitation. There are mysteries which 
 are not clearetl up, \vhich revelation does not pre- 
 tend to clear up, — some, it is likely, which the 
 human intelligence, at its present grade of develop- 
 ment, is incapable of exploring. We are not yet 
 arrived at the summit where we can overlook the 
 universe. Christianity is a practical system : its 
 founder likenal himself to a physician. We are 
 justified in taking food, and in taking medicine 
 when we are sick, and this not merely on grounds 
 of experience. We can see to some extent the 
 rationale of the operation of food and medicine, 
 even without an exhaustive knowledge of chemis- 
 try and physiology, and the hidden process of life 
 and growth. An apostle only claimed for himself 
 and others to " know in part," to have a fragmen- 
 tary and obscure knowledge — but still a real 
 knowledge — of things invisible. The question 
 respecting any creed proposed for belief, whether 
 in religion or philosophy or science, is whether the 
 reasons for it are stronger than the reasons against
 
 8 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 it, and whether they are enough stronger to justify 
 credence. Christianity asks no more for itself 
 than is conceded in regard to every other system 
 and theory, and in regard generally to events which 
 do not fall under the immediate notice of the 
 senses; though even here time and space, sense- 
 perception, and the reality of an external world 
 are not free from the most perplexing difficulties. 
 
 3. Another thing which may as M^ell be said 
 here is, that Christians are not all agreed in their 
 Differences opiuious, that it is Unreasonable to 
 
 among n • 
 
 Christians. expcct them to coucur on all pomts, 
 and that it is unfair to identify the special ideas of 
 a class with the essentials of Christian belief. 
 What master in philosophy was ever interpreted 
 just alike by all of his adherents ? The disciples 
 of Plato have differed as to his meaning on par- 
 ticular points. One of them has maintained one 
 thing, and another the opposite. Some have 
 denied certain Dialogues to be his, which others 
 with equal confidence have declared to be genuine. 
 Yet there is an essential Platonism in which, as a 
 body, Platonic disciples are agreed. Where is
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 9 
 
 there a political party which has existed for a score 
 of years, the members of which are perfectly at 
 one in their creed ? How commonly do they dis- 
 agree as to the meaning of their " platform," and 
 this when there is no designed ambiguity in it ! 
 It would be too much to expect that on a subject 
 like Christianity, covering, as it does, so broad a 
 field, and as to the precise character of the Bible 
 as a whole, and of its component parts, there 
 should be an absolute accord among all who call 
 themselves, and deserve to be called. Christians. 
 To take a single example : there are some who hold 
 that every thing that is said in the Scriptures which 
 bears on natural and physical science is correct, 
 and of divine authority. There are others who 
 hold that the biblical writers, whatever they knew 
 of the physical world, accommodated their lan- 
 guage to the science of their time. Others, again, 
 hold that in the Bible are positive errors in science, 
 which, however, are affirmed, not to militate against 
 its authority as a teacher of moral and religious 
 truth. These last are not to be denied the name 
 of Christians : the fundamental principles of super-
 
 10 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 natural Christianity they may cherish with all their 
 hearts. It is a blunder of ignorance, or a trick of 
 controversy, to refuse to discriminate between what 
 is essential to a system and the diverse opinions, on 
 points not essential, which spring up among its 
 adherents. The line of demarcation it may not be 
 so easy to draw. There may be a difference as to 
 where exactly it should run ; but the existence of 
 such a line none but a sophistical reasoner will 
 iguore. 
 
 4. Before proceeding farther, it is well to advert 
 
 to an idea which I had formerly supposed was 
 
 nearly extiuct in the world, — the idea, 
 
 Is religion '' 
 
 baneful? namely, that religion, and the Christian 
 religion in particular, is a bane. The Epicureans 
 thought it an advantage to have deities which stood 
 aloof from all concern for men or connection with 
 human affairs. Lucretius wrote a poem to set forth 
 the atomic theory of the universe, and thus to 
 deliver men's minds from the terrors of superstition 
 and all the gloom and torture of soul of which 
 religion was the occasion. It cannot be denied that 
 religion has been the occasion of incalculable suffer-
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 11 
 
 ing. Think of the uncounted victims of religious 
 intolerance ! Think of the animosity and blood- 
 shed caused by religious wars ! What an amount 
 of misery arose out of the European wars of the 
 seventeenth century, which had their origin largely 
 in religious dissension ! It seems a quick way to 
 abolish these manifold calamities to abolish relision 
 itself. Does it need to be said that there is another 
 side to the picture ? Apart from the fallacy of 
 charging on a feeling or principle the consequences 
 of its abuse or perversion, one should look at the 
 comfort, wholesome restraint, uplifting hope, and 
 all the other purifying, elevating, beneficial influ- 
 ences, incalculable in their extent, which have gone 
 forth to the individual, to the household, to the 
 state, and to mankind at large, from religion in its 
 purer forms. Moreover, one should look at the 
 state of things which would ensue if religion, and 
 the Christian religion, were swept away, and men 
 were left to be born, and toil and live and die, 
 "having no hope, and Avithout God in the world." 
 This way of arguing against religion as baneful 
 really contains an argument /or religion. The evil
 
 12 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 that has sprung from fanaticism and other abuses 
 of the religious sentiment shows how deeply planted 
 religion is in the constitution of human nature, how 
 powerful and ineradicable a feeling it is. In no 
 other way can we account for its tremendous influ- 
 ence, when unenlightened or morbid, for evil. 
 Wliy not go for getting rid of the nervous system 
 on account of sciatica and neuralgia ? Apply the 
 same sort of reasoning which is used against religion 
 to the passion of love as between the sexes. Who 
 can measure the agony of which it has been the 
 occasion, — ^the corroding jealousies, the frantic rage, 
 abiding rancor, adulteries, self-murder, sanguinary 
 wars, from the siege of Troy for the capture of 
 Helen to the connection of Mark Antony and 
 Cleopatra, and from the epoch of the Egyptian 
 sorceress down to our day ? Remembering Pa-scal's 
 remark, that, if Cleoj^atra's nose had been longer 
 or shorter, the course of history would have been 
 changed, I am tempted to turn aside, and show 
 what unutterable woe would have been spared to 
 mankind if "the fatal gift" of beauty had not been 
 given to woman or to man. But, not to leave our
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 13 
 
 illustration, if love had been absent, and the sensi- 
 bilities and propensities involved in it, none can 
 doubt that frightful sorrows would have been 
 avoided. But then, among other things, we should 
 have missed the family ! To argue that religion is 
 a curse is like contending that domestic life and 
 human government are a curse. If the family had 
 not existed, or were to be abolished, an unmeasured 
 amount of petty tyranny, grinding toil, anguish at 
 bereavement, would not have been, and would be 
 no more. Then, as to human government, what is 
 it but a long record of oppression? The cruel 
 deeds of tyrants, — of the Pharaohs, the Neros, the 
 Napoleons, the ravaging wars which rulers have 
 instigated, the dynastic struggles, — were they all 
 written down, the world would not contain the 
 books. Yet, is human government a bane ? 
 
 AVhat is there bad in religion ? Religion is love 
 to God and men ! What more is required by 
 religion but "to do justly, and to love Nothing 
 
 , 11 1 " 1 1 . , , harmful in 
 
 mercy, antl to walk huml)ly Avjtli thy Keiigion. 
 God " ? (Micnh vi. 8.) Tin's is religion even accord- 
 ing to an Old-Testament delinition. Is this harm-
 
 14 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 fill to the individual who practises it ? Is it hurtful 
 to a neighborhood or to a civil community? 
 Would it be bad for farmers, merchants, artisans, 
 for young people or old people, or any other class ? 
 Are penitence for evil-doing, trust in a heavenly 
 Father who is more willing to bless than is an 
 earthly parent, the conforming of one's life to the 
 purest Example, in which righteousness and love 
 are perfect and perfectly blended, mischievous ? Is 
 it mischievous to resist temptation, and to pray to 
 God for help in the conflict, and for aid in be- 
 coming unselfish ? Yet these are essential ingredi- 
 ents in practical Christianity, and Christianity has 
 nothing in it incompatible with them ; but every 
 thing else in Christianity is auxiliary to them. 
 
 I must confess myself amazed that any rational 
 
 person can read history Avith the least attention, 
 
 and fail to see the beneficent influence 
 
 Benefits of 
 
 christiauity ^f ^j^g Christian religion. To vindicate 
 Christianity in this particular appears very like 
 pronouncing a eulogy upon the sun in answer to 
 the assertion that there ^vas light — "cosmic light" 
 — in the world before the sun first rose in the
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 15 
 
 heavens, and iu order to rebut the complaint that 
 the sun has been sometimes clouded, and gives us, 
 not unfrequently, dull and murky days. What 
 was the world into which Christianity state of the 
 
 Ancient 
 
 entered ? Tribes and nations had been worid. 
 distinct, each of them shut up in its own boundar- 
 ies, and going forth only to make war on its neigh- 
 bors. Then all were subdued, and reduced under 
 the hard domination of one city. Liberty — such 
 as had existed in Greek towns where there was a 
 little fraction of freemen to a multitude of slaves, 
 and in Rome within the oligarchy which ruled it — 
 had disappeared. As concerns morality, Roman 
 slavery, the slavery of whites, — of artists, teachers, 
 and authors, as well as of peasants, — which was 
 bad enough under the Republic, grew ^vorse after 
 its fall ; gladiatorial combats, where all classes of 
 people applauded the butchery of men by thousands 
 in the arena; infanticide, countenanced by philoso- 
 phers and statesnien ; the foulest sorts of pollution, 
 to which modern society is a stranger, — these are 
 some of the features of social life at that epoch. 
 The picture of ancient morals and mauners has
 
 16 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 been sometimes drawn in colors too black, and 
 without due discrimination ; but when faithfully 
 drawn it justifies the condenmation which the 
 Apostle Paul pours upon it in the introduction of 
 his Letter to the Eoman Church/ There were 
 noble men in antiquity, and there were virtuous 
 women. But when one hears laudations of ancient 
 morals, as if there was a state of things to be com- 
 pared for a moment with the pure atmosphere of 
 Christian society, one can hardly avoid reminding 
 the authors of such false and ignorant comparisons 
 that the noblest man of all the ancients went with 
 his disciples to visit a prostitute, not to advise her 
 " to sin no more," but to talk on the question how 
 to ply her occupation with most profit.^ Consider- 
 ing what Greek life was, Socrates deserves no severe 
 reproach. But this verdict in his favor condemns 
 the society where even the best of its members 
 knew no better. 
 
 Neither Socrates nor Plato rose above the Greek 
 
 ' I have endeavored to describe tbe morals of heathen so- 
 ciety in "The Beginnings of Christiauitj'," ch. vi. 
 ^ Xenophon: "Memorabilia," II., xi.
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 17 
 
 prejudice against "the barbarian." There came, 
 inJeed, at length, a dawning sense of a humanity 
 not limited by barriers of nation and Lack of 
 
 . liumaiie 
 
 race. Yet utterances of this nature Feeiiug. 
 are heard chiefly from the Stoic sect, — a sect which 
 purchased tranquillity at tlie cost of sympathy, 
 and, by smothering emotion, indulged in compas- 
 sion only in contradiction to its own fundamental 
 tenets, and preached fatalism and the drifting of all 
 things to destruction as the best gospel it could 
 discover. If Terence wrote a line in praise of 
 humane feeiiug, Plautus declared that " man is a 
 wolf to the stranger," — ^^ Homo homini ignoto lupus 
 cM.'' The only Roman writer who expresses a 
 disapproval of gladiatorial fights is Seneca, and he 
 only in his old age, after he had implied in earlier 
 writings a contrary view. Even the younger 
 Pliny applauds the provisions made by a private 
 person, as well as by Trajan, for these bloody 
 amusements.^ 
 
 ^ See Friedliinder's comments on Cicero's view, etc., in the 
 " Sittengesch. Eoms," I., 242, 243; and Goll, "Hellas u. 
 Rom," 158, 159.
 
 18 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 Charity, compassionate love, says Boeckh, one 
 of the profoundest classical scholars of the present 
 Restrie- age, was uo virtuc of the ancient world. 
 
 tions of ^ _ 
 
 charity Kindly sayings can be met with, as 
 
 blossoms are found on the high Alps in the midst 
 of the snow. There are instances of jjhilanthropy 
 in something approaching to a systematic form. 
 But it takes more than one swallow to make a 
 spring. The few examples of benevolence on a 
 broad scale, which are often referred to, are gener- 
 ally more apparent than real. The provision for 
 poor children and for orphans, begun by Nerva 
 and carried out by Trajan, was for the increase of 
 the free population, just as Augustus had offered a 
 bounty on marriage. The number of boys sup- 
 ported was ten times that of girls, which indicates 
 that female children were in large numbers aban- 
 doned, either to perish or to be saved from death 
 for a w^orse lot. Children deserted by their parents 
 were reared by a special class of slave-dealers, 
 in order to sell them as slaves.^ Measures which 
 
 > See Merivale : " History of the Eomans," vii., 208, 209.
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 19 
 
 "were founded on policy — as much so as the feeding 
 of the idle populace of Rome out of the public 
 granary — are not to be construed into evidences of 
 benevolence. The motive of the benefaction of 
 Trajan is shown in the fact that it made no provi- 
 sion for children thus abandoned to perish. The 
 same " mild " Trajan, — and he was mild in com- 
 parison with many of the emperors, — after his 
 victories on the Danube, put ten thousand men 
 into the arena, who continued for four months to 
 soak the sand with their blood.' The truth is, 
 that among the Jews alone the spirit of fraternity 
 and charity prevailed. The Jew alone left in his 
 field the sHeaf of grain for the gleaner, and in the 
 vineyard the bunch of grapes for the needy. Aris- 
 totle and Plato were the philosophers of widest 
 repute. Aristotle defends slavery on the ground 
 that the slave is an animated tool. Plato discoun- 
 tenances an interest in the poor when they are sick. 
 The laboring man who cannot recover, the physi- 
 cian is to abandon, or to experiment on. In all 
 
 » Dio, LXVIII., 15.
 
 20 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 antiquity the individual was merged in the state. 
 "When the states of antiquity fell the Stoic dreamed 
 of a cosmopolitan state ; but it remained a dream. 
 Christianity came into the world with a new 
 commandment, to " love one another." It brought 
 Benefi- in the princij)le of the brotherhood of 
 
 cenee of i i • 
 
 Christians. man. it broKC down the barriers of 
 country and clan. It gathered the Greek and bar- 
 barian, the rich and the poor, tlie freeman and the 
 slave, about the Lord's table, where all differences 
 were merged in a fraternal unity. The Christian 
 churches were eleemosynary societies. They dis- 
 pensed alms with an open hand to their own j)oor, 
 and to the needy about them. There had been 
 sodalities for mutual benefit, — mutual insurance 
 clubs ; but such beneficence and self-sacrifice as 
 Christians showed were something altogether new 
 in the world. The indigent, the oppressed, the 
 desponding invalid, the toiling slave, took heart 
 and hope. There was sympathy for them here on 
 earth, and a bright hope beyond death. 
 
 Christianity survived persecution. It was 
 stronger than Rome, stronger than pagan fan-
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 21 
 
 aticism. It displaced the old religion. Amidst 
 the decay of all to which the hearts of men had 
 cluno-, Christiauity remained the sole 
 
 ^' •' Historic 
 
 stay and hope of a falling world. The ^^^ 
 Church turned to the Germanic nations, ^^ ^' 
 carried to them the gospel, reduced their languages 
 to writing, gave them the Bible and a literature, 
 civilized them, conveyed to them such learning and 
 such of the arts of life as had outlived the tides of 
 barbarian invasion. The oldest writings in the 
 Teutonic tonmies are the fra^raents of the Gothic 
 translation of the Bible by Ulfilas. As he gave 
 letters to the Goths, another missionary, Cyril, did 
 the same service for the Slavonic peoples. Anglo- 
 Saxon literature, with English civilization, grew 
 up among our fierce barbarian ancestors through 
 their conversion by Augustine, and the connection 
 into which they were brought with the converted 
 nations of the Continent. It is very doubtful 
 whether the individuals of our Teutonic race who 
 attack the Christian religion would know their 
 letters, or would be possessed of any vehicle for 
 expressing their ideas except in an oral form, had
 
 22 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 it not been for the heroic missionaries of that reli- 
 gion which is thouglit to be so deleterious in its 
 influence. In Christian monasteries the remains 
 of ancient literature were preserved. By Christian 
 monks barbarians were taught agriculture and what- 
 ever knowledge was left from the general wreck. 
 From schools founded by British missionaries, and 
 by Charlemagne (who was taught his letters by an 
 English clergyman), the universities of Europe 
 afterward arose. In the partial corruption of the 
 Church, the Scriptures had still been preserved ; 
 the truth of the gospel had not been quenched. 
 When the Bible was opened, out of the bosom of 
 the Church came a great reformation. Religion in 
 its purified form manifested its immortal power in 
 the individual and for the renovation of society. 
 From the awakening of the souls of men to a 
 truer sense of their relations to God and to Christ, 
 resulted in modern times the demand for political 
 liberty and for institutions more conformed to 
 justice. The struggle for English freedom ensued, 
 and the events which paved the way for the 
 American Republic.
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 23 
 
 I have not space to pursue tliis topic. The 
 eccentric thesis that religiou — that the Christian 
 religion as it is set fortli in the New r^^^^^, 
 Testament — is a curse may be tested in ti.c G?4pci 
 
 test(>d. 
 
 a practical way. Let any one nnagine 
 the best and most faithful Christian, measured by 
 the New-Testament standard, whom he knows, to 
 be deprived of his religion altogether, or even of 
 such elements in it as are the exclusive result of 
 the gospel, and then let him ask himself if his 
 manhood would be improved by the cliange, and 
 if his influence in the aggregate would be for the 
 better. Then let the same person imagine the 
 entire community to be stripped of the churches, 
 hospitals, schools, the customs of private prayer 
 and household religious teaching, — stripped, in a 
 word, of all the beliefs, habits, feelings, institu- 
 tions, laws, so far as their origin is due to the 
 gospel of Christ as taught in the New Testament, 
 and then let him inquire of himself whether the 
 change would be salutary, or whether, in case the 
 gospel had not borne these fruits, anything else 
 equally desirable would have grown up in the
 
 24 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 room of them. Let him make up the account, 
 putting in the column opposite to the benefits of 
 Christianity whatever of evil he thinks has come 
 from it, or would have been prevented without it. 
 Let him make the calculation for himself, and 
 render an honest verdict. 
 
 5. "What is Christianity ? It is composed of facts 
 and doctrines, two elements which I shall severally 
 What is the cousidcr hereafter. Christians believe in 
 
 Christian i • • /» t • i • 
 
 Faith? the supernatural mission of Jesus, in his 
 
 divine sonship, in the authority of his teaching and 
 of the teaching of his apostles, in his spotless excel- 
 lence, in his miracles, in his death and resurrection. 
 They believe that God has established a kingdom 
 in tlie world, a spiritual kingdom, the beginnings 
 of which were laid in the remote past ; that it began 
 in the separation of one man, Abraham, from the 
 surrounding idolatry, and in the segregation from 
 idolatrous peoples of the nation which sprang from 
 him ; that this kingdom, founded and sustained by 
 a supernatural Providence, was carried from stage 
 to stage until its consummation, or its attaining to 
 a ripe and universal form, through Jesus Christ ;
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 25 
 
 that within this kingdom true religion was planted 
 and nourished until it arrived at perfection in the 
 final or Christian stage of revelation, when it only 
 remained to diffuse it over the earth ; that to this 
 outcome the whole system, even in its rudimental 
 shape, looked and tended; and that Christiauity 
 was the object of prediction, sometimes dim, some- 
 times more clear ; that the manifestation of God 
 was primarily in act and deed, or in a succession 
 of historical events? in which the divine agency was 
 evidently concerned, and which served, therefore, to 
 reveal God and to bring men into communion with 
 him ; that for the understanding of the significance 
 of these transactions the minds of prophets and 
 apostles were supernaturally enlightened, Mdiereby 
 they were qualified to be the expositors of the out- 
 ward revelation and to enforce its lessons. 
 
 A distinction must be made between revelation 
 and inspiration, and between Christianity and the 
 Bible. He is the recipient of a revela- Revelation 
 
 1 . . 1 . , . ft"*! Inspira- 
 
 tion to whom nisight mto truth is super- *'"'»• 
 
 naturally communicated. The same man may, or 
 
 may not, be inspired to set forth the contents of that
 
 26 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 revelation either orally or iu a writing. But 
 Christianity existed and was complete, and it was 
 preached, before a syllable of the New Testament 
 was written. Christians hold to the obvious his- 
 torical fact that the old dispensation stands iu an 
 organic relation to the new. Christianity sprang 
 up among the Je^vs. If science is from the Greeks, 
 and law is from the Eomans, " salvation is of the 
 Jews." Religion was the one absorbing idea and 
 interest of that people as it never has been of any 
 other. The Son of man is the Son of David. But 
 a great part of the Bible is made up of narratives. 
 How far were the writei'S aided from above in the 
 composition of them, and how far did they depend 
 on observations and inquiries like those through 
 which writers of secular history, into which the 
 miraculous element does not enter, gain their in- 
 formation ? No one holds that history was to any 
 considerable extent dictated to them. Some Chris- 
 tians hold that inspiration guided their minds in 
 the selection and omission of matter. Some hold 
 that inspiration protcctc<l them from all sorts of 
 en'or, even such imperfections as the most accurate
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 27 
 
 and faithful narrators are liable to fall into. Others 
 dissent from this last view. But Christians gener- 
 ally consider these historical books of the Old and 
 New Testaments, and all the other books of the 
 Bible, to be differentiated from all other literature, 
 as being pervaded by another spirit, ■\vliicli is due 
 to the fact that they are produced on the plane of 
 revelation, and stand in a peculiar relation to the 
 supernatural events which form its groundwork. 
 The books of the Bible are the documents of the 
 Christian religion, from which its facts and doc- 
 trines, and the circumstances of its origin and 
 growth, can be correctly ascertained. Deviations 
 from traditional theories of inspiration may be 
 erroneous, or they may be well founded ; but no 
 man who accepts the essential truths of Christianity 
 is to be denied the title of Christian on the ground 
 of peculiarities of opinion on this subject. 
 
 6. The foregoing remarks naturally bring us to 
 the important fact of the gradualness of divine reve- 
 lation. Like the subsequent spread of Gradual- 
 
 , . 11 ness of 
 
 tlie gospel. It was " first the blade, then Revelation, 
 the ear, then the full corn in the car." This in-
 
 28 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 clioate, preparatory, and, in tliis sense, imperfect 
 character is ascribed to the Old-Testament system, 
 both in the Old Testament itself and in the New. 
 The whole form of the kingdom of God in the earlier 
 dispensation was provisional ; the disclosure of God 
 was partial and increasing ; laws fell short of the 
 absolute standard of moral duty ; rites were adapted 
 to religious feelings and to perceptions not yet 
 mature; the tyjje of character corresponded to the 
 inadequate conceptions of God ; the ethical and 
 emotional expressions answered to the several stages 
 of revelation to which they pertained. All this 
 ought to be as familiar to readers of the Bible as 
 the alphabet. Unhappily, it has been often over- 
 looked by Christians, and persistently ignored by 
 the adversaries of Christianity. 
 
 Christ contrasted his precepts with the injunctions 
 given to them of old time. He taught that sin. 
 The Gospel and not sinners, was to be the object of 
 
 and the Mo i • r> i i 
 
 saic Law. abhorreucc. The boundaries ot love and 
 good-will were to be co-extensive with the race of 
 mankind. Men Averc to pray for their euemies. 
 lleferring to an impurtant precept in the INIosiiic
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 29 
 
 legislation, that relating to divorce, he said that it 
 was given on account of " the hardness " of men's 
 hearts ; that is, their rude, uncivilized condition, and 
 their moral obtuseness (^Nlatt. xix. 8). The JNIosaic 
 law required a man who wished to be rid of his 
 wife, to give her a written testimony which should 
 protect her — when all A^omen separate from a 
 family were castaways — and enabled her to contract 
 marriage with anotlier man. This was a limit to 
 the husband's arbitrary prerogative, a restraint put 
 upon him, and so far an approach to the full recog- 
 nition of her marital rights, and of the sacred char- 
 acter of the marriage-tie. It was a step in the right 
 direction, and as long a step, considering the state 
 of society then existing, as could be taken. To 
 attempt more would have been to rush into doc- 
 trinaire legislation of the most impracticable char- 
 acter. To complain of this old divorce law, one 
 of the various enactments by which the Hebrew 
 wife and the Hebrew family finally attained to a 
 position which they held in no heathen nation, and 
 by which safeguards were set around the purity of 
 the household, — to complain of this law is as illogi-
 
 30 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 cal as it is for advocates of temperance to pronounce 
 every license law immoral, when, if the law were 
 called restrictive (as it might be), the whole force 
 of their objection would vanish. It is not less 
 unreasonable than it would be to complain of the 
 civil law at present, because, while it prohibits and 
 punishes certain forms of slander, it publishes no 
 statute for the detection and punishment of gossip 
 and petty defamation ; as if the forbidding of one 
 offence involved an approval of the other. 
 
 Now, an apjilication of the fact of the gradual- 
 
 ness and partialness of revelation will remove most, 
 
 if not all, of the moral difficulties which 
 
 Removal of ' 
 
 difficulties. j^j.g j,j^}ggj ^yjjj^ regard to the Old Testa- 
 ment. Whoever discerns distinctly this fact — 
 which is a perfectly manifest fact — will have gained 
 a point of view where the major part of these diffi- 
 culties disappear of themselves. Without this his- 
 torical sense, Mathout a sympathetic appreciation 
 of the condition of mankind in the far-distant ages 
 when the movement of revelation began, the old 
 dispensation and the Old Testament can never be 
 understood. Those who have no dislike for the
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 31 
 
 New Testament, but liave only hard words for the 
 Old, who can honor the heavenly Father of whom 
 Christ speaks, but find the Jehovah of the law and 
 the prophets repulsive, may be compared to one 
 who relishes a ripe and juicy peach, but has no 
 patience with the rough and bitter peach-stone from 
 which the tree sprang. 
 
 The benign tendencies and effect of the institu- 
 tions and laws of the Old Testament, when com- 
 pared with the legislation of all other Laws of 
 
 the Old 
 
 ancient nations, have been often demon- Testament. 
 strated. One of the most lucid discussions of the 
 subject, in a brief compass, is that of Professor 
 Goldwin Smith, in his tract entitled " Does the 
 Bible sanction American Slavery?" He justly 
 characterizes the Old-Testament legislation as " a 
 code of laws, the beneficence of which is equally 
 unapproached by any code, and least of all by any 
 Oriental code, not produced under the influence of 
 Christianity." The purpose was not to transform 
 society by a miracle. That is not the method of 
 God. The Jewish code brought in no barbarous 
 institution or custom. Its aim and result are to
 
 32 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 reform, mitigate, and finally abolish evil usages 
 already existing. Take the laws respecting the 
 avenger of blood. This wild kind of justice is 
 well-nigh universal among primitive tribes. The 
 Old Testament did not attempt to abolish it at a 
 stroke, but laid upon it useful restrictions. The 
 avenger could punish no sort of homicide but 
 wilful murder ; the innocent slaver was furnished 
 with a safe retreat ; no money was to be taken in 
 satisfaction for blood ; hereditary feuds were for- 
 bidden ; judges were provided in all the tribes to 
 arbitrate between the slayer and avenger.^ Thus a 
 reign of law was introduced which in time must 
 supplant, and actually did supplant, private venge- 
 ance. Take the laws relative to the right of 
 asylum, another ancient institution existing among 
 the Greeks and Romans, and prominent in the 
 middle ages among the semi-civilized European 
 nations. In old times it was a beneficent check 
 upon lawless violence. It furnished safe retreats 
 for the unprotected ; but gross abuses always arose 
 
 * Num. xxxvi. ; Deut. xxi. 16.
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 33 
 
 in connection with it. Superstitions about sacred 
 places and the imrauuity of criminals were con- 
 nected with it. The Mosaic law recognized the 
 custom. It established six cities of refuge. But 
 these were not for the wilful murderer. He was 
 to be dragged from the altar.^ The cities were not 
 to be holy places. They were for the shelter of 
 the sojourner as well as of the Jew. The fugitive 
 was not compelled to stay in them forever : he 
 might leave the asylum with impunity on the death 
 of the high priest.^ Look at the laws respecting 
 paternal authority. In patriarchal society the rule 
 of the father was supreme and absolute. It con- 
 tinued to be an unqualified despotism among the 
 Romans. A Roman father had the legal right to 
 take the lives of his wife and children. As late as 
 the time of Seneca, Erixon, a Roman knight, put 
 his son to death. Under the Mosaic law a mother 
 must concur with the father in an accusation ag-ainst 
 a rebellious son. There must be a charge before 
 "the elders," — a solemn public proceeding.^ Poly- 
 
 i Exod. xxi. 14. "^ Num. xxxv. 26-28. ^ Deut. xxi. 18-22.
 
 34 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 gamy prevailed in primitive times. A woman 
 disconnected from a family was the most forlorn 
 of beings. She was a miserable outcast. The 
 Mosaic law did not abolish polygamy, but it alle- 
 viated its evils. If one wife was hated and an- 
 other favored, still the first-born child, if it was 
 "hers that was hated," should inherit a double 
 portion.^ It may be here remarked that woman 
 among the Hebrews was never degraded as in 
 most Oriental countries. In the decalogue, adul- 
 tery and the coveting of a neighbor's wife or 
 maid-servant were prohibited. Crimes against the 
 purity of matron or maid were rigorously pun- 
 ished. Among the leaders celebrated in Hebrew 
 story were such as Miriam and Deborah. Millen- 
 niums before the discussions of our day upon the 
 emancipation of women Deborah was a judge in 
 Israel. The description of a virtuous housewife 
 in the Proverbs ^ — the woman " in whom the heart 
 of her husband doth safely trust "—exhibits the 
 Hebrew ideal of the wife and mother. Inhuman 
 
 > Deut. xxi. 15-17. * Prov. xxxi. 10-31.
 
 THE CHBISTIAN RELIGION. 35 
 
 as the rules of war were among the aueieut Hebrews, 
 the Mosaic legislation on this subject was for that 
 (lay humane. The opportunity was to be given 
 to a besieged city to surrender and to become 
 tributary'. The inhabitants had the option of 
 savins: their lives.^ The Hebrews were forbidden 
 to do as the Greeks did, — cut down the fruit-trees 
 in a district which they invaded. If an attractive 
 female was captured, she might be taken to wife, 
 and then must be treated as a wife ; but it was 
 forbidden " to sell her at all for money." ^ Who- 
 ever has read Homer, or studied the Assyrian and 
 Babylonian monuments, or even read the history 
 of the Thirty Years' War, may be safely trusted 
 to pronounce a judgment on the spirit and tendency 
 of this legislation. The Jews w'ere forced to fight 
 in self-defence, surrounded as they were by power- 
 ful and aggressive nations. But they did not 
 become a warlike people. War was never the 
 great occupation ; military distinction never counted 
 for so much as was the case in other nations ; and 
 
 1 Deut. XX. 10 ; Deut. xx. 19, 20. ^ Deut. xxi. 10.
 
 36 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 there were checks upon enforced military service, 
 as remarkable as they were beneficent. 
 
 Professor Gold win Smith has just observations 
 respecting monarchy among the Hebrews. Their 
 Monarchy leaders recognized the advantages of a 
 
 among the i r- i • i 
 
 Hebrews. free commouwealtli, and lelt it to be 
 more consonant with their idea and function as a 
 people. But when the people — being what they 
 were — preferred monarchy, monarchy was allowed. 
 But the Hebrew kings were not Oriental despots. 
 They reigned by consent of the people. There 
 were laws which set a limit to their prerogatives. 
 There were fearless prophets to rebuke and de- 
 nounce the proudest of them. The right of 
 revolution was maintained. No such man as 
 Nebuchadnezzar would have been endured by the 
 Hebrew people. 
 
 Respecting Hebrew worship, Professor Goldwin 
 Smith remarks,- 
 
 " All the nations worshipped God by sacrifice and through 
 Hebrew outward forms till the mind of man had been 
 
 Worship. raised high enough to worship in spirit and in 
 
 truth. The Hebrew law-giver did not originate sacrificial
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 37 
 
 rites, but he elevated and purified them, and guarded them 
 against the most horrible aberrations as to the nature of God, 
 and the mode of winning his favor and averting his wrath, 
 as all who know the history of heathen sacrifices, Eastern or 
 Western, must perceive. The scapegoat has been and is a 
 subject of much mockery to philosophers. Moses did not 
 introduce that symbolic way of relieving the souls of a 
 people from the burden of sin, and assuring them of the 
 mercy of God ; but he took care that the scapegoat should 
 be a goat, and not, as at polished Athens and civilized Kome, 
 
 The Levites were not a sacerdotal caste. They 
 were set apart for service in tlie ritual by the laying- 
 on of the hands of " the children of Israel," who 
 were gathered in an assembly for the purpose. 
 The right to teach was not confined to the priestly 
 class. The prophet lield a more exalted station 
 than the priest; and one might be called, like 
 Amos, to the prophetic office, whose occupation 
 had been to tend sheep. 
 
 Slavery has existed among all, or nearly all, un- 
 civilized nations. It was universal , , 
 
 Hebrew 
 
 among the peoples of antiquity. The ^''^^'^''y- 
 lives of the inhabitants of a conquered place were 
 
 5£o4;iV'-^^
 
 38 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 forfeited by the laws of war. They might, at the 
 option of the captor, be reduced to slavery. Patri- 
 archal slavery, as it is depicted iu the Bible, was 
 the mildest form of servitude. It was domestic 
 slavery : the servant was one of the family, was a 
 companion of the master, was brought into religious 
 fellowship with him, and, like a feudal vassal, 
 was armed in his defence. Slavery, as regu- 
 lated by the Mosaic enactments, when compared 
 with slavery as defined and practised under Roman 
 law, or even among modern nations, was a humane 
 institution. A Hebrew might become a slave vol- 
 untarily, on account of poverty, or he might be 
 reduced to slavery as a penalty for theft. But his 
 servitude was terminable by the satisfaction of just 
 claims upon him, or by the recurrence of the year 
 of jubilee, whicli emancipated all slaves of Hebrew 
 extraction ; and, in any event, by the expiration of 
 six years from the time when he became a slave. 
 His master was enjoined to treat him not as " a 
 bond-servant," but as " an hired servant," and 
 "not to rule over him with rigor." When his 
 servitude came to an end, his master was forbidden
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 39 
 
 "to let him go away empty." ^ AVith regard to 
 marriage, a master might give to a Hebrew slave a 
 uou-Hebrew wife, herself a slave, for the time of 
 his servitude ; but she and her children remained 
 with the master, — a provision which, however 
 harsh it may appear to us, was not harsh when 
 compared with the ordinary codes and customs of 
 slavery. A father might, for money, dispose of 
 his daughter; but this was with a view to her 
 marriage, and was one branch of the patria potestas, 
 the paternal prerogative. The purchase-money 
 might be looked upon somewhat in the light of a 
 dower. Enactments were carefully made for her 
 protection in case she did not become a wife of the 
 one to whom she was given, or of his son.^ As 
 regards non-Hebrew slaves, they might be manu- 
 mitted. There were regulations for their protection 
 and comfort, such as no other ancient nation framed. 
 The wilful murder of a slave was visited with the 
 same penalty as the murder of a freeman. A 
 
 'Exod. xxi. 2, seq.; Deut. xv. 12-15. 
 ' Exod. xxi. 7-10.
 
 40 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 serious injury, such as the loss of an eye or a tooth, 
 was to be recompensed by giving the slave his 
 liberty. Kidnapping, and the surrender of fugi- 
 tive slaves flying from a heathen master, were 
 punished. The general treatment of slaves under 
 the Old-Testament law was gentle. The Hebrew 
 is most emphatically commanded to be kind to the 
 stranger, and not to maltreat or oppress him. 
 " Thou shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress 
 him ; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt." 
 " For the Lord your God is a God of gods, and 
 Lord of lords, a great God, a mighty and a terrible, 
 which regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward. 
 He doth execute the judgment of the fatherless 
 and widow, and loveth the stranger, in giving him 
 food and raiment. Love ye, therefore, the stranger ; 
 for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt." The 
 slave, like his master, did no work one day in 
 seven. He partook with the family in the most 
 solemn acts of public worship. He even took part 
 in the family festival of the Passover. There was 
 no policy looking to the multiplying of slaves. 
 There were no slave-markets. Israel was never a
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 41 
 
 "slave-power" as were Athens, Rome, and other 
 ancient states. 
 
 We may pause for a moment to advert to the 
 attitude of Christianity toward slavery. If Christi- 
 anity had made war directly on the con- ^, . . . 
 
 •' •' Christianity 
 
 stitution of society, had undertaken to '"'^ Slavery. 
 reduce the government of Nero to a moderate and 
 legitimate exercise of authority, had attempted to 
 define the distinction between just service and un- 
 just servitude, — if Christianity had attempted these 
 things, it would have had a short stay in the world. 
 AVhat did the apostles do ? They inculcated the 
 golden rule. They insisted on the equality of men 
 before God. They enjoined the exercise of justice 
 and love. They taught that both master and slave 
 had a Master in common, to whom both were 
 answerable. They counselled slaves not to resist 
 even harsh masters, but to bear their sufferings 
 with patience and fortitude. They bade masters 
 render to their bond-servants that which is just and 
 equal. Paul sent back Onesimus to Philemon, no 
 longer as a servant, but as a brother beloved. In 
 a word, Christian ethics, or the bearings of tlie law
 
 42 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 of love on social relations, were not developed in 
 all their ramifications in a moment. They were 
 left to be brought gradually to the consciousness 
 of Christian men, and thus to be intelligently and 
 peacefully realized in social organization. If Chris- 
 tianity did not abolish slavery by an instantaneous 
 decree, which would have been only a brutumfuhnen, 
 it put gunpowder under the system. For it was the 
 influence of the gospel which eventually abolished 
 slavery in the Roman Empire and serfdom in the 
 Middle Ages ; and it is the direct and indirect in- 
 fluence of Christianity which has abolished modern 
 slavery, notwithstanding the defence of it by un- 
 disceruing or interested clergymen and churches. 
 
 We return to the Old Testament. There was 
 
 one thing which the Hebrews were to regard with 
 
 unsparino; hatred. This was idolatry. 
 
 Hatred of I & ^ 
 
 Idolatry. They were the chosen people. They 
 were chosen to be the recipients of a revelation ; to 
 form a community in which the only living and 
 true God should be alone worshipped, — through 
 which monotheism should be planted on the earth, 
 and a priceless gift be prepared for all nations.
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 43 
 
 What sliall l^e said of the extermination of the 
 Canaauites? The moral questions involved in this 
 topic are so grave and momentous, that, Extermina- 
 if it were to be discussed adequately, a cauaanites. 
 large space would be requisite for their full treat- 
 ment. But I venture upon a few observations. 
 
 In the first place, what reason is alleged for the 
 driving out of these tribes, and for destroying them 
 root and branch ? One reason was their Reasons for 
 
 , T ., , . . . destroying 
 
 unexampled vileness and impurity. An- t'»em. 
 other reason was the contamination which would 
 make association with them the ruin of the Israel- 
 ites. These old Canaanite tribes were steeped in a 
 worse than brutal sensuality. The foulest incest 
 was not the extreme point of their pollution. 
 With this bestiality was joined a cruelty which 
 made human sacrifices, the flino^iDo: of children 
 alive into the flames to appease their gods, congenial 
 to tliem.^ Many of them fled to Tyre and other 
 Phoenician towns. From what we know of Carth- 
 age, which was settled by Canaanite worshippers 
 
 ^ See Lev. xviii.
 
 44 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 of Baal and Ashtaroth, we can get an idea of the 
 savage rites of their idolatry. In the flourishing 
 days of that city, hundreds of innocent boys, be- 
 longing to the best families, were thrown into the 
 fire as a sacrifice to Moloch, the "horrid king" of 
 the old Canaanite religion. " The land is defiled : 
 therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, 
 and the land itself vomiteth forth its inhabitants." ^ 
 The Israelites were warned not to follow the course 
 of the Canaanites, " That the land spew not you 
 out, also, as it spewed out the nations that were 
 before you." These degraded tribes were to be 
 rooted out, "That they teach you not to do after 
 all these abominations, which they have done unto 
 their gods."^ 
 
 In the second place, that the Israelites, animated 
 with faith in the true God, taught to detest the 
 
 Israelites' Unspeakable wickedness of the Canaan- 
 sense of a . . 
 
 mission. ite tribes, considered themselves in- 
 
 trusted with a mission to execute God's judgment 
 upon them, to drive them out and destroy them, 
 
 ^ Lev. xviii. 25. ^ Deut. xx. 18.
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 45 
 
 and to make room for that true religion, of which 
 they were the exclusive representatives on earth, is 
 an historical fact. When they saw afterward the 
 mischief that resulted from the influence of the 
 remnant of the Canaanites that were left, they 
 were confirmed in the conviction that their destruc- 
 tion was the just ordinance of God. They felt that 
 a sacred obligation rested on them to sweep the 
 ground clean. 
 
 In the third place, the beneficent results of re- 
 vealed religion, the benefits which have gone forth 
 to mankind, and aiiiicar in the Christian 
 
 ' ^ '^ Benenoent 
 
 civilization of to-day, were contingent, le-^^'t-^- 
 as far as we can judge, on the extermination of 
 these tribes. I shall quote here from two accom- 
 plished historical scholars, neither of whom can be 
 accused of a lack of humane fueling, and neither 
 of whom is wedded to traditional theological beliefs. 
 Professor Goldwin Smith remarks on this topic of 
 "the penal destruction of the Canaanites," — 
 
 " Had they been spared, and reduced to slavery, the result, 
 judging from analogy, would have been the deep corruption 
 of the chosen people. "With abundance of slave-labor, the
 
 46 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 Jews would not have taken to industry, nor have acquired the 
 virtues which industry alone can produce and guard. Their 
 fate would have been like that of the Turks and other conquer- 
 ing hordes of the East, which, the rush of conquest once over, 
 have sunk into mere sloth and abject sensuality. And, if the 
 morals of the Canaanites are truly painted in the Pentateuch, 
 the possession of such slaves would have been depraving in the 
 highest degree." 
 
 More emphatic still are the words of Dr. Arnold : 
 
 " It is better that the wicked should be destroyed a hundred 
 times over tiian that they should tempt those who are as yet 
 innocent to join their company. Let us but think what might 
 have been our fate, and the fate of every nation under heaven 
 at this hour, had the sword of the Israelites done its work 
 more sparingly. Even as it was, the small portions of the 
 Canaanites who were left, and the nations around them, so 
 tempted the Israelites by their idolatrous practices, that we 
 read continually of the whole people of God turning away 
 from his service. But had the heathen lived in the land in 
 equal numbers, and, still more, had they intermarried largely 
 with the Israelites, how was it possible, humanly speaking, 
 that any sparks of the light of God's truth should have sur- 
 vived to the coming of Christ ? Would not the Israelites have 
 lost all their peculiar character ? And, if they had retained 
 the name of Jehovah as of their God, would they not have 
 formed as unworthy notions of his attributes, and worshipped
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 47 
 
 him with a worsliip as abominable as that which the Moabites 
 paid to Chemosh, or the Philistines to Dagon ? 
 
 " But tbis was not to be, and therefore, the nations of Canaan 
 were to be cut off utterly. The Israelites' sword, in its bloodiest 
 executions, wrought a work of mercy for all the countries of 
 the earth to tlie very end of the world. They seem of very 
 small importance to us now, tliose perpetual contests with the 
 Canaanites an<l the Midianites and the Ammonites and the 
 Philistines, witb which the Books of Joshua and Judges and 
 Samuel are almost filled. We may half wonder that God 
 should have interfered in such quarrels, or have changed the 
 course of nature, in order to give one of tliese nations of Pales- 
 tine the victory over another. But, in these contests, on the 
 fate of one of these nations of Palestine the happiness of the 
 human race depended. The Israelites fought not for them- 
 selves only, but for us. It might follow that they should thus 
 be accounted the enemies of all mankind ; it might be tbat 
 they were tempted by their very distinctness to despise other 
 nations : still they did God's work ; still they preserved un- 
 hurt the seed of eternal life, and were the ministers of blessing 
 to all other nations, even though they themselves failed to 
 enjoy it." ^ 
 
 It is pertinent to remind the reader that acts 
 occurring in recent times resembling the destruction 
 
 ^ Quoted by Stanley : " History of the Jewish Church," I., 
 283.
 
 48 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 of the Canaauites have been approved, whether 
 justly or not, by writers of high repute. Of the 
 massacre by Cromwell at the siege of Drogheda, 
 Carlyle says, — 
 
 " Oliver's proceedings have been the theme of much loud 
 criticism and sibylline execration, into which it is not our 
 plan to enter at present. Terrible surgery this ; but is it 
 surgery and judgment, or atrocious murder merely? That is 
 a question which should be asked, or answered. Oli ver Crom- 
 well did believe in God's judgments, and did not believe in 
 the rose-water plan of surgery ; which, in fact, is this editor's 
 case too. . . . An armed soldier solemnly conscious to himself 
 that he is the soldier of God the Just, — a consciousness which 
 it well beseems all soldiers and all men to have always, — 
 armed soldier, terrible as Death, relentless as Doom; doing 
 God's judgments on the enemies of God ! It is a phenomenon 
 not of a joyful nature ; no, but of awful, to be looked at with 
 pious terror and awe." 
 
 In the fourth place, as far as the effect upon the 
 
 Israelites of this war of extermination is concerned, 
 
 there was no wounding of sensibility. 
 
 Effect on the ^ "^ 
 
 Israelites. There was no such departure from the 
 prevalent ideas and the prevalent usages of war, as 
 would produce a moral deterioration in the Israelites
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIOION. 49 
 
 themselves. Rather is it true, that, feeling them- 
 selves the deputies of the Supreme God for the 
 infliction of righteous penalties, and for carrying 
 out his purpose, they would perform their stern 
 task with a kind of sacred enthusiasm, distinct 
 from personal revenge and malice, and impressed 
 at every step with their own exposure to a like 
 retribution in case they should fall back into the 
 pollutions of heathenism. An act which, though 
 enjoined by just authority, and in its ultimate 
 results beneficent, it might not have been possible 
 for a people on a higher stage of moral develop- 
 ment to perform without a hardening effect on 
 themselves, the Israelites could do with no such 
 consequence flowing from it. 
 
 As to the Canaanites themselves, they endured a 
 retribution which has often been inflicted, in the 
 ordinary course of Providence, on cor- 
 
 . , Analogies. 
 
 rupt and enervated races, gomg down 
 before the power of a more vigorous invading 
 people. In the case before us the Supreme Ruler 
 employed human instruments directly designated, 
 and therefore justly empowered, for the purpose.
 
 50 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 Yet on this view it may still be said with truth 
 that the iDJunction to drive out the barbarian tribes 
 took the form that it did on account of "the hard- 
 ness of their hearts." Had they been more sus- 
 ceptible to geutler motives, less inclined themselves 
 to sink into debasing idolatry, and had their moral 
 sense been capable of discriminations which Christi- 
 anity has made familiar, the mission given to them 
 might have been different. It might then have 
 been as safe for Israelites to mingle with the heathen 
 as it was in later ages, when no seductions and no 
 terrors could move them to take part in idolatry. 
 
 I am not satisfied that the foregoing remarks do 
 
 not embrace the elements of a fair solution of the 
 
 problem presented by this page of the 
 
 Alternative ^ ^ ./ i o 
 
 solution. sacred history. But if any think that 
 this solution, in the light of the gospel, by which 
 every thing is to be judged, is insufficient, the 
 alternative remains to consider — not the abhorrence 
 of idolatry, not the disposition to put far from them 
 its orgies and pollutions — but the connected im- 
 pulse to destroy and exterminate which those feel- 
 ings engendered, as not inspired of God, but as a
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 51 
 
 natural impulse and emotion on that stage of moral 
 discernment which, on the one hand, was elevated 
 above the obtuseness of conscience out of which 
 they had been lifted by the light of revelation, and, 
 on the other hand, was not so far elevated above it 
 as to enable them to think of other means of attain- 
 ing the desired end. On this theory another view 
 must be taken respecting the inspiration of these 
 passages in the record. They must be considered 
 as reflecting the judgment of the men of "the old 
 time" respecting the deed of the Israelites. Tliat 
 deed must be held to have sprung, not from an 
 explicit injunction, but from the dictate of a holy, 
 yet imperfectly holy, sentiment. The espousal of 
 this view, however, does not deprive a man of the 
 title of Christian. Whether true or false, it can 
 be held consistently with the belief that Jesus Christ 
 is the Son of God and the Saviour of the world. 
 This belief it is which makes a man a Christian,^ 
 
 To sum up what I have to say here upon the Old- 
 Testament system: It was a national religion. 
 
 > Matt. xvi. 16-18 ; John iv. 42, vi. 69.
 
 52 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 Without a stupendous and continuous miracle, in 
 no other way could the true religion get a foot- 
 The Old hold on the earth. But miracle is not 
 
 system. magic. At that time all religions were 
 
 tribal. The Hebrews were organized by the act 
 of God into a theocratic community. He assumed 
 toward them the relation of a lawgiver. His legis- 
 lation, given through prophets, extended over all 
 matters of which government was expected to take 
 cognizance. Idolatry was weeded out by express 
 enactments. Apostasy from God was at once im- 
 piety and treason. Penalties were inflicted upon 
 overt irreligion, not through the agency of natural 
 law only, as on the broad field of the world, but 
 through civil law, which was acknowledged to 
 emanate directly from God. The uncivilized in- 
 stincts of men were more and more curbed by 
 wholesome enactments adapted to their condition. 
 Increasing disclosures of the character of God puri- 
 fied the popular conception of him. As revelation 
 advanced, the standard of piety and morality rose 
 to a higher grade. Holiness came to be a word 
 full of the most sacred meaning. Conscience was
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 53 
 
 disciplined. Aspirations for a nearer access to God, 
 for a wider reign of God, were awakened. A more 
 full revelation was anticipated in the dim future. 
 To the future the longing eyes of men were turned. 
 At length the day came for the true religion to burst 
 through the bonds of its political form and its ex- 
 ternal ritual. The true King, the hope of i)rophecy, 
 appeared, not as the head of a single commonwealth, 
 but as the Lord and Redeemer of mankind. Theoc- 
 racy reached the ideal to which it had pointed, and 
 toward which it had striven, from the beginning. 
 
 7. In presenting the evidences of Christianity, 
 the facts are first to be established. The facts 
 which are principally called in question 
 are the miracles recorded in the Gospels, ^"^'^^'''eis™ 
 An atheist cannot credit the narrative of a miracle, 
 for he knows of no power competent to perform 
 one. A deist who believes in an idle deity who 
 lets the world go on of itself, and takes little inter- 
 est in the well-being of men, will distrust all testi- 
 mony to miracles, be it as cogent as testimony ever 
 can be. But a theist, whose God is a benevolent 
 Being and pities human distress, even the distress
 
 54 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 of those who have wilfully forsaken him, will 
 regard a revelation as not improbable, and miracles, 
 a part and evidence of it, as not unlikely to 
 occur. 
 
 Without considering, for the present, questions 
 
 relating to the authorship and date of the Gospels, 
 
 it is affirmed to be impossible to account 
 
 Proof of ^ 
 
 miracles. ^^^ ^j^g beginnings of Christianity, and 
 for facts which every sensible person admits respect- 
 ing Christ, his teaching, and the foundation of the 
 Church, without allowing that miracles such as are 
 narrated in the Gospels, including his resurrection, 
 were actually wrought. The known fact — a fact 
 attested by the Apostle Paul,' an unimpeachable 
 witness — that the apostles themselves professed to 
 work miracles by a power derived from Christ 
 makes it highly probable that they believed mira- 
 cles to have been wrought by him. What made 
 them believe this, if they had not seen them? 
 Repeated injunctions of Christ not to report his 
 miracles are an obviously authentic ]>art of the 
 
 ^Gal. iu. 4: 2 Cor. xii. 12.
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 55 
 
 gospel history ; and this proves that the events to 
 which these injunctions refer actually took place. 
 Cautions, plainly authentic, proceecliug from him, 
 addressed to his disciples, against making too much 
 of miracles, are a proof that they were actually 
 wrought. There is teaching of Christ, the authen-^-- 
 ticity of which cannot reasonably be disputed^' 
 which is meaningless unless certain miracles were 
 the occasion of it. An example is the message sent 
 to John the Baptist, when he inquired if Jesus were 
 really the Christ (Matt. xi. 4 ; Luke vii. 22). Other 
 examples are conversations of Jesus with over-rigid 
 observers of the sabbath : they complained that he 
 had healed the sick on that holy day. His answer 
 on one occasion (Luke xiv. 5) implies that the heal- 
 ing was of a desperate malady. The charge that 
 Jesus cast out demons by Beelzebub proves that he 
 restored demoniacs, like the madman of Gadara, to 
 reason and health. The resort to this imputation 
 proves that the cures of this kind which he wrought 
 were not parallelwith any exorcisms with which 
 the Jews were familiar. The fact that not a miracle 
 is attributed to John the Baptist should conv^iuce one
 
 66 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 that the miracles attributed to Jesus were really- 
 done. John was considered by the apostles inferior 
 to none of the prophets. Why are not marvellous 
 works connected with the accounts of him? Why 
 are no miracles ascribed to Jesus himself before his 
 public ministry? The later apocryphal Gospels do 
 this, but not the Gospels of the canon. It is im- 
 possible to explain the faith of Jesus in himself as 
 the Messiah, or the persevering faith of the disciples 
 in him, if he wrought no miracles. Strauss called 
 the miracles myths, growing out of the fixed expec- 
 tation that the Messiah, when he should come, 
 would do such works. How, then, could they con- 
 sider Jesus the Messiah if he did not do them ? To 
 one who studies the gospel history, it is plain that 
 miracles enter into the nexus of well-attested occur- 
 rences, and cannot be dissected out of it. The 
 TheMiracie crowuiug miraclc of Christianity — the 
 
 of the Res- • p t • i i 
 
 urrection. rcsurrectiou 01 Jesus — IS supported by 
 proof which cannot be invalidated. Everybody 
 who knows anything about the subject will con- 
 cede that the unanimous faith of the apostles in the 
 resurrection, as having occurred the third day after
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 57 
 
 his death, is the cause of tlie continued existence of 
 Christianity beyond that date. A\^hether Christi- 
 anity should survive or perish turned on that pivot. 
 To explain that belief of the apostles, for which 
 they were ready to lay down their lives, — that 
 inspiring belief which raised thera from the depths 
 of despondency, and transformed them from timid 
 fugitives to courageous heralds, going forth to con- 
 front and conquer all opposition, — to explain this 
 belief, if it was not founded on fact, is a tough 
 problem for scepticism to solve. The Apostle Paul, 
 who was converted in the year 35, about five years 
 after the crucifixion ; who, three years later, spent 
 a fortnight with Peter at Jerusalem ; ^ who was con- 
 versant at the time with the testimony given by the 
 apostles, — presents in detail the successive manifes- 
 tations of Jesus to them and to the other disciples; 
 in one instance, to five hundred at once.^ These 
 interviews were a definite number : they began at a 
 certain time ; they ceased altogether at a certain 
 time. This circumstance, taken in connection ^vith 
 
 » Gal. i. 18. » 1 Cor. xv. 1-18.
 
 58 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 all the other phenomena which no candid sceptic 
 will deny to have entered into the testimony of the 
 apostles on this subject, excludes the theory of hal- 
 lucination. Moreover, the psychological conditions 
 which it would be necessary to assume in order to 
 render self-delusion possible on their part were 
 wholly wanting. They were mourning as for a lost 
 cause. Nothing but an objective event of the most 
 impressive character could have revived their spirit, 
 and produced that revulsion of feeling out of which 
 the whole subsequent history of the Christian reli- 
 gion sprang.^ 
 
 An objection to the credibility of the gospel mu*- 
 
 acles is often drawn from the fabulous miracles 
 
 which abound in the records of pagan 
 
 Objection 
 
 uious^*^ antiquity, and in the legends of the 
 miracles. ^^.^^^^ ^j^^ objectiou is plausible; but 
 
 it is fallacious in logic, and is based on a superficial 
 resemblance. The miracles of the gospel are for a 
 higher end : they are for the purpose of revelation. 
 
 ^ For a full discussion of the credibility of the miracles, 
 see my work, The Grounds of Theistic and Christian Belief.
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 59 
 
 They mark the opening epochs in the establish- 
 ment of the kingdom of God on earth. For the 
 diffusion of that kingdom they are not required. 
 Again, the miracles of the gospel M'ere not wrought 
 in coincidence with a prevailing system, and for 
 the furtherance of it. They had not the enthu- 
 siasm of believers, and their already established 
 faith behind them. They created that faith, they 
 kindled that enthusiasm. This is a most significant 
 difference. Moreover, the temptations to fraud in 
 the case of ecclesiastical miracles are such as had 
 no place when Christianity was first introduced by 
 Christ and the apostles. The qualifications of the 
 witnesses to mediaeval and patristic marvels cannot 
 for a moment be compared to those possessed by 
 the disciples of Jesus. Any one may see this who 
 will take the trouble to read the contemporary 
 lives of St. Francis. Once more, the gospel mira- 
 cles were none of them merely tentative. There 
 were not a few instances of miraculous cure con- 
 nected with numerous failures, as in the case of the 
 Jansenist miracles, referred to by Hume. Had 
 this been the fact, vigilant enemies would have
 
 60 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 blazoned it abroad at ouce. I do not dwell on the 
 grotesque character of the ecclesiastical miracles as 
 a class, in comparison with the dignity of those 
 narrated in the Gospels ; nor do I touch on other 
 points of disparity which put credulous chroniclers 
 of antiquit}^ and of the Middle Ages in an utterly 
 diverse category as regards trustworthiness from 
 that held by the founders and first teachers of the 
 Christian religion. 
 
 Thus far I have spoken of miracles without 
 specially considering the origin of the Gospels. 
 Genuine- That wc havc iu thcsc narratives the 
 
 ness of the , 
 
 Gospels. testimony substantially, to say the least, 
 
 as it was given by the apostles, there is no valid 
 reason to doubt. To begin with the manuscripts : 
 The allegation that because we have not the origi- 
 nal documents we do not know whether the copies 
 extant are not falsified, can only come from sheer 
 ignorance. It is impossible to account for the 
 agreement of the manuscripts which exist, including 
 the most ancient Uncials, — to make no account 
 here of the minor diversities M^hich give occasion 
 for textual criticism, — without concluding that they
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. Gl 
 
 correspond to tlic original compositions, and to tlio 
 copies in use in the lifetime of the authors.^ It is 
 a sufficient answer to illiterate objections of this 
 sort, tliat we have better proofs of the integrity of 
 the Gospels than of any other ancient writings. 
 They were in use by numerous widely scattered 
 societies. These could not have conspired, had 
 they been so disposed, to corrupt the text. They 
 appeared in early translations, as the Pediito, or 
 Syrian, and the old Italic, the basis, in part, of the 
 Vulgate. They are quoted by a body of ancient 
 ecclesiastical authors in the East and West. It is 
 enough to say, that, if one questions the integrity 
 of the Gospels, he ought never to quote a line of 
 Homer, no complete manuscript of whom is older 
 than the thirteenth century. He ought never to 
 cite Marcus Aurelius, or Plato, or any other 
 heathen sage. In truth, he should never refer to 
 ancient liistory ; for the bulk of our information re- 
 
 ^ For the proof in detail, see Norton's " Genuineness of the 
 Gospels," or my article, " How the New Testament came 
 down to us," in " Scribner's Montlilj," February, 1881.
 
 62 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 specting it is derived directly from ancient writers, 
 whose autograph manuscripts perished long ago, 
 and were documents concerning which we have 
 generally far less evidence than we have respecting 
 the writings of the New Testament. 
 
 As to the authorship of the Gospels, I will state 
 what I believe to be the outcome of sound and ini- 
 Authorship partial critical study. The second Gos- 
 
 of the 1 1 • 1 ' 1 • 1 1 
 
 Gospels. pel^ which many now think to have 
 
 been the first written, is the Avork of Mark, who 
 was for a time a companion of the Apostle Peter, 
 and, perhaps, has transferred some part of that 
 apostle's vivacity to his pages. On the ground of 
 a comparison of the contents of Mark and Matthew, 
 some have contended that not quite all of the 
 second Gospel in its present form emanated from 
 Mark, but that a portion of the matter was, at an 
 early day, added by some other hand. I see no 
 good reason for this opinion. There are no traces 
 of a proto-lNIark in antiquity. The third Gospel 
 and the Book of Acts were written by a Gentile 
 Christian, who journeyed for a time with the 
 Apostle Paul, and whose affirmation that he had
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 63 
 
 gathered liis knowledge of the words aud actions 
 of Clirist from eye-witnesses, is entitled to full 
 credit. The first Gospel is ascribed to Matthew 
 by the early Christian writers without dissent, 
 although it is said to have been first written in the 
 Hebrew language, aud it is thought now to have 
 receival some additional matter from the early 
 disciple, whoever he was, who transferred it into 
 Greek. It existed in Greek at the date when it is 
 spoken of by Papias, a contemporary of the Apos- 
 tle John. There is internal evidence which, in my 
 judgment, is of a most convincing character, that 
 these three Gospels existed in their present form 
 about A. IX 70, or when some of the apostles, aud 
 a multitude whom they had taught, were still 
 living. The genuineness of the Gospel of John 
 has been of late persistently, but, as I thiuk, 
 unsuccessfully assailed. If there are difficulties 
 connected with tlie supposition of its genuineness, 
 there are far greater difficulties attending the 
 opposite hypothesis. Only one fact belonging to 
 the external evidence may here be given. Irenagus, 
 a man of unquestioned probity, Bishop of Lyons
 
 64 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 in the latter part of the second century, by whom, 
 as by all of his contemporaries, the fourth Gospel 
 was received without doubt or question, had per- 
 sonally known in the East the martyr Polycarp, 
 Bishop of Smyrna, and had heard him describe 
 the appearance and manners of the Apostle John, 
 whom Polycarp had personally known at Ephesus, 
 where the apostle spent his closing years. It is 
 morally impossible that Irenseus received a Gospel 
 as from John which Polycarp knew nothing of, or 
 that Polycarp could have been mistaken on a point 
 like this. 
 
 When all the literary evidence is scanned, and 
 all the collateral proofs weighed, the conclusion 
 The apos- will be that we have presented to us in 
 
 ties' testi- i • i i 
 
 mony. the Gospels the story which the apostles 
 
 told of what they had seen and heard in their 
 intercourse with Jesus. In these inartificial narra- 
 tives the testimony of the original disciples is 
 fairly laid before us. 
 
 The question recurs, Are the apostles to be be- 
 lieved ? If not, shall we say that they are knaves 
 or that they are fools ? The idea of their being
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 65 
 
 knaves, who were so anxious to become '' the off- 
 scouring of all things " that they made up a lie, — 
 made up a lie for the pleasure of dying credibility 
 
 of the 
 
 for it, — this idea is happily obsolete, apostles. 
 But were they fools ? Were they half-orazed enthu- 
 siasts who imagined that they saw such things as 
 the cure of the leper after the sermon on the mount, 
 or the stopping of the bier at Nain, and the raising 
 from the dead of the widow's son, when no such 
 things occurred ? Did Jesus, then, who is lauded 
 as a great reformer, as one who knew human 
 nature, a teacher of pre-eminent wisdom, select a 
 band of fools for his chosen companions, to make 
 up his family ? And did he choose them for the 
 express purpose of observing what he should say 
 and do, that they might go forth and relate it to 
 others ? In what light does this theory place 
 Christ ? Turn to the narratives : were there ever 
 stronger marks of truth ? Artless, Mitli no effort 
 to parry objections, or anticipate cavils, the manner 
 of the writers is that of honest men. The narra- 
 tive given by the apostles is objective : they are 
 taken up in the subject-matter ; they are oblivious
 
 66 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 of the bearing of what they relate on their own 
 repute ; they tell their own faults, their own 
 unfaithfulness to Christ, their cowardice, treachery, 
 desertion. They set down the sharp rebukes which 
 they received from his lips. There is no effort at 
 concealment, nor is there any trace of exaggeration. 
 There are none of the exclamations of wonder, 
 none of the expletives and asseverations which 
 belong to fictitious testimony. All is simple, 
 unadorned, marked with the unmistakable signs of 
 truthfulness. These are witnesses before whose eyes 
 great and wonderful things have passed, — so great 
 and wonderful that in the presence of them all 
 personal considerations are lost out of sight. If 
 the poptrait which they incidentally present of 
 Jesus in his transcendent purity and goodness — a 
 portrait in which divine authority, and power 
 above that of men, are strangely yet inseparably 
 mingled with human meekness and sympathy — 
 does not correspond to a reality which they had 
 seen and known, then who gave to these unprac- 
 tised authors, to these apostolic witnesses, d(>stitute 
 of artistic skill, the ability to produce such a mar-
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. G7 
 
 vellous creation of fancy? If this be, indeed, 
 their creation, let us worship them ! 
 
 8. What shall be said of the objection to the 
 credibility of the Gospels from alleged discrep- 
 ancies? The first thino- to be said is 
 
 " Discrep- 
 
 that the objection is irrelevant. Dis- and'in- 
 
 T . '11 accuracies. 
 
 crepancies and inaccuracies belong to 
 almost all testimony. On the 2>i'iu^'iple that a 
 witness or an author is to be discredited if he fails 
 of accuracy in all particulars, it would be impos- 
 sible to believe any thing. Courts of law would 
 have to be shut up. All books of history, includ- 
 ing narratives written from personal observation, — 
 much more, such as are based on them, — would be 
 worthless. Paley, one of the ablest defenders of 
 Christianity in the last century, justly says, " I 
 know not a more rash or unphilosophical conduct 
 of the understanding than to reject the substance 
 of a story by reason of some diversity in the 
 circumstances with which it is related. The usual 
 character of human testimony is substantial truth 
 under circumstantial variety. This is what the 
 daily experience of courts of justice teaches. When
 
 68 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 accounts of a transaction come from the mouths of 
 diiferent witnesses, it is seldom that it is not possible 
 to pick out apparent or real inconsistencies between 
 them. These inconsistencies are studiously dis- 
 played by an adverse pleader, but oftentimes with 
 little impression upon the minds of the judges. 
 On the contrary, a close and minute agreement 
 induces the suspicion of confederacy and fraud." 
 Contemporary historians, although honest and 
 painstaking, usually fail to accord with one another 
 in some particulars of the narrative. They may 
 differ as regards quite important circumstances, and 
 yet their general credibility not be shaken. The 
 accounts of the assassination of Julius Caesar con- 
 tain numerous discrepancies ; so it is with the 
 ancient narratives of the murder of Cicero. Yet 
 Cffisar and Cicero were killed, and the main cir- 
 cumstances can be well ascertained, and even minor 
 particulars arrived at, by a comparison of authorities. 
 Some maintain that Colonel Prescott commanded at 
 Bunker Hill ; others that General Putnam was in 
 the chief command. However the question may 
 be determined, or, if it cannot be determined, there
 
 THE CHRISTIAN UELIUION. 69 
 
 is no doubt that a conflict occurred there, and no 
 doubt as to the essential facts. Macaulay's his- 
 tory of England is not made worthless because 
 he confounded William Penn, the Quaker, with 
 George Penn, the pardon-broker. \Yhere varia- 
 tions occur in testimony, or inaccuracies in any 
 single witness or reporter, the only question is 
 whether they are of such a number and character 
 as to destroy the general trustworthiness of the 
 narrators, and to cast doubt on the substantial con- 
 tents of their tale. If not, they may furnish 
 material for a pettifogger to deal with, but they 
 will have no weight with a discerning judge or an 
 intelligent critic. 
 
 Applying these principles to the evangelists, we 
 shall find that their general credibility is rather 
 confirmed than weakened bv the blcm- 
 
 Method 
 
 ishes alleged to exist in their narratives. '^^ strauss. 
 It is true that Strauss and critics of that stanij) 
 have tried to break down this testimony by luakiug 
 a parade of verbal diiferences, and by opposing a 
 clause taken from one author against a clause 
 picked out of another. It is true of Strauss, as of
 
 70 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 many others, that he reasons often in a circle, im- 
 peaching one author on account of the statement of 
 another whom he likewise impeaches. The method, 
 as thus jjursuecl, is a sophistical one, and is parallel 
 to instances of artificial harmonizing which well- 
 meaning but ill-judging defenders of the Gospels 
 have sometimes resorted to in order to remove real 
 or apparent inconsistencies. Our historian, Mr. 
 Prescott, began to read Strauss, but soon laid aside 
 the book on account of the false and unfair method 
 w^hich marks the discussion, — a method subversive 
 of the canons of sound historical criticism. 
 
 AVhatever opinion is entertained on the question 
 wdiether the narrations in the Gospel histories admit 
 Substantial of bciug rcconcilcd in all particulars, — 
 Gospels. a question on w-hich Christian scholars 
 
 are still dividetl, — it can be clearly shown that in 
 numerous instances where it has been pretended 
 that contradictious exist, this opinion is erroneous. 
 It must be remembered that these books are not 
 formal histories. They are memoirs. There is no 
 aim at completeness. They are not from the pen 
 of expert writers. Circumstances, even very im-
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 71 
 
 portaut facts, may be left out of one aud recorded 
 by another. In narratives of this character, 
 whether oral or written, there is often an appeiir- 
 ance of inconsistency where some additional circum- 
 stance not introduced would at once dispel this 
 appearance. One has only to observe the narra- 
 tives of daily occurrences as they are given by one's 
 friends who are possessed of an average degree of 
 accuracy, to discern the fallacy and unfairness of 
 much of the adverse criticism of the Gospels. But, 
 as I have intimated above, if no single transaction 
 were described by any tAvo evangelists, either in 
 precise agreement ^vith one another, or in precise 
 correspondence to the facts, no inference could be 
 drawn against the substantial truthfulness of their 
 narratives. The fact would compel a modification 
 of a conception of inspiration which many entertain, 
 but would leave the essential facts in the life of Jesus, 
 his miracles and resurrection included, untouched. 
 
 9. We leave the gospel history to glance at Chris- 
 tianity on the doctrinal side. Chris- „ , 
 
 •' Redemption 
 
 tianity is the religion of redemption. It ^""^ ^'"' 
 rests on the presupposition of theism, and stands or
 
 72 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 falls with it. The being of God being acknowl- 
 edged, the one postulate of Christianity is the doc- 
 trine of sin. In affirming that sin is a dominating 
 principle, or in declaring the general sinfulness of 
 mankind, the gospel brings forward a truth made 
 evident by the individual's personal consciousness 
 and observation, implied in the laws, customs, 
 languages, and literature of the world, and mani- 
 fested in the entire history of the race. Christi- 
 anity does not create moral evil. On this subject 
 of human wickedness it does nothing more than 
 reiterate what the foremost of heathen poets and 
 philosophers have united in asserting. Seneca is as 
 severe in the accusation wdiich he brings against 
 mankind as Paul, though the Stoic's moral abhor- 
 rence of the guilt which he denounces is less intense. 
 Those who find fault with Christian teaching 
 seldom avoid implying a prevalence of sin which 
 they will not consent explicitly to allow. We hear 
 them call slavery "a hideous crime," the sum of 
 abominations. But slavery, up to a revent day, 
 has existed almost everywhere, and in all ages. The 
 class of oppressors who are directly responsible for
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 73 
 
 it have been strong enough and numerous enough 
 to hold their victims in subjection. It has com- 
 monly been true that the slave has been ready, at 
 any time, to take, when he could, the position of a 
 master. Mankind, then, have been engaged, from 
 the dawn of history, in the perpetration of what is 
 termed a hideous crime. Wars of conquest are 
 denounced as flagrantly wicked. But war has been 
 the great business of the race, and no homage, no 
 lionors, no rewards have been so great as those 
 bestowed on the conqueror. What are generally 
 deemed the purest religions are charged with having 
 incorporated into their sacred books, their creed 
 and rites, features indicative of the direst cruelty. 
 What must be the moral condition of a race whose 
 theology and worship are said to be the offspring 
 of cruel and vindictive passions? Christianitv 
 broaches no new doctrine when it teaches that moral 
 unworthiness belongs, though in diiferent degrees, 
 to men in common; that evil-doing is the habit of 
 the race, though responsibility and guilt are per- 
 sonal. If there be a mystery in the universality 
 of sin, viewed in connection with personal agency
 
 74 THE CHRISTLiN RELIOION. 
 
 as its necessary source, aud the condition, sine qud 
 non, of its guilt, it is not a mystery which the gos- 
 pel originates. It inheres in the facts, which are 
 as patent to the enlightened heathen as to the Chris- 
 tian, and stare every man in the face. Christianity 
 brings out in a clear light the identity of sin as a 
 principle, although Stoicism was not blind to this 
 truth. Unrighteous anger is not literally murder ; 
 but it is, in a minor degree, the same evil which in 
 murder appears full-grown. It is murder in the 
 germ. Ambition is not avarice ; but both arealike 
 selfish. Take what specific form it may, sin is a 
 violation of righteous law, a disregard of rightful 
 authority, a preference of a narrow interest to the 
 universal good. All moral obligations are so bound 
 together that he who offends in one point is guilty 
 of all. Law is one, and love is one, and love is the 
 law. Christianity, as it recognizes the love of God 
 as the first and supreme duty, traces all special 
 forms of excessive self-love and evil-doing to the 
 separation of man from communion with God. 
 Here is the fons et origo malorum. In the void 
 created in the human soul by the renunciation and
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 75 
 
 loss of God, all idolatries have their origin ; not 
 merely the -worship of deities devised by the imagi- 
 nation, but the idolatry of the world, — the inordinate 
 love of pleasure, power, fame, wealth. Ethics has 
 the springs of its life in religion. Morality, divorced 
 from religion, is a plant cut ofiF from its root. It 
 may retain its freshness and fragrance for a time ; 
 but in time it withers and perishes. This idea of 
 the moral and spiritual life of man as having its 
 living source in man's fellowship with God, in whom 
 he lives, is one pervading idea of the Bible. It is a 
 vital bond between the Old Testament and the New. 
 It makes Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah, and all 
 the worshippers of God in the old time, even when 
 their ethical development was as crude and imper- 
 fect as their agriculture or architecture, of one com- 
 pany with John and Paul and the holiest of Chris- 
 tian saints. Christianity has no hope for mankind, 
 whether as individuals or communities, except in 
 the return of mankind to God. It looks on men 
 who stand in no relation of affectionate loyalty to 
 God as wasting their substance in a far country, 
 and summons them back to the Father's house.
 
 76 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 Christiauity is for sinners. " They that are whole 
 need no physician." He who will think earnestly 
 enough to grasp, in its full reality, the fact of sin, 
 is prepared at least to understand Christiauity. 
 
 Communion with God is mediated and restored 
 through Jesus Christ. He is sent to save that which 
 Person and was lost. He Came not to fulminate a 
 Christ. deserved sentence of condemnation ; he 
 
 came not to condemn, but to save the world. His 
 function is to break down walls of separation, the 
 separation of men from each other, the alienation 
 of mankind from God. No work so sublime was 
 ever undertaken on the earth. It is to form a 
 universal society, tlie bond of which is love. It is 
 to organize a spiritual community, embracing the 
 race of man, and having its centre in himself, — a 
 society to be trained for a future and perfect develop- 
 ment of human nature in an immortal state. He 
 who is to effect the re-union of man to God is him- 
 self the Son of God as well as the Son of man. 
 There is a mysterious community of being with the 
 Father, an inscrutable derivation distinct from that 
 of all creaturely existences, of which tlie human
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 77 
 
 relation of sonship is to finite apprehension the 
 most expressive symbol. There is an incarnation, 
 a great act of self-sacrifice. That nature of the 
 Deity which is called, in the technical language of 
 theology, the Trinity, is a mysterious truth. That is, 
 it is a truth with regard to which we know that it is, 
 also to a certain extent ^cll(d it is, but not how it 
 is. We know that a plant grows from the seed ; 
 we know that it grows, but very imperfectly how it 
 grows. We know tliat bodies attract each other in 
 the inverse ratio of the square of their distances. 
 We know that a result takes place, but not in the 
 least hoio it takes place: "attraction" is a figure of 
 sjieech. So of the connection of soul and body, and 
 of a thousand other things. So true is it that omne 
 exit in mystenum. We may know that two attri- 
 butes co-exist in an entity, but hoia they do or can 
 we may be ignorant. A mysterious truth may be 
 clear in its practical relations. It is thus with the 
 divine sonship of Christ. Endowed with all human 
 sensibilities, exposed to temptation, he devotes him- 
 self, in obedience to the will of God, to the task of 
 bearing witness for him, and with an al)sorbing
 
 78 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 sympathy to the work of bringicg men to repent- 
 ance. In the prosecution of this work his love to 
 God and man, though always without flaw, is 
 developed, in the experiences of life and of death, 
 to an absolute perfection. On the cross he par- 
 takes of death, the wages of sin, and through the 
 absolute self-devotion of sympathy attains to such 
 a living apprehension of man's guilt and ill-desert, 
 and of the condemnation of sin felt in the divine 
 mind, that through the cross the communion be- 
 tween him, and between mankind as represented in 
 him, and the holy and loving God, reaches its con- 
 summation. It is a communion in which there is 
 a full, intelligent sanction, on man's side, of the 
 justice of God in the penal allotment of death, and 
 in his righteous disj^leasure at sin. Thus in Christ, 
 as a centre, communion between God and man was 
 restored. In the case of all who enter into the 
 work of Christ with sympathy, Avhich is a work 
 done not for himself but for his fellow-men, there 
 is a guaranty that pardon will not be mistaken for 
 indulgence. Tliere is a guaranty that from liim 
 will go forth upon those who give up their isolated
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 79 
 
 individuality, aud seek for a new life in fellowship 
 with him, an influence adequate not only to implant 
 and sustain a filial allegiance to God, but to infuse 
 into conscience a sense of his holy auger at sin, as 
 vivid as if they had themselves been visited with 
 the punishment due to their sins. It is not strange 
 if there should be questions respecting the atone- 
 ment which neither man nor angel can answer. 
 To say that the atonement makes God placable is 
 false. "He so loved the world," etc. It is no 
 bribe to an unmerciful judge. It is not a commer- 
 cial transaction, a price paid for a dispensation of 
 pardon. It is a substitute for punishment, embracing 
 in it certain elements of punishment itself, and doing 
 for the satisfaction of God's own feeling, for the 
 moral order disturbed by the violation of law, and 
 thus for the protection of authority and the preven- 
 tion of transgressions in the future, a work like that 
 which the infliction of the curse threatened by con- 
 science and the law would fulfil. As to the vicarious 
 feature of the atonement, its analogies are seen 
 wherever we look, — in fixmilies and the succession 
 of generations, in the entailment of evils and bless-
 
 80 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 ings, and even in material nature all around us where 
 life springs out of death. " Except a corn of wheat 
 fall into the ground, it abideth alone." The call for 
 an unconditioned absolution, with no correlated 
 work for the manifestation and vindication of just- 
 ice, is not a call that comes up from the human soul 
 when it is deeply penetrated with a sense of guilt. 
 Criminals, when their consciences have been aroused, 
 and they have been struck with the iniquity of their 
 deeds, have preferred to suffer the penalty. "When 
 a terrible crime is committed, which spreads grief 
 and dismay through a nation, men demand, if the 
 pei-petrator was sane and responsible, that the pen- 
 alty should be inflicted in its full severity. This 
 demand springs not merely or chiefly from a regard 
 for public safety : it is the voice of nature asserting 
 an eternal fitness of things. Who dare say, then, 
 that if sin is remitted, if the transgressor is ap- 
 proached with offers of forgiveness, there ought not 
 to be a corresponding revelation of the sanctities of 
 justice? Who dare say that the process of recon- 
 ciliation ought not to include something of the nature 
 of expiation ? It is easy to caricature these things.
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 81 
 
 It is easy to paint the righteous anger of God against 
 evil-doing as a personal feeling, a passion, instead 
 of the holy, impersonal sentiment of conscience. It 
 is easy to represent the atonement as suffering im- 
 posed on the innocent One, when it was suffering 
 voluntarily assumed and endured by him. There 
 is no element in the atonement which may not be 
 distorted by ignorance or by prejudice. Against 
 all theoretical objections, there is the fact that mil- 
 lions of human beings have found in it a reconcili- 
 ation to God in M'hich nothing of his fatherly 
 character is obscured, while the perception of the 
 guilt and peril of sin has been increasingly deepened 
 instead of being dulled. 
 
 By the moral victory achieved on the cross, there 
 was a liberation from death. When sin was ex- 
 pelled from human nature in the person Fruits of 
 01 the liepresentative of mankind, who rection. 
 thereby stored up in himself a potency of spiritual 
 life, of holiness and goodness, for the race of which 
 he was the head, or the second Adam, the resur- 
 rection was a normal consequence. Set free from 
 the limitations of space and time, while retaining
 
 82 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 all human sympathies and the fruits of a human 
 experience perfected on the cross, he can act from 
 the spiritual sphere with a more wide-spread eflfi- 
 ciencj. He is the herald, the type, the author of 
 a perfected humanity. The kingdom of God, in 
 consequence of the glorified form of being which 
 belongs to its head, attains to its universal stage, 
 where there is neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor 
 free, male nor female, and in which neither to 
 Jerusalem nor Mount Gerizim is it needful to 
 resort for the worship of the Father. How sub- 
 Progress Hnie is the progress of that kingdom ! 
 
 of the • 1 1 , ji 
 
 kingdom. We can trace it back to the remote age 
 when a single nomad chief, having a living faith in 
 the true God, broke away from his home and 
 kindred, and wandered over the hills of Palestine. 
 AVe can look on it many centuries later, when it 
 was threatened with complete destruction by colos- 
 sal empires on its borders, when its narrow strip of 
 territory was trampled down by their invading 
 armies, when its people were deported in a mass to 
 foreign lands to serve heathen masters, when it 
 seemed on the verge of utter extinction, but when,
 
 THE CHRISTLiN RELIGION. 83 
 
 even in the darkest hours, its prophets proclaimed 
 that it would rise from the dust, aud would over- 
 spread the whole earth. We behold it in the fiual 
 stage of its development, when the predicted King, 
 with only a handful of Galilean peasants for his 
 followers, declared that against it the powers of 
 Hades — the powers of death and destruction which 
 swallow up every thing earthly — should never pre- 
 vail. We observe the kingdom growing as from a 
 grain of mustard-seed, diifusing its power as leaven 
 hidden in measures of meal, travelling from land 
 to laud, supplanting ancient religions, surviving, in 
 full vigor, the rise and fall of nations. We open 
 the New Testament, and find that " it breathes in 
 every page boundless hope for the future, together 
 with the charity which is the source of social effort, 
 and with the faith which carries each man beyond 
 the sensual objects of his own short life. And it 
 closes with that splendid vision of the consumma- 
 tion of all Christian effort in the perfect reign of 
 God on earth, from which folly attempts to cast, 
 like an astrologer, the horoscope of nations ; but 
 which is in truth the last voice of Christianity, as
 
 84 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 it passes from tlie hands of the apostles, and com- 
 mits itself to the dark and dangerous tide of 
 human affairs, breaking forth in the assurance of 
 final victory." Where, save in Christianity, is 
 tliere a prosjject of a grand and inspiring future 
 for man on earth ? Where else is an antidote to 
 the pessimism which creeps into the modern mind 
 when it turns away from Christian revelation? 
 What is there to kindle enthusiasm in Stoic or 
 Agnostic anticipations of an approaching resolution 
 of all things into chaos, to be followed by new 
 cycles of development in endless and aimless suc- 
 cession ? Say not that the kingdom of God is to 
 be explained by a " Semitic genius for monothe- 
 ism." It is an historical blunder. What was the 
 monotheism of Assyrian and Babylonian and 
 Phoenician, of the devotee of Baal, of Astarte, of 
 Moloch ? And Mohammedanism was the old 
 Abrahamic theism, partly inherited and partly 
 caught up from Judaism and a degenerate Chris- 
 tianity. Hebrew monotheism was no result of 
 mere natural instinct : it won for itself a footing 
 and a permanent life only through arduous conflict
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 85 
 
 with tendencies to polytheism and idolatiy. The 
 native Semitic tendency may be seen in the un- 
 speakable abominations of the Chaldean ritual, 
 which were escaped by Abraham when he left his 
 father, who even then had begun " to worship 
 other gods." The proposed offering-up of Isaac 
 was not unlikely the turning-point M'here he cast 
 behind him the idea of immolating human victims 
 on the altar, one of the horrible features of \vorship 
 in Babylon and Tyre. 
 
 There ought to be no need of contending for the 
 reasonableness of the Christian doctrine of the 
 influence of the Spirit of God upon the influence 
 
 of the 
 
 human soul. With the idea of a divine spirit. 
 influence upon the minds of men heathen antiquity 
 found no difficulty. The analogies of a quickening, 
 elevating, renovating power, superadded to definite 
 instruction, and going forth from person to person, 
 are familiar. Inquiries into the relation of the 
 Spirit's influence to the free agency of the human 
 will are only one branch of a problem which 
 belongs as much to philosophy as to theology. 
 They present no greater embarrassment in the
 
 86 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 matter of religion than in connection with any- 
 other department of human agency. Arguments 
 for fatalism, such as they are, sweep over the entire 
 field of voluntary activity. The consistency of 
 free will and responsibility with the efficacy of 
 inducements is as capable of vindication when re- 
 pentance and conversion are the results produced 
 as when it is the building of a house or the marry- 
 ing of a wife. 
 
 The Christian conception of God includes that 
 which is positive in deism and pantheism, excluding 
 imma- that which is negative and one-sided. 
 
 Transctn- Spiuoza, in his affirmations, is not so far 
 
 dence of '■ 
 
 God. wrong, nor is Emerson, in his essay on 
 
 "The Over-soul." The difference between the 
 deistic and pantheistic idea on the one hand, and 
 the Christian idea on the other, is the difference be- 
 tween a hemisphere and a globe. For Christianity, 
 at the same time that it teaches the immanence 
 of God in the world, and his all-pervading energy, 
 likewise holds fast to his transcendence. It saves 
 thus the personality of God and the free activity 
 of man, both of which are essential to religion,
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 87 
 
 religion being the communion of person with per- 
 son. Christianity, in distinction from the religious 
 and philosophies of heathenism, affirms creation, 
 and denies every species of dualism, thereby con- 
 sistently maintaining that God is an absolute 
 being, — a being not depending on any thing 
 beyond himself for the realization of his essential 
 attributes. 
 
 It is impossible for the human mind to entertain 
 a more exalted notion of the character of God than 
 Christianity presents in the fore-front 
 of its teaching. God is love. This is "^ ^'"^■ 
 not the assertion of the Apostle John alone. Who- 
 ever thinks that Paul did not cherish a similar idea 
 will disabuse his mind of this false impression by 
 reading the thirteenth chapter of the First Epistle 
 to the Corinthians. Such is the teaching of Christ. 
 " The bruised reed he will not break," etc. The 
 mission of Christ is founded on the love and com- 
 passion of God toward evil-doers, — toward those 
 inimical to him. The Old-Testament Scriptures, 
 in which law and justice are made prominent as a 
 pre-requisite in the moral education of man for Ihe
 
 88 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 gospel of forgiveness, dwell, also, on the love of 
 God. He is " loug-suflPering," '' plenteous in mercy," 
 feeling toward all who revere him a father's pity 
 for his children, " forgiving iniquity, transgression, 
 and sin." Nevertheless, throughout the Scriptures, 
 it is a holy love which is predicated of God. Love 
 is of necessity holy. Love infolds in itself hatred. 
 It is impossible to love one thing without hating 
 its moral opposite. He who loves the well-being 
 of men must proportionally hate that which is 
 fatal to man's well-being. He who is benevolent 
 cannot avoid recoiling with abhorrence from ma- 
 levolence and selfishness. That love of right is 
 spurious the obverse side of which is not the detes- 
 tation of wrong. The Great Teacher, therefore, in 
 conformity with prophets and apostles, sets forth 
 the righteous anger of God against sin, — a dis- 
 pleasure which expresses itself in the divine 
 administration of the world. This aspect of the 
 character of God and of his government is not a 
 proper object for concealment or apology. From 
 beginning to end of the Bible, he is represented as 
 tenderly meeting e\'ery penitent, as giving a welcome
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 89 
 
 to the repenting soul like that of the flither in the 
 parable to the prodigal sou who " had wasted his 
 living among harlots." " Though your sins are 
 as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow." At the 
 same time, toward the impenitent, who persist in 
 trampling on sacred obligations, — obligations which 
 bind together the moral system, as gravitation holds 
 together the physical, — he presents himself in the 
 character of a Judge who will " by no means clear 
 the guilty." It is " indignation aud wrath, tribu- 
 lation and anguish, upon every soul of man that 
 doeth evil," but " glory, honor, and peace to every 
 man that worketh good." Whoever cannot endure 
 this character, whoever wants an indiscriminate 
 lenity or indulgence, or no divine government at 
 all, may as well turn away from Christianity at 
 once. He will not be able to read a page in the 
 New Testament or the Old with any satisfaction. 
 But, when Christianity points out the unsparing 
 righteousness of God in the infliction of penal evil, 
 it goes no farther than the observation of the course 
 of things among men warrants us in believing. 
 We see enough to make the Christian doctrine
 
 90 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 credible. There are laws of character. Habits tend 
 
 to irreversible permanence. There is a bondage 
 
 under evil : and self-emancipation, or 
 
 Laws of ' r 7 
 
 character. deliverancc by any exterior influences, 
 grows more and more difficult. Choice turns into 
 a chain. Conscience cannot easily shake oif the 
 presentiment of retribution to be met wutli in " the 
 undiscovered country." On this subject, Chris- 
 tianity teaches, in the first place, that it is necessary 
 for any true or blessed life that man should be 
 reconciled and re-united to God. This is a /''inda- 
 meutal assertion ; Christianity stands or falls with 
 it. In the second place, Christianity teaches that 
 Jesus Christ is the only means to this end, or the 
 only Saviour. It is through him, or on the founda- 
 tion of what he does and suffers, that those who 
 have no personal knowledge of him, in case they 
 are ever brought into relations of conscious peace 
 and fellowship with God, are delivered. The 
 whole family of the redeemed are to stand in con- 
 nection M'ith him. Thirdly, Cliristianity teaches, 
 as a corollary to the foregoing proposition, that the 
 final rejection of the Saviour by those to whom he
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 91 
 
 is made known, leaves the soul without the hope 
 of salvation. It is a self-evident truth, that, when 
 there is only one means of salvation, perdition is 
 the consequence of a persevering refusal to avail 
 one's self of it. Such refusal is a voluntary act of 
 self-destruction. Most Christians understand the 
 New Testament to predict that there are those who 
 will thus repel the approaches of mercy and help, 
 and thus bring on themselves an endless doom, — 
 endless from the fixity of habit, and their own 
 irrevocable action, yet not the less penalty, since 
 the law of habit is itself an apparatus not only of 
 reward, but of retribution. There have been some 
 eminent teachers of Christianity in ancient and in 
 modern times who have dissented from the pre- 
 vailing interpretation of the Scriptures. Some 
 have thought that eventually the attractive power 
 of God's love in the gospel will overcome all the 
 opposition of tlie human will, pour light and 
 warmth into the darkest mind, and bring to pass a 
 universal restoration. Others, especially in later 
 days, have believed tJiat intimations in the New 
 Testament, coupled with observed tendencies of sin,
 
 92 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 justify the expectation that incorrigible souls will 
 wear themselves out, consume their own powers of 
 rational thought, and perish out of being. But all 
 considerate Christians, be their opinions or doubts 
 what they may, are bound to protest with all energy 
 against any theory of fatalism which would attri- 
 bute to sin a self-destroying character. The pan- 
 theism which makes moral evil a phase of good, a 
 transient phenomenon that eliminates itself, is in 
 deadly hostility to the essential spirit of the Chris- 
 tian religion. "Woe unto them that call evil good, 
 and good evil." Sin is self-propagating, not self- 
 consuming. He who ventures to indulge the hope 
 of a final recovery of all souls to holiness and to 
 God has no moral right to the Christian name, if 
 he founds his hope on any natural necessity, or on 
 aught save the moral operation of motives which 
 exert over the will no coercive agency. Perhaps 
 the day will come when controversy on this subject 
 will be less heated, and when a more chastened 
 curiosity will exist respecting the statistics of the 
 future world in its far remote aeons. 
 
 As concerns tlie problem of the theodicy, the
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 93 
 
 difficulty presented to Christian theology is precisely 
 the same as under every other religion or phil- 
 osophy in which the reality of moral evil ^^^ ^^^^ 
 is not denied, and in which the Power i^'""*"^"'- 
 that rules the world is neither conceived of as finite, 
 or as deficient in benevolence. Physical and moral 
 evil are here. AVe see and experience them both. 
 They are permitted to be by the Author of the 
 universe. The reasons why they are permitted, we 
 are for the most part left to conjecture. Since the 
 masterly discussion of Leibnitz, the objection to the 
 perfection of God from the existence of* physical 
 evil or suffering has been more seldom heard. On 
 the supposition that moral evil is to exist, the 
 existence of physical evil, where and when it is 
 found, may be, for aught that anybody can prove 
 to the contrary, beneficent. Moral evil or sin is 
 purely the act of the creature. It is an abuse of 
 freedom. It is overruled in the divine govern- 
 ment, and turned into an occasion of multiform 
 benefits which do not issue from its inherent tend- 
 encies, and were not designed by the evil-doer. 
 The question why it is allowed to be introduced by
 
 94 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 the all-foreseeing Deity is among the mysteries of 
 life. But the objection of Epicurus and Hume can- 
 not logically be urged against the divine omnipo- 
 tence. It can never be proved that the exclusion 
 of sin in any of the cases where it is suffered to 
 occur, by dint of divine power interfering to pre- 
 vent it, does not involve an incompatibility in the 
 nature of things. It can never be proved that in 
 a universe composed of rational agents further 
 divine interposition for the exclusion of sin might 
 not necessarily involve a degradation of the system, 
 a diminution of the good to result from it, greater 
 than any advantages consequent on such inter- 
 ference. In other words, the permission, not the 
 causation, of sin on the part of God may be the 
 dictate of supreme wisdom. It is not a Christian 
 philosophy which teaches that two and two may 
 be five on some other planet, or that omnipotence 
 can make a thing to be and not to be simultaneously, 
 or achieve any other impossibilities. As long as 
 this solution of the mystery of evil is a possible 
 one, the impeachment of the divine power or good- 
 ness has no logical foundation to rest upon. It is
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 95 
 
 a subject on which all but the most presumptuous 
 will be willing to wait for light. Meantime, Chris- 
 tianity stands immeasurably above the ripest heathen 
 philosophy in ascribing sin to the self-determina- 
 tion of the creaturely will, instead of making it the 
 necessary product of matter, or of any germ inhe- 
 rent in the constitution of things. 
 
 Protestant Christians hold the Bible to be the 
 sufficient and authoritative rule of faith and conduct. 
 The Scriptures are the umpire in coutro- 
 
 ^ '- Character 
 
 versies. But it is to the Scriptures o^' ^''^ i^'bie 
 collectively taken that these attributes pertain. We 
 cannot open the Book of Leviticus, or any other 
 book of the Old Testament, and apply forthwith a 
 precept which falls under the eye to ourselves. We 
 cannot select a verse in a Psalm, and adopt it, 
 without consideration, as a sentiment suitable for 
 a Christian to cherish. The Old Testament Scrip- 
 tures are not Christian Scriptures. They belong to 
 the earlier stages of revelation. The criterion to 
 which every utterance, even of the most evangelical 
 prophets, is to be brought is the teaching of Christ 
 and his apostles. This truth derogates nothing
 
 96 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 from the proper dignity of the Old-Testament 
 Scriptures, nor does it clash with any reasonable 
 idea of inspiration. It is simply an inference from 
 the progressive character of revelation, on which I 
 have before commented. An illustration resembling 
 one which Whately has somewhere presented may 
 be of service. A father corresponds with an absent 
 son from his childhood. The earliest of these letters 
 will naturally contain injunctions and counsels 
 adapted to the situation, needs, and temptations 
 peculiar to a boy. He is exhorted, perhaps, to set 
 apart a definite hour for play, and a particular time 
 for writing his letters. He is enjoined to retire to 
 bed at nine o'clock in the evening. Particular 
 regulations are laid down relative to his clothing 
 and his expenses. The letters for a number of 
 years are composed largely of rules of behavior, 
 affectionately, yet imperatively, urged, and inter- 
 spersed with that sort of instruction in morals and 
 religion which would be most easily apprehended 
 by an immature mind. At length the son arrives 
 at the stage of manhood, and shows the moulding 
 agency of this long-continued guidance. Then the
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 97 
 
 father addresses him as a full-grown man, and 
 communicates to him in one final composition the 
 principles pertaining to life, duty, and man's des- 
 tiny, which he deems of the highest moment. The 
 sou collects all these letters in a volume. They 
 all discover in ditferent degrees his father's charac- 
 ter, and throw light on the path of his duty. But 
 he would be a simpleton if he referred to the earliest 
 and latest without discrimination, and confounded 
 the injunctions given to a school-boy with the truths 
 and appeals of that final letter. Kather would he 
 test every thing previous by the contents of this 
 last communication. The illustration will mislead 
 if it is understood to imply that the books of the 
 Bible are to be literally described as letters from 
 God to man. The point is simply that the progres- 
 sive nature of revelation renders it necessary, as it 
 is natural, to use the New Testament as the touch- 
 stone of the relative completeness and the continued 
 validity of all prior biblical teaching. It requires 
 to be further said, that, from this gradually develop- 
 ing nature of revelation, devotional expressions, 
 current proverbs, and the varied expressions of a
 
 98 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 religious and ethical character, whether verbal or in 
 the conduct of good men, will bear upon them 
 traces of the limit of the knowledge possessed at 
 different epochs. There is an Old-Testament type 
 of piety which is felt in all tliis literature. "The 
 law was given by ISIoses, but grace and truth came 
 by Jesus Christ." 
 
 The critical study of the Bible, coupled with the 
 general advance of physical and historical investiga- 
 tion, have brought out in recent times, in more 
 distinct relief, what is called the "human side," or 
 Criticism factor, iu the biblical Writings. Scholarly 
 Scriptures. criticism tends to the conclusion that there 
 was a growth in Hebrew institutions and laws; 
 that the codes were kept open, the original rubrics 
 being retained ; that legislation was added, from 
 time to time, under the guidance of prophets, to 
 suit changing circumstances, new ordinances being 
 looked on as INIosaic for the reason that they were 
 conceived in the spirit and were considered a legiti- 
 mate development of the primitive enactments. 
 These questions are to be determined before the 
 tribunal of searching and impartial scholarship.
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 99 
 
 But they involve no such peril to the Christian 
 faith as they are oflen thought to contain. The 
 religion of tlie chosen people is all within the covers 
 of the Old Testament. The debate is about the 
 order of stratification. The organic relation of the 
 Old Testament religion to Christianity is a historical 
 fact "which stands on indisputable proof, and is 
 altogether independent of these critical inquiries, 
 however important in their place they may be. 
 Of the Scriptures as a whole, it is true that the 
 more they are studied in the light of modern science 
 and learning, the more striking is felt to be the 
 apostle's declaration, "We have this treasure in 
 earthen vessels, that the power may be of God and 
 not of men." The poicer remains. The treasure 
 is more evident from the homely casket which sur- 
 rounds it. Traditional formulas relative to inspira- 
 tion may undergo modification: they are not an 
 integral element of the Christian religion, but 
 belong to the attempts of scientific thought to define 
 it. The great Protestant principle of the normal 
 authority of tlie Bible as a teacher of religion and 
 morals remains intact. What Christianity is can
 
 100 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 be correctly ascertained from the Scriptures, and 
 nowhere else. The marks of inspiration are stamped 
 even on parts of Scripture which precede contem- 
 porary authorship and testimony, — the one main 
 criterion of historical proof. The attempted " recon- 
 ciliations" of Genesis and science may not be happy, 
 either as expositions of science or interpretations of 
 literature ; but the sublime cosmogony which stands 
 at the threshold of the Bible, the moment it is 
 contrasted with the ancient Semitic traditions or 
 legends, Assyrian, Babylonian, or Phoenician, with 
 which it has features in common, is perceived to be 
 immeasurably elevated above them. How came 
 polytheism and dualism to be excluded here, and not 
 elsewhere ? How did the pure theism, with its doc- 
 trine of a Creator of man in his own image, of sin 
 as man's free act, of guilt bringing shame, of im- 
 morality and crime as flowing from practical athe- 
 ism, — how did this mass of religious and moral 
 truth, truth recognized throughout the Bible, and at 
 the foundation of the Christian system, get into this 
 Hebrew record ? Who can fail to see that a Spirit 
 was at work in the Hebrew mind not manifested
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 101 
 
 elsewhere ? As the maguet attracts only true metal, 
 so did that mind, wlicn moved by the Spirit of God, 
 take up only those elements of belief which were 
 consonant with the true religion. Books in the Old 
 Testament which are a puzzle to some Christians, 
 and are often a theme of derision, assume an utterly 
 different character when they are considered from 
 what I may call the historico-theological point of 
 view. The Song of Solomon contains — except in 
 one passage (chap. vii. 1-9), which is an interpola- 
 tion — nothing to which a pure mind can take excep- 
 tion. Instead of being marked by a sensual quality, 
 as has often been asserted, it celebrates the virtue 
 and victory of chaste love and constancy against all 
 enticements. There is not a syllable in the Bible, 
 from Genesis to the Apocalypse, which is adapted 
 to foster impure passion. Those who are fond of 
 contrasting the Old Testament with the New, as 
 if there were a contrariety between them, must find 
 it hard to explain how the Old Testament could 
 have been so cherished by Christ and the apostles. 
 Why were they not shocked by what we are told is 
 hostile to the spirit of Christianity ? It is plain
 
 102 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 that the drift of the Old Testament is all in the 
 right direction. The Book of Jonah — whether it 
 be held that it was meant to be history, or was 
 meant as a parable, like the tale of the Pharisee 
 and the Publican, as many Christian scholars hold 
 — contains a beautiful lesson of Jehovah's pity for 
 the heathen, and affords a foreglimpse of the 
 broader discovery of God's love which is made in 
 the gospel. It is a rebuke of Jewish narrowness 
 and harshness : it really marks an advance in 
 revelation. The proverbs are an anthology of wise 
 sayings by Solomon and other sages, as the Psalms 
 are an anthology of hymns by David and other 
 poets. They are differentiated, as I have said 
 before, from heathen literature: another spirit 
 dwells in them. Only they must be tested by 
 Christianity, which is the complement of all prior 
 revelations. 
 
 The gospel was brought into the world in a way 
 to pour contempt on human pride. There is no 
 The Gospel pomp of any sort attending its advent. 
 
 in the form 
 
 of a Servant Humblc, Unlearned men are chosen for 
 its first teachers. The Lord himself was in the
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 103 
 
 form of a servant. The New-Testament Scriptures 
 are in keeping with the lowly circumstances that 
 invested Christianity at its origin. They, too, from 
 the ordinary point of view of the world, "are with- 
 out form or comeliness," They are not elaborate 
 compositions. Xo pains are taken to disarm preju- 
 dice, anticipate cavils and objections, frame a case 
 all parts of which are nicely fitted together to defy 
 attack. Attacks are expected. They are predicted. 
 The Divine Author of Christianity has rather 
 chosen to leave much in the Christian documents 
 that may easily provoke disesteem and even scepti- 
 cism. A test is presented of the candor, the earn- 
 estness, and, above all, of the real desire to find 
 God, and to obtain forgiveness and peace from 
 him. 
 
 There is room for brief observations on the ethics 
 of Christianity. It is never to be forgotten that 
 Christianity is in its essence a religion, tiip Ethics 
 
 , of the Gos- 
 
 Its end is a transformation of character, p^i- 
 It aims to make man "a new creature" by connect- 
 ing him with Christ, the herald, the t}q)e, and the 
 creative potence of a perfected humanity. It incul-
 
 104 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 cates principles rather than specific statutes for the 
 regulation of conduct. It is sometimes said that 
 the golden rule is not peculiar to the gospel. As 
 found in Isocrates, Confucius, the Rabbis, and in 
 other authors where it is alleged to occur, it appears 
 either in a negative form, " Do not unto others," 
 etc. ; or in some restricted application, as to the 
 relation of husbands, fathers, or children. In the 
 gospel it stands in a form at once affirmative and 
 universal. But, even if an equivalent injunction 
 were to be met with elsewhere, it would be more 
 pertinent to show where, save in Christianity, there 
 has been provided an efficient motive and iuspii'a- 
 tion to its fulfilment. Moreover, this precept is far 
 from being an adequate guide of life, when severed 
 from the Christian truth connected with it. The 
 rule to treat others as we should wish to be treated 
 ourselves, or even as we should think it right for 
 others to treat us, requires as its complement a true 
 idea of man as he ought to be. We must know in 
 what man's well-being consists. What ought we 
 to desire at the hands of others ? The golden rule 
 is simply to brace men up on the weak side. It is
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 105 
 
 to counteract the bias of self-love, the most prolific 
 source of injustice and unkiudness. This is the 
 limit of its function. It is one of those parts of 
 New Testament teaching which the natural con- 
 science sanctions, if it fails to suggest. 
 
 The New Testament insists on general affections. 
 It lays stress on philanthropy, because at that age 
 there was no need to exhort men to 
 
 Patriotism. 
 
 patriotism. The tendency was to make 
 love of country the acme of virtuous attainment. 
 But Christianity never disparages particular affec- 
 tions, such as bind men together in families and 
 communities. It simply guards against their ex- 
 aggeration, and insists on a benevolence as broad 
 as humanity. 
 
 It is a narrow and frigid method of interpretation 
 which finds in the sermon on the mount a universal 
 prohibition of the use of force. The 
 
 ■■• Tho uso of 
 
 precept of non-resistance is like that — ^*'''°^' 
 which is a branch of it — enjoining that if a man is 
 sued for his coat he is to give, unasked, his cloak 
 also. In all such precepts the thing forbidden is 
 malice and revenge. The thing commanded, as the
 
 106 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 main reliance for the overcoming of evil, is the 
 practice of forbearance and kindness. But the 
 state, as an organization of force, existing by divine 
 authority for the maintenance of justice, is sanctioned 
 by Christ and the apostles. Nor does the spirit of 
 Christianity forbid the use of force for ends con- 
 sonant with those for which the civil authority is 
 established. The limit to the duty of civil obedi- 
 ence is where human law is in direct conflict with 
 the divine. Then a Christian is to obey God rather 
 than man. To conclude that there is an obligation 
 of passive obedience in all conceivable cases, and no 
 right of revolution, is an unwarrantable inference 
 from injunctions given at a time when armed 
 resistance to tyranny would have been a suicidal 
 folly, and directed to those charged wdth a special 
 mission to found, by persuasion and by patient suf- 
 fering, the new kingdom of God among men. 
 
 10. The relation of Christianity to ethnic religions 
 and to philosophy among the heathen is not that of 
 The heathen u^^^^^ified rcpuguance. The "wild- 
 rehgious. growing religioDs," as Schelling calls 
 them, may have in them important elements of
 
 THE CimiSTIAN RELIGION. 107 
 
 truth. These are found iu their right place in the 
 Christian system. In one religion, the teaching 
 of Buddlia, there is an impressive inculcation of 
 sympathy and philanthropy. It is linked with a 
 gloomy metaphysic which places the highest hope 
 of the soul in the annihilation of personal being. 
 That system, in its proper consequences, is fatal to 
 responsibility as well as to hope. All that is good 
 in Buddhism is found iu the gospel, without its 
 dismal accompaniment of atheism and the drown- 
 ing of personality in a fathomless ocean of being. 
 How infinitely richer is the good offered to the 
 wretched victims of caste in the invitation of Jesus, 
 " Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy- 
 laden, and I will give you rest," — words which 
 Augustine says he had never found in Plato, high as 
 he rated the charms of that prince of philosophers. 
 Whatever in Greek philosophy or the uninspired 
 sages of other peoples is true to human nature, 
 Christianity welcomes as congenial with itself, and 
 knows how to assimilate. Orthodox fathers of the 
 ancient Church did not hesitate to say that rays of 
 lio-lit from above had fallen into the minds of
 
 108 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 Socrates and other masters of wisdom, who rose 
 into a higher atmosphere than was breathed by the 
 generations among whom their lot was cast, — men 
 of whom it might be said that heathen society 
 " was not worthy." Stoicism yearned for a universal 
 polity. As the ancient states, one after another, 
 fell to pieces, there Vv^ere those who aspired after a 
 broader and permanent bond of union. Cicero, in 
 a strain caught from those teachers, discourses of a 
 universal "commonwealth" of gods and men. 
 Th&se were aspirations which could never be real- 
 ized on the soil of heathen antiquity. They were 
 dreams awaiting a fulfilment. They were uncon- 
 scious prophecies of the brotherhood of mankind, 
 secured in the fellowship of Jesus Christ, and of the 
 Church opening its doors to every nation and every 
 rank. 
 
 It is, likewise, a part of the genius of Christianity 
 to foster, within its due limit, every genuine expres- 
 /,r, • .• -^ sion of human nature, to encourage the 
 
 . Christianity •' ° 
 
 ; and Society, development of the human mind, and the 
 ^omotion of human welfare in all directions. 
 Christianity seeks to mould society according to
 
 TEE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 109 
 
 justice and love. It seeks to infuse into govern- 
 ment and legislation the spirit of equity. It favors 
 education and culture, because it values the human 
 soul infinitely above every exterior good. It is 
 friendly to art, for the love of beauty is allied to 
 the love of goodness. Whatever inventions and 
 discoveries lighten the burden of labor, minister to 
 the healing of the sick, and heighten the comforts 
 of daily existence, are welcomed by the followers of 
 him who went about doing good. Christianity is 
 not an ascetic system. The kingdom of God on 
 earth is not a ghostly community, busied exclusively 
 with religious exercises. It is humanity developed, 
 trained, perfected on every side. Christian virtue 
 is no "fugitive and cloistered virtue." " ^ATiatsoever 
 things are true, whatsoever things are honest, what- 
 soever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, 
 whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are 
 of good report," Christians are exhorted to pay 
 regard to. The comprehensive command of Christ 
 is, " Be ye perfect." Perfection is reached in the 
 disciple as in Christ, not by "minding his own 
 things," but "the things of others." To live and
 
 110 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 labor for the world without worldliness — that is, 
 subordinating all material good to that which is 
 spiritual and walking by faith in things not seen — 
 is a Christian's work. 
 
 Let a thoughtful man contemplate the prospects 
 of mankind on the supposition that the Christian 
 
 faith is to pass away. Civilization ad- 
 of'tho^*'^ vances. Human science goes forward 
 
 as far as it can in alleviating bodily 
 pain. Provisions for living comfortably are mul- 
 tiplied in a degree at present incalculable, and are 
 diffused abroad. Knowledge increases more and 
 more. Wars come to an end. Governments become 
 equitable and beneficent. Manners take on a finer 
 quality. Conceive that such a progress of mankind 
 is possible, apart from the purifying and restrain- 
 ing influence of religion, — an expectation for which 
 neither human nature nor experience affords the 
 slightest warrant, — what then? Are men who are 
 thus advanced in the intellectual scale and in the 
 affections of the heart to be satisfied with a merely 
 mundane existence ? Can they content themselves
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. Ill 
 
 to live iu this way with no wider horizon, and then 
 to pass out of being ? Will they find a sufficient 
 stimulus to labor for their race iu the mere hope 
 of rendering: the earth a more comfortable abode 
 for tenants who in swift succession rise into being 
 and sink into the grave, as flowers blossom and the 
 next day fall from their stems ? The further civil- 
 ization advances, were a sure advance practicable 
 without the inspiration and the safeguards of reli- 
 gion, the more intolerable human life would become. 
 Man would be less happy than the animals. The 
 brutes have no thoughts or imaginations above the 
 necessities of the hour ; but man, with a nature 
 too large to be satisfied with earthly good, is cut 
 off from any thing higher. The dignity of life, 
 and its joy not less, are gone when there are no 
 ties connecting this brief existence with a world 
 unseen. 
 
 I have spoken of Christianity, making no effort 
 to confute atheism. It is no part of my plan to 
 set forth the evidences of the beins; of „, , . 
 
 >= The Vjoing 
 
 God. He reveals himself in the consti- ''' '^'"^■ 
 tutiou of the human soul, a free intelligence, which
 
 112 THE CHBISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 cannot explain itself to itself by any material 
 causes among Avhich freedom has no place and 
 intelligence does not exist. He reveals himself in 
 conscience, through which an imperative law is 
 imposed on us, which is superior to the human will 
 and independent of it. He reveals himself in the 
 order and design wliich render science possible, and 
 which bring home to the unperverted mind the 
 conviction that the world is framed and sustained 
 by an intelligent Creator. He reveals himself in 
 the course of history, in the working out of ends 
 by the concurrence of numberless instruments, 
 neither of whom comprehends the plan which he 
 takes part in executing, and in the traces of a 
 righteous government which, amid all the confusion 
 of human affairs, are clearly discerned, and which 
 excite a rational presentiment of a more complete 
 manifestation of justice hereafter. Nothing can be 
 more irrational than criticism of the justice and 
 goodness of the First Cause of all things ; for that 
 there is a First Cause few reasoners are so unphilo- 
 sophical as to call in question. The Author of the 
 universe is the author of the human faculties by
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 113 
 
 which we jnflge of truth and falsehood, of good 
 and evil. If he is not righteous, what reason have 
 we to trust the faculties which he has given us ? 
 "What ground have we to rely on any conclusion ? 
 and, if not on any conclusion, how can we put 
 confidence in impressions that we may have in 
 regard to the Creator's attributes ? Faith in GckI 
 is the presupposition of faith in our own intel- 
 lectual processes. 
 
 In the foregoing discussion I have endeavored to 
 state the opinions of Christians correctly, wherever 
 
 I have professed to refer to general or Christian- 
 ity and 
 prevailing beliefs. In other cases I sects. 
 
 have expressed frankly my personal convictions. 
 Christianity is the peculiar property of no indi- 
 vidual and of no single sect. AYhoever defends it 
 or assails it has no right to confound peculiarities 
 of doctrine found here or there among Christians, 
 or even widely prevalent, A\ath the catholic faith, 
 or that great substance of belief which Christians 
 generally unite in cherishing. I have passed in 
 rapid review a series of topics, to either of which 
 
 a volume might well be devoted. If the effect is 
 8
 
 114 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 to give to any disbeliever or doubter a more 
 enlightened conception of the religion of Christ, 
 and to diminish prejudices which oflen spring from 
 incorrect teaching, I shall feel that I have not 
 written in vain. Should any one be moved to 
 controvert statements in the preceding pages, I 
 shall not, partly for the reasons stated at the outset, 
 feel obliged to make reply. I have no fear that 
 candid readers will infer from my silence that the 
 propositions which have been stated above admit 
 of no further defence. 
 
 THE EXD.
 
 EPOCHS OF HISTORY. 
 
 "A Series of concise and carefully prepared volumes on special 
 eras of history. Each is devoted to a group of events of such 
 importance as to entitle it to be regarded as an epoch. Each 
 is also complete in itself, and has no especial connection with 
 the other members of the series. The works are all written 
 by authors selected by the editor on account of some especial 
 qualifications for a portrayal of the period they respectively 
 describe. The volumes form an excellent collection, especially 
 adapted to the wants of ageneral reader." — CHARLES KENDALL 
 ADAMS, President of Cornell University. 
 
 "The ' Epochs of History ' seem to me to have been prepared with 
 knowledge and artistic skill to meet the wants of a large number 
 of readers. To the young they furnish an outline or compen- 
 dium which may serve as an introduction to more .extended 
 study. To those who are older they present a convenient sketch 
 of the heads of the knowledge which they have already acquired. 
 The outlines are by no means destitute of spirit, and may be 
 used with great profit for family reading, and in select classes 
 or reading c\uhs."— NOAH PORTER, President of Vale College. 
 
 " It appears to me that the idea of Morris in his Epochs is strictly 
 in harmony with the philosophy of history— namely, that 
 great movements should be treated not according to narrow 
 geographical and national limits and distinction, but uni- 
 versally, according to their place in the general life of the 
 world. The historical Maps and the copious Indices are 
 welcome additions to the volumes." — Bishop JOHN F. HURST, 
 Ex-President of Drczu ThcoLgical Seminary. 
 
 "The volumes contain the ripe results of the studies of men who 
 are authorities in their respective fields." — The Nation. 
 
 "To be appreciated they must be read in their entirety ; and we 
 do no more than simple justice in commending them earnestly 
 to the favor of the studious public." — The Nciu Vork Jl'orld. 
 
 The great success of the series is the best proof of its general 
 popularity, and the excellence of the various volumes is further 
 attested by their having been adopted as text-books in many of 
 our leading educational institutions, including Harvard, Cornell, 
 ■Wesleyan, Vermont, and Syracuse Universities ; Yale, Princeton, 
 Amherst, Dartmouth, Williams, Union, and Smith Colleges; and 
 many other colleges, academies, normal and high schools.
 
 EPOCHS OF MODERN HISTORY. 
 
 A SERIES OF BOOKS NARRATING THE HISTORY OF 
 
 ENGLAND AND EUROPE AT SUCCESSIVE EPOCHS 
 
 SUBSEQUENT TO THE CHRISTIAN ERA. 
 
 Edited by 
 
 Edward E. Morris. 
 
 Sixteen volumes, i6mo, with 70 Maps, Plans and Tables. 
 
 Sold separately. Price per vol., $1.00. 
 
 The Set, Roxburgh style, gilt top, in box, $16.00. 
 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE MIDDLE AGES— England and Europe 
 
 in the Ninth Century. By the Very Rev. R.W. Church, M.A. 
 THE NORMANS IN EUROPE— The Feudal System and England 
 
 under Norman Kings. By the Rev. A. H. Johnson, Si.A. 
 THE CRUSADES. By the Rev. G. W. Cox, M.A. 
 THE EARLY PLANTAGE NETS— Their Relation to the History 
 
 of Europe : The Foundation and Growth of Constitutional 
 
 Government. By the Rev. Wm. Stubbs, M.A. 
 EDWARD III. By the Rev. W. Warburton, M.A. 
 THE HOUSES OF LANCASTER AND YORK— The Conquest and 
 
 Loss of France. By James Gairdner. 
 THE ERA OF THE PROTESTANT REVOLUTION. By Frederic 
 
 Seebohm. With Notes on Books in English relating to the 
 
 Reformation. By Prof. George P. Fisher, D.D. 
 THE AGE OF ELIZABETH. By the Rev. M. Creighton, M.A. 
 THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR, 1618-1648. By Samuel Rawson 
 
 Gardiner. 
 THE PURITAN REVOLUTION; and the First Two Stuarts, 
 
 1603-1660. By Samuel Rawson Gardiner. 
 THE FALL OF THE STUARTS; and Western Europe. By the 
 
 Rev. Edward Hale, M.A. 
 THE AGE OF ANNE. By Edward E. Morris, M.A. 
 THE EARLY HANOVERIANS— Europe from the Peace of Utrech to 
 
 the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. By Edward E. Morris, M.A. 
 FREDERICK THE GREAT AND THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR. By 
 
 F. W. Longman. 
 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND FIRST EMPIRE. By 
 
 William O'Connor Morris. W^ith Appendix by Andrew 
 
 D. White, LL.D., Ex-Pres't of Cornell University. 
 THE EPOCH OF REFORM, 1830-1850. By Justin McCarthy. 
 
 These volumes, read consecutively, form the best history of 
 Modern Times,
 
 EPOCHS OF ANCIENT HISTORY. 
 
 A SEJi/ES OF BOOKS NARRATING THE HISTORY OF 
 
 GREECE AND ROME, AND OF THEIR RELATIONS TO 
 
 OTHER COUNTRIES AT SUCCESSIVE EPOCHS. 
 
 Edited by 
 
 Rev. G. W. Cox and Charles Sankey, M.A. 
 
 Eleven volumes, i6mo, with 41 Maps and Plans. 
 
 Sold separately. Price per vol., $1.00. 
 
 The Set, Roxburgh style, gilt top, in box, $11.00. 
 
 TROY— ITS LEGEND, HISTORY, AND LITERATURE. By 
 S. G. W. Benjamin. 
 
 THE GREEKS AND THE PERSIANS. By the Rev. G. W. Cox. 
 
 THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE— From the Flight of Xerxes to the 
 Fall of Athens. By the Rev. G. W. Cox. 
 
 THE SPARTAN AND THEBAN SUPREMACIES. By Charles 
 Sankey, M.A. 
 
 THE MACEDONIAN EMPIRE— Its Rise and Culmination to the 
 Death of Alexander the Great. By A. M. Curteis, M.A. 
 
 The five volumes above give a connected and complete histor) 
 of Greece from the earliest times to the death of Alexander. 
 
 EARLY ROME— From the Foundation of the City to its Destruc- 
 tion by the Gauls. By W. Ihne, Ph.D. 
 
 ROME AND CARTHAGE— The Punic Wars. By R. Bosworth 
 Smith, M.A. 
 
 THE GRACCHI, MARiUS, AND SULLA. By A. H. Beesly. M.A. 
 
 THE ROMAN TRIUMVIRATES. By the Very Rev. Charles 
 Merivale, D.D. 
 
 THE EARLY EMPIRE— From the Assassination of Julius Ccesar 
 to the Assassination of Domitian. By the Rev. W. Wolfe 
 Capes, M.A. , 
 
 THE AGE OF THE ANTON I NES— the Roman Empire of the 
 Second Century. By the Rev. W. Wolfe Capes, M.A. 
 
 The six volumes above give the History of Rome from the 
 founding of the City to the death of Marcus A melius Antoninus.
 
 PROF. G. P. FISHER'S WORKS. 
 
 THE GROUNDS OF THEISTIC AND CHRISTIAN 
 BELIEF. I vol., crown 8vo, $2.50. 
 
 The need of a new book on Evidences to replace the older treatises, which 
 do not meet the wants of the present time, is universally admitted. Prof. 
 Fisher possesses eminent qualifications for supplying thte need in hii thorough 
 knowledge of all the later thinking on the subject and an extensive acquaint- 
 ance with the arguments on both sides of the question, combined with a power 
 of condensation and a clear, attractive style. 
 
 Frovi a Letter of Julius H. Seelye, President of Amherst College. 
 " I find it as I should expect it to be, wise and candid, and convincing to 
 an honest mind. I congratulate you upon its publication, in which you seem 
 to me to have rendered a high public service." 
 
 From Prof. James O, Murray, of Princeton College, in the N. Y. Evangelist. 
 "The volume under review meets here a great want, and meets it well. 
 It is eminently fitted to meet the honest doubts of some of our best young men. 
 . . . . Its fairness and candor, its learning and ability in argument, its 
 thorough handling of wo(/!'r« objections — all these qualities fit it for such a 
 service, and a great service it is." 
 
 Frotn the Congregationalist. 
 "We hope that this treatise will be widely scattered and diligently studied. 
 It is wholly in the right direction. It is liberal without being loose, learned 
 without being dry, conclusive without being as-uming, and indicates its 
 author's place among the ablest writers of the day on Christian themes," 
 
 ESSAYS ON THE SUPERNATURAL ORIGIN OF 
 CHRISTIANITY, i vol., 8vo, new and enlarged edition, 
 
 I3.00. 
 
 From the North American Reznew. 
 "Able and scholarly essays on the Supernatural Origin of Christianity, 
 in which Prof. Fisher discusses such subjects as the genuineness of the Gospel 
 of John, Baur's view of early Christian History and Literature, and the mythi- 
 cal theory of Strauss." 
 
 From the Methodist Quarterly Review. 
 " The entire work is one of the noblest, most readable, most timely and 
 effective in our apologetic literature, which has appeared at the present day." 
 
 From the Ne^u York Tribune. 
 "The author seems equally at home in every department of his subject. 
 They are all treated with learning, with insight, with sense, and discrimina- 
 tion. His volume evinces rare versatility of intellect, with a scholarship no 
 less sound and judicious in its tone and extensive in its attainments than it is 
 modest in its pretensions." 
 
 From the British Quarterly Review. 
 "We know not where the student will find a more satisfactory guide in 
 relation to the great questions which have grown up between the friends of 
 the Christian revelation and the most able of its assailants, within the memory 
 of the present generation. . . . To all these topics the author has brought 
 a fullness of learning, a masculine discernment, and a sturdy impartiality 
 which we greatly admire."
 
 HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION. "A Popular 
 Manual for Instruction and Study." i vol., crown 8vo, new 
 and cheaper edition, $2.50. 
 
 From the Christian Union. 
 
 "The book is a remarkable instance of that power of lucid condensation 
 which its author possesses in a high degree. . . . Thequality ofcondensed- 
 ness renders it worthy to be studied, not merely read ; and it would be excel- 
 lent as a text book in college. The references are full and valu.ible, and the 
 chronological table and li>t of authorities will be appreciated by all students." 
 
 From Pro/. Charles A. Aiken, D.D., Princeton Tlieolcgical Seminary. 
 
 "Professor Fisher's History of t lie Reformation presents the results of 
 prolonged, extended, and e^act study, with those excellent qualities of style 
 which are s) characteristic of him — clearness, smoothness, judicial fairness, 
 vividness, felicity in arranging material, as well as in grouping and delineating 
 characters. It must become not only a library favorite, but a popular 
 manual, where such a work is required for instruction and study. Fur such 
 uses it seems to me admirably adapted." 
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OF CHRISTIANITY. With a 
 view of the state of the Roman World at the Birth of Christ. 
 I vol., 8vo, $3.00. 
 
 From the Boston Advertiser. 
 " Prof. Fisher has displayed in this, as in his previous published writings, 
 that catholicity and that calm judicial quality of mind which are so indispens- 
 able to a true historical critic." 
 
 From the Examiner. 
 "The volume is not a dry repetition of well-known facts. It bears the 
 marks of original research. Every page glows with freshness of material and 
 choiceness of diction." 
 
 From the Evangelist. 
 " The volume contains an amount of information that makes it one of the 
 most useful of treatises for a student in philosophy and theology, and must 
 secure for it a place in his library as a standard authority." 
 
 DISCUSSIONS IN HISTORY AND THEOLOGY. 
 
 I vol.. 8vo, $3.00. 
 
 " Prof Fisher has gathered here a number of essays on subjects connected 
 with these departments of study and research which have engaged his special 
 attention, and in which he has made himself an authority. 
 
 FAITH AND RATIONALISM, i vol., i2mo, new and 
 cheaper edition, 75 cents. 
 
 From the New 1 "ork Times. 
 "This little volume may be regarded as virtually a primer of modem 
 religious thought, which contains within its condensed pages rich materials 
 that are not easily gathered from the great volumes of our theological authors." 
 From the Presbyterian. 
 "The author deals with many of the questions of the day, and does so with 
 a freshness and completeness quite admirable and attractive." 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. i vol., i6mo, cloth, 
 50 cents net. 
 "This masterly essay of Prof. Fisher is one of the best arguments for 
 Christianity that could be placed in the hands of those who have come under 
 the influence of sceptical writers."
 
 BOOKS AND READING. A new edition. By Noah 
 
 Porter, LL.D., President of Yale College. With an appendix 
 
 giving valuable directions for courses of reading, prepared by 
 
 James M. Hubbard, late of the Boston Public Library, i vol., 
 
 crown 8vo, $2.00. 
 
 It would be difficult to name any American better qualified than President 
 Porter to give advice upon the important question of " What to Read and Kow 
 to Read." His acquaintance with the whole range of English literature is most 
 thorough and exact, and his judgments are eminently candid and mature. A 
 safer guide — in short, in all literary matters — it would be impossible to find. 
 
 " The great value of the book lies not in prescribing courses of reading, 
 but in a discussion of principles, which lie at the foundation of all valuable 
 systematic reading." — The Christian Stafidard. 
 
 " Young people who wish to know what to read and how to read it, or how 
 to pursue a particular course of reading, cannot do better than begin with this 
 book, which is a practical guide to the whole domain of literature, and is full of 
 wise suggestions for the improvement of the mind." — Philadelphia Bulletitt. 
 
 " President Porter himself treats of all the leading departments of litera- 
 ture of course with abundant knowledge, and with what is of equal importance 
 to him, with a very definite and serious purpose to be of service to inexperi- 
 enced readers. There is no better or more interesting book of its kind now 
 wi thin their reach,"— .5oj^c« Advertiser. 
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 ELEMENTS OF INTELLECTUAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 A Manual for Schools and Colleges. Abridged from "The 
 
 Human Intellect." i vol., 8vo, $3.00. 
 
 This work is used as a text book in Yale, Dartmouth, Eowdoin, Oberlin, 
 Bates, Hamilton, Vassar, and Smith Colleges ; Wesleyan, Ohio, Lehigh, and 
 Wooster Universities, and many other colleges, academies, normal and high 
 schools. 
 
 ELEMENTS OF MORAL SCIENCE, Theoretical and 
 Practical, i vol., Svo, $3.00. 
 
 From George S. JMorris, Professor of Ethics, University of Michigan. 
 
 "I have read the work with great interest, and parts of it with enthusiasm. 
 It is a vast improvement on any of the current text books of ethics. It is tole- 
 rant and catholic m tone ; not superficial!}-, but soundly, inductive in method 
 and tendency, and rich in that kind of practical suggestion by which, even 
 more than by the formal statement of rules, the formation of character is 
 capable of being determined." 
 
 From E. G. Robinson, President of Brown University . 
 " It has all the distinguishing marks of the author's work on ' The Human 
 Intellect,' is full and comprehensive in its treatment, dealing largely with 
 current discussions, and very naturally follows it as a text book for the 
 class room."
 
 AN OUTLINE STUDY OF MAN ; or, the Body 
 and Mind in One System. \\ itli illustrative diagrams. 
 By Mark. Hopkins, D.D., LL.D., late President of Williams 
 College. I vol., i2mo, $1.75. 
 
 Few colleges owe so much to the influence of a single man as 
 the institution, with which Dr. Hopkins has so long been identi- 
 fied, owes to his genius for instruction and to the weight of his 
 character. His power of making abstuse and dillicult matters 
 clear and easily mastered, of interesting and stimulating his pupils 
 and of impressing them with his own lofty views, have given 
 him an almost unique position as an educator. 
 
 Among all his works, that which illustrates best his peculiar 
 lucid mode of teaching difficult subjects is An Outline Study of 
 Man, which is a model of the developing method as applied to 
 intellectual science The work is on an eniirely new plan. It 
 presents man in his unity, and his several faculties and their rela- 
 tions are so presented to the eye in illustrative diagrams as to be 
 readily apprehended. 
 
 Dr. Hopkins' work has come into more general use in this 
 country than any other book designed for instmction in mental 
 science. It has been found to be better adapted for educational 
 uses than any other, and the demand for it is increasing every year. 
 
 THE LAW OF LOVE, AND LOVE AS A LAW; 
 or, Christian Ethics, i vol., i2mo, $1.75. 
 
 This work is designed to follow the author's Outline Stiidv of 
 Man. As its title indicates it is entirely an exposition of the 
 cardinal precept of Christian philosophy in harmony with nature 
 and on the basis of reason. 
 
 Like the treatise on mental philosophy it is adapted with un- 
 usual skill to educational uses. 
 
 It appears in a new edition, which has been in part rewritten 
 in order to bring it into closer relation to his Outline Study of 
 Man, of which work it is really a continuation. More prominence 
 has been given to the idea of Rights, but the fundamental doctrines 
 of the treatise have not been changed. The very interesting cor- 
 respondence with Dr. AlcCosh is retained. 
 
 From an able review of the work on its first appearance we 
 quote the following : 
 
 "In this work Dr. Hopkins has given the world a clear expo=;ition of the 
 principles of moral science, and practical rules for their application. The sim- 
 plicity, strength, and exactness of its style and language; its discriminating 
 analysis and forcible logic; its accurate adjustments of relative truths; its 
 admirable blending of the independence of human reason with dependence 
 upon the Divine mind ; — in all these respects we have no hesitation in saying that 
 its combined excellences place the work at the head of all similar treatise's."
 
 A Vade Mecum for Young Men and Students. 
 
 ON SELF-CULTURE; 
 
 INTELLECTUAL, PHYSICAL, AND MORAL. 
 
 By JOHN STUART BLACKIE, 
 
 PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN THE UNIVEISIFY OF EDINBURGH, AND AUTHOR OF 
 " FOUR PHASES OF MORALS," ETC. 
 
 One Volume, 16mo, cloth, $1.00. 
 
 From the New } 'ork Evening' Post. 
 "The reader himself must go to this little volume. It is full of excellent 
 sense and fine suggestion. The style is forcible, simple, and elegant; the 
 thought clear and scholarly ; of the high moral quality of the book we have 
 said enough, ' 
 
 From the Boston Transcript. 
 
 '■ Prof. Blackie's little book is so full of strong Scotch common-sense and 
 of judicious counsel in regard to the aims, studies, and habits of young men, 
 that it ought to find its way to the library, and to the head and heart of every 
 young man — and young woman, too — in all English-speaking countries," 
 
 Frotn the Churchman. 
 "The volume is one which every young man ought to read. It sets forth, 
 in a way which no recent writer has equaled, the relations between intel- 
 lectual, physical, and moral culture, and will truly serve as a most valuable 
 vade mecum," 
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 WHAT DOES HISTORY TEACH ? 
 
 One Volume, 16mo, cloth, 7S cents. 
 
 Frotn the Hartford Courant. 
 "It is a small volume, but one packed with treasure, as, indeed, a book 
 written by John Stuart Blackie, of Edinburgh, is likely to be. . . . We can 
 only indicate the value of this bright, Ijrave, inspiring volume, and heartily 
 commend it to our readers." 
 
 From the Illustrated Christian Weekly. 
 " It will repay repeated perusal and is a book to own." 
 
 From the Fartn, Field and Stock-man, Chicago. 
 " We can imagine nothing better for a Teachers' Reading Circle, or for 
 any social reading club, than this little book." 
 
 These hooks are for sale by all booksellers , or "will be sent, prepaid, on 
 receipt of price by the publishers. 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, 
 
 '743 AND T45 BROA.D\?VA.Y, = ISIEW YORK.
 
 This booR is DUE on the last 
 date stamped below 
 
 WOV 2 8 194^ 
 FEB 2 3 194» 
 
 DE:C2 71958 
 
 uiffiriiRsiTi cf tal^fornia 
 
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 LOS ANGELES
 
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