^^ 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 MRS. MARY WOLFSOHN 
 
 IN MEMORY OF 
 
 HENRY WOLFSOHN 
 
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 DE WITT & SNELLINC 
 
 BOOKSELLERS 
 
 I TELEGRAPH AVE OAKLAND. CAL 
 
A REASONABLE FAITH. 
 
A SEASONABLE FAITH 
 
 PLAIN SERMONS ON FAMILIAR 
 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 
 
 ARTHUR CROSBY 
 
 PASTOR OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH OF SAN RAFAEL, 
 CALIFORNIA. 
 
 x 
 
 OF THF \ 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 SAN RAFAEL, CAL. 
 MARIN JOURNAL PRINTING HOUSE 
 
 1889 
 
Coptti'Hjtit, 1888, 
 ARTHUR CROSBY. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 158787 
 
IN California, skepticism among 
 respectable people is much ^ more 
 outspoken than in the Eastern States. 
 
 Good men, whose families are in 
 the church, excellent citizens and 
 neighbors, do not hesitate to express 
 with utmost candor their unbelief 
 in revealed religion. There is very 
 little conventional, or merely formal 
 Christianity here, for there is almost 
 no temptation for a man to conceal 
 his real sentiments if he be an unbe- 
 liever. 
 
 It is just about as respectable to 
 play lawn tennis, or to go duck- 
 shooting of a Sunday morning, as to 
 go to church. This practical irre- 
 ligion is generally either the efficient 
 cause or the immediate result of the 
 prevailing skepticism; so that, as a 
 rule, the line is sharply drawn 
 between believers and unbelievers. 
 
viii PREFACE. 
 
 The frankness of those who deny 
 the truth of Christianity, although 
 rather startling at first to one accus- 
 tomed to the greater reserve of 
 Eastern unbelief, is not without its 
 advantages both to the unbeliever 
 himself and to the preacher of the 
 gospel. The unbeliever forms the 
 habit of consistency of acting as 
 he thinks; so that if he can be 
 brought to think rightly, he is much 
 more likely at once to rectify his 
 conduct. The change in his views 
 will be marked by a definite change 
 in his life. 
 
 The preacher has this advantage, 
 that he know r s what he has to deal 
 with, and can be outspoken and 
 aggressive. The strongholds he must 
 assail are not masked batteries. The 
 guns of the enemy are in full sight. 
 He will, moreover, very soon dis- 
 cover the fact that the prevalent 
 unbelief is, for the most part, neither 
 very profound nor very obdurate, and 
 to meet it and counteract its influ- 
 
PREFACE. ix 
 
 ence, he will find a plain restatement 
 of familiar evidences the most effec- 
 tive method. 
 
 Unfortunately, however, the peo- 
 ple whom he most desires to reach 
 are seldom in church and, in all 
 probability, will not hear the ser- 
 mons which he has prepared for their 
 especial benefit. 
 
 It is in the hope of meeting, in 
 some measure, this difficulty in my 
 own parish that I risk the publica- 
 tion of these sermons. Perhaps there 
 are some who will read them, who 
 would not come to church and hear 
 them preached. I also venture to 
 hope that they may in some slight 
 degree supply a need in other places. 
 This hope is not based upon any 
 originality in the arguments; cer- 
 lainly not upon any brilliancy of 
 treatment. The arguments are old, 
 and, to those who have given atten- 
 tion to such matters, familiar. The 
 method of treatment and the style 
 of composition are commonplace. 
 
x PREFACE. 
 
 Perhaps therefore the usefulness of 
 the book will be greater. 
 
 What most people need for th 
 confirmation of their faith is not 
 something new, not something bril- 
 liant. They simply need to have set 
 before them in unpretentious lan- 
 guage the old, well-established argu- 
 ments for the truth of the Bible and 
 for the Divinity of Christ. And to 
 do this has been my aim in these 
 plain sermons. 
 
 It will be seen at once that their 
 purpose is not to answer the more 
 profound metaphysical and scientific 
 objections to Christianity. These are 
 fully answered in the many learned 
 treatises of eminent theologians and 
 philosophers. But for the most part, 
 the works of Christian apologists are 
 too deep, and require too much learn- 
 ing on the part of the reader to be 
 read by busy people of ordinary edu- 
 cation. 
 
 My intention, in this volume, has 
 been to group together, and to state 
 
PREFACE. xi 
 
 in the simplest and most direct Eng- 
 lish, some of those evidences which 
 have stood the test of time, which 
 have never been answered simply 
 because they are unanswerable. The 
 last two sermons those on Sin and 
 on Regeneration are intended to 
 .show the practical effects which 
 should result from a conviction of 
 the truth of revealed religion. They 
 are intended to lead those who intel- 
 lectually believe to that personal 
 repentance and that heart faith, with- 
 out which mere belief is of no avail. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 I. No MYSTERY No FAITH 1 
 
 II. A MESSAGE FROM HEAVEN 23 
 
 III. THE EVERLASTING KINGDOM 47 
 
 IV. WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST ? 67 
 
 V. THE THREE WITNESSES 93 
 
 VI. THE EXPERIMENTAL PROOF 123 
 
 Vil. SIN 145 
 
 VIE[. REGENERATION 107 
 
I. 
 
 No Mystery No Faith. 
 
or THE 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 I. 
 
 ISAIAH xlv, 15. " Verily thou art a God that hidest 
 thyself." 
 
 OUR whole existence in this world 
 is involved in mystery. The wisest 
 and most learned of men are pro- 
 foundly ignorant of many things 
 which come nearest to us. Our 
 birth, our life, our death, our bodies, 
 our minds, our feelings, our nourish- 
 ment, our growth, our decay, our 
 material and spiritual environment 
 are all deep, unfathomable myster- 
 ies. Scientific men explore and 
 investigate. Philosophers reason. 
 Theories are propounded. Systems 
 are constructed, and wise men an- 
 nounce their discoveries and their 
 conclusions to an admiring world. 
 And what does it all amount to? 
 Isaac Newton, the greatest, the wis- 
 
4 NO MYSTERY NO FAITH. 
 
 est, as well as the most humble or 
 them all, declared that he was bat a 
 little child picking up pebbles on the 
 shore of an infinite ocean. We must 
 confess that all we know of nature 
 and of life the whole sum of human 
 knowledge, is as nothing compared 
 with what we do not and cannot 
 know. 
 
 In whatever direction we turn our 
 curious investigations, we soon come 
 to an impassable barrier, beyond 
 which it is useless for us to try to 
 penetrate. For instance, suppose 
 that like Solomon we desire to know 
 all about the plants and the trees 
 from the hyssop that is upon the 
 wall, to the cedar that glorifies the 
 slopes of Mt. Lebanon we proceed 
 to study with careful industry the 
 peculiarities of form, of color, of 
 growth of many thousand specimens. 
 Then we classify and arrange them. 
 We give them names and place each 
 one in its proper order. We discover 
 certain laws of development, and by 
 
NO MYSTERY- NO FAITH. 5 
 
 fulfilling certain ascertained condi- 
 tions we can even control to some 
 extent the form and color of the 
 plant. But who knows what the 
 life is which underlies all this? Who 
 has discovered the hidden principle 
 contained in the seed? Who can tell 
 how it is that sun and rain and earth 
 combine with that mysterious germ 
 to produce the green herb, or the 
 flower of the field, or the stately 
 forest tree? Who has succeeded in 
 making, by art and man's device, 
 even the most insignificant growing 
 plant? Here we have reached the 
 barrier, and beyond this limit the 
 youngest infant is as wise as Solo- 
 mon himself. 
 
 So again the anatomist and phys- 
 iologist have examined the human 
 frame with minute and patient atten- 
 tion, and all the strange and compli- 
 cated machinery of our bodies, by 
 which we move and walk and eat 
 and sleep all the wonderfully har- 
 monious relations and interdepend- 
 
6 iVO MYSTERYNO FAITH. 
 
 encies of these useful organs and 
 members are, or we may believe will 
 be known and described, but here 
 again the limit is reached. The liv- 
 ing soul, the thinking mind, the sad 
 or joyful emotion of the heart, the 
 action of the will upon brain and 
 nerve arid sinew, all these, which 
 are the very essentials of man, are 
 mysteries about which the most 
 learned and ingenious can tell us no 
 more than the most ignorant and 
 foolish of men. 
 
 The truth is, that on overy side of 
 us above, below, within, without 
 us in the air we breathe, in the 
 food we eat, in the thoughts we 
 think in the whole course of life, 
 and in the w^hole sphere of nature, 
 God is present, working out the 
 wonders of his will; and hence mys- 
 teries abound, and human intellect 
 is baffled, and human curiosity is 
 rebuked, and human pride is hum- 
 bled. 
 
 The finite cannot grasp the infin- 
 
NO MYSTERY NO FAITH. 7 
 
 ite, and with all our boasted progress 
 we have only learned the first letters 
 of an alphabet, the literature of 
 which fills the universe to its remot- 
 est bound we have but touched the 
 outer hem of the garment with which 
 God is clothed. 
 
 Thus, whichever way we turn in 
 search of truth, we are soon con- 
 fronted by questions which no human 
 wisdom can solve, and which baffle 
 the most careful and painstaking 
 investigation. 
 
 Now since this is so; since in the 
 structure of our own bodies and 
 minds since in all our relations 
 with the material world there is so 
 much that is mysterious and inexpli- 
 cable it would be strange indeed if 
 in our relations with our Creator 
 everything were plain and simple 
 and easily understood by our finite 
 intelligence. 
 
 While the sciences of nature and 
 of man the sciences of things vis- 
 ible and tangible are limited and 
 
8 NO MYSTERY NO FAITH. 
 
 imperfect, by reason of the limita- 
 tion of our powers, we may certainly 
 expect that religion, the science of 
 the supernatural, the science of God, 
 of the invisible and spiritual, will 
 be compassed with difficulties alto- 
 gether insurmountable by human 
 reason. We may expect to meet with 
 facts which we cannot explain, and 
 which we cannot harmonize in any 
 exact system of thought, or even ex- 
 press in any logical formula of words 
 and phrases. Even with all the light 
 which revelation sheds upon our spir 
 itual conditions and our relations 
 with God with all the illuminating 
 and guiding influences of the Holy 
 Spirit, with all the instruction af- 
 forded by the Christian experience 
 of many generations there is yet 
 much, very much, of which we are 
 left in utter ignorance. There are 
 many high mysteries which are far 
 above our comprehension, and which 
 we cannot by any means reduce 
 within the scope of finite reasoning. 
 
NO MYSTERY NO FAITH. & 
 
 The alchemists of the middle ages 
 devoted their lives to the discovery 
 of the philosopher's stone, which 
 should transmute the baser metals 
 into gold. The modern scientific 
 man, who imagines that he can pen- 
 etrate nature's secret of the source 
 and origin of life, is the victim of an 
 infatuation quite as irrational. And 
 equally foolish and futile is the labor 
 of those who would explain in the 
 terms of exact science the mysteries 
 of the Divine Being, or construct a 
 logical and consistent system which 
 shall include all the facts regarding 
 sin and salvation. 
 
 No doubt the studies a nd researches 
 of the theologians have great value- 
 so long as they have for their object 
 the clearer knowledge of the word 
 of God; the more vivid illustration 
 of Christian truth; the more impres- 
 sive arrangement of the facts of 
 religion; the more appropriate de- 
 fense of the doctrines of the Bible. 
 But when they go beyond all thi& 
 
10 NO MYSTERY NO FAITH. 
 
 and attempt to set forth a complete 
 system of doctrine, and claim for it 
 logical consistency throughout, and 
 the authority of absolute truth; 
 when they attempt to formulate divine 
 revelation and pretend to cover the 
 whole ground of theoretical religion 
 with their definitions and statements, 
 then they are going beyond their 
 proper work, and the result is con- 
 fusion and contradiction. 
 
 Take for example the Calvinistic 
 system of theology, as set forth in the 
 Doctrinal Standards of the Presby- 
 terian Church, probably the most log- 
 ical and consistent ever constructed. 
 Their statements, for the most part, 
 express revealed truth in clear and 
 precise terms, but after all they do 
 not, strictly speaking, present a sys- 
 tem. It is not a perfect and har- 
 monious whole, and the effort to force 
 dogmas, which are true, into logical 
 agreement within the range of human 
 reasoning, has resulted in some state- 
 ments which are both unscriptural 
 
NO MYSTERY NO FAITH. II 
 
 and absurd. No doubt, however, 
 systematic theology has its place and 
 its use, when too much is not claimed 
 for it; but we must be careful to 
 acknowledge and emphasize the fact 
 that there are many things about 
 God and religion that we do not know 
 and need not expect to know this 
 side the grave. "Verily thou art a 
 God that hidest thyself." 
 
 Now there are many who are 
 checked in their approach to Chris- 
 tianity by this fact of mystery, this 
 unsearchablenees of God and divine 
 truth. They want to know all about 
 God before they will believe on Him. 
 They demand that all difficulties shall 
 be removed and all mysteries solved 
 before they will accept Christ as their 
 Savior or take the precepts of the 
 gospel as their guide in life. When 
 you point them to the Lord Jesus 
 Christ as the redeemer of the world, 
 and urge them to believe on Him and 
 be saved they ask you to reconcile 
 God's sovereignty and man's free 
 
12 NO MYSTERY NO FAITH. 
 
 "will; or else they enter upon a dis- 
 cussion of the origin of evil, or of 
 eternal punishment, or of the nature 
 of the Trinity, or of the atonement, 
 or of the incarnation and they re- 
 fuse to go a step toward Christ, in 
 practical trust and love, until these 
 vast and mysterious questions are 
 settled. 
 
 But surely this is not wise; it is 
 not reasonable. You do not and 
 could not take up such a position in 
 regard to other matters. There are 
 mysteries everywhere, and to be con- 
 sistent you should also refuse to 
 think, until it is settled by the scien- 
 tific authorities just what thought is, 
 and whether it is the cause or the 
 effect of cerebral motion. And you 
 should refuse to eat your daily bread, 
 until you are informed how it is that 
 the planted seed breaks forth into 
 new life and produces, "first the 
 blade, then the ear, after that the 
 lull ?orn in the ear." 
 
 What Christ asks of you is that 
 
.0 MYSTERY NO FAITH. 1 
 
 you should believe on Him as your 
 personal Lord and deliverer as one 
 who is able and willing to save you 
 from the grasp of your own sin, and 
 from all its evil consequences. He 
 wants you to trust his friendship, 
 and to leave all your highest inter- 
 ests in his care and keeping. And 
 all these puzzling philosophical and 
 theological questions are of second- 
 ary importance. If you can arrive 
 at a satisfactory belief concerning 
 them, well and good; but if not, then 
 learn to hold them in abeyance and 
 wait patiently until the Holy Spirit 
 shall lead you into all truth. Mean- 
 while it is enough if you trust Christ 
 as your Savior, and try to do his 
 will. What I urge is this Look at 
 the Lord Jesus, study his life in the 
 gospels, examine his character, note 
 his spirit, become familiar with the 
 principles of his teaching, and see- 
 ing believe! Believe on Him per- 
 sonally. Never mind the intricacies 
 of theology. Never mind what is. 
 
14 NO MYSTERY NO FAITH. 
 
 hidden and mysterious . Just believe 
 on Jesus Christ. If you really desire 
 to find the truth, you certainly cannot 
 fail to recognize that truth which 
 shines in His life and teachings, there- 
 fore unite yourself to Him; surren- 
 der yourself to His control; adopt 
 His principles and follow His guid- 
 ance. This is the kind of faith which 
 the gospel demands. This is what 
 is meant by receiving the Kingdom 
 of Heaven as a little child. Lay 
 aside the pride of intellect. Do not 
 stop to reason out the how and the 
 why of every question. Do not wait 
 to solve every mystery, but simply 
 cling to Jesus with the trust and love 
 of the heart, and that, because he is 
 so evidently worthy of trust and love. 
 Thus only can we be saved, and thus 
 only can we come to an assured con- 
 viction of the higher truths of Rev- 
 elation. 
 
 Let a man walk in the light so far 
 as it shines for him, and it will shine 
 more and more unto the perfect day. 
 
NO MYSTERY NO FAITH. 15 
 
 Let him live up to what he does 
 know and his knowledge will surely 
 increase. As Christ says, "If any 
 man will do His will, he shall know 
 of the doctrine." 
 
 And besides, as a matter of fact, 
 the principal difficulties at which 
 men stumble, and which they urge 
 as objections to Christianity, are not 
 at all peculiar to Christianity. If 
 you deny Christianity, if you destroy 
 the Bible, if you give up all faith in 
 a personal God, the same puzzling 
 questions remain unanswered. You 
 are no nearer to a solution of the 
 mystery, arid you have lost all ground 
 and reason for the exercise of faith. 
 
 For example, men object to the 
 doctrine of predestination; they say 
 that it interferes with our free choice, 
 and that they do not see how there 
 can be any justice in punishing men 
 for anything, if all their circumstan- 
 ces and all their acts are predestined 
 by the Creator, so that they cannot 
 help themselves. They refuse to 
 
16 NO MYSTERY NO FAITH. 
 
 accept a religion which contains so 
 glaring a contradiction. But, if you 
 think of it, this difficulty is not made 
 by the Bible, nor by Christianity. It 
 belongs to the very nature of things, 
 and cannot be got rid of. It puzzled 
 the ancient heathen philosophers of 
 Greece and Eome, and the shrewdest 
 of modern scientific skeptics has no 
 key to unlock the mystery. If you 
 say there is no God; if you refer all 
 existence and all events to an endless 
 chain of cause and effect, making all 
 the activities of man and of nature 
 but the result of eternal law, you 
 still have predestination, though now 
 it is the predestination of an imper- 
 sonal, blind, immoral fate, instead of 
 the righteous and intelligent order- 
 ing of a personal creator. And you 
 still have the punishment of sin, in 
 the degradation and misery which 
 follow evil-doing though you may 
 choose to call it by a different name. 
 So true is it that God's judgments 
 are unsearchable, and his ways past 
 
NO MYSTERY NO FAITH. 17 
 
 finding out. How foolish then it is 
 for us to shut our eyes to the light 
 which He has graciously given us in 
 His word % and to reject the truth 
 which we might possess, because we 
 may not know everything because 
 we are not all at once admitted into 
 all the secrets of creation and of 
 Providence. 
 
 Our subject has also a practical 
 application to those of us who are 
 Christians- who have accepted the 
 essentials of religion have taken 
 the Bible for our guide and are try- 
 ing to live according to the truth as 
 it is in Jesus. Some of us are per- 
 haps tempted to speculate too much 
 about the hidden things of God and 
 so to darken our minds and neglect 
 the plain and simple duties of Chris- 
 tianity. 
 
 No doubt there are truths revealed 
 in God's word which can only be 
 discovered and understood by long 
 study and patient investigation, and, 
 it may be, much discussion; but you 
 
18 XO MYSTERY NO FAITH. 
 
 and I, who necessarily have our time 
 and our thoughts so largely filled 
 with the practical duties of every 
 day life in the busy world; you and 
 I, who are comparatively ignorant 
 and unlearned, are not called upon 
 to engage in this work. This search- 
 ing out and discussion of the deep 
 things of Scripture are to be done by 
 men especially fitted for it men 
 whose education, and training, and 
 circumstances, and intellectual char- 
 acteristics are calculated to make 
 them wise and skillful and able to 
 discriminate between philosophical 
 truth and error. And then w^e can 
 take their conclusions and test them 
 by the word of God, and accept or 
 reject them, or hold them in doubt 
 with w^hat intelligence we may pos- 
 sess. 
 
 And in this limitation of our abil- 
 ity to understand, or even to form 
 independent opinions, concerning 
 many things in Scripture, there is 
 no hardship, nothing against the 
 
NO M&&AlTH. 19 
 
 simplicity of religion. All the essen- 
 tial truths of Christianity, all the 
 doctrines which we need for our 
 guidance in the ordinary affairs of 
 life, are written plainly here, so that 
 the wayfaring man, though a fool, 
 need not err therein. And whatever 
 is not thus clear and plain on- the 
 face of Scripture, whatever high and 
 mysterious things may be found by 
 careful searching here, we can afford 
 to differ about, without bitterness. 
 Or, even if we form no definite and 
 positive opinion concerning them, I 
 suppose that wo shall not endanger 
 our souls. It would be pleasant, no 
 doubt, to have all these questions 
 cleared up, once for all, but there is 
 something far more important for us 
 to strive after than the solution of 
 theological puzzles "Yet show I 
 unto you a more excellent way, * 
 though I understand all mys- 
 teries and all knowledge, and have 
 not love, I am nothing." "Follow 
 after love." 
 
20 NO MYSTERY NO FAITH. 
 
 In conclusion, as the sum of the 
 whole matter, let us all be more 
 modest in our opinions of God and 
 of religion, not given to profane and 
 vain babblings, which increase to 
 more ungodliness, but in all humility 
 remember that we are weak and fal- 
 lible in judgment, and that our pow- 
 ers of discernment are extremely 
 limited. There are many things 
 which we do not know, and are not 
 likely to know until death has opened 
 wider the gates of knowledge for us. 
 
 But, blessed be God, there are 
 some glorious things which we do 
 know " We know that all things 
 work together for good to them that 
 love God" so that we need not be 
 greatly disturbed by any of the vicis- 
 situdes of life; and *'We know that 
 if the earthly house of our tabernacle 
 be dissolved, we have a building from 
 God, a house not made with hands, 
 eternal, in the heavens" so that we 
 need fear no disaster in the approach 
 of death. And " We know that when 
 
NO MYSTERY NO FAITH. 21 
 
 He shall appear, we shall be like 
 Him, for we shall see Him as He is" 
 so that a glorious and sinless fu- 
 ture is in store for us. And then, 
 as inclusive of all joy and peace, as 
 containing everything that our hearts 
 could desire. "We are persuaded that 
 neither death, nor life, nor angels, 
 nor principalities, nor powers, nor 
 things present, nor things to come, 
 nor_ height, nor depth, nor any other 
 creature shall be able to separate us 
 from the love of God which is in 
 Christ Jesus our Lord." 
 
 Having all these certainties, rejoic- 
 ing in the possession of these price- 
 less truths, surely we can be content 
 to wait until our powers are devel- 
 oped in a better world, until the light 
 of God's presence shall fill us with 
 spiritual illumination we can wait 
 God's own time, to be led into all 
 truth, and to know even as we are 
 known. 
 
II. 
 
 A Message from Heaven. 
 
II. 
 
 PSALM cxix, 105. " Thy Word is a lamp unto my 
 feet and a light unto my path." 
 
 IN attempting to answer the ques- 
 tion, Is the Bible a Message from 
 Heaven? I shall assume the existence 
 of God and the immortality of the 
 soul. I take for granted that there 
 is a Supreme Being, all powerful, all 
 wise, who made the heavens and the 
 earth, who upholds and governs the 
 universe, and that what we call 
 Nature and the Laws of Nature are 
 God's methods of working out His 
 will through and upon His creatures. 
 
 And I take for granted, that man 
 is immortal, that he has an invisible, 
 undying soul, and that he was made 
 to know and love and serve his 
 Maker. His true, ideal life can only 
 be developed through intercourse 
 
26 A MESSAGE FROM HEAVEN. 
 
 and communion with God. The 
 things which begin, continue and 
 end within the brief period of his 
 existence on the earth things which 
 belong to his body and bodily com- 
 fort cannot meet the wants of his 
 higher nature or satisfy the longings 
 and aspirations of his soul. God 
 and truth and love, , things unseen 
 and eternal, can alone supply his 
 deepest needs. As Jesus said, "Man 
 shall not live by bread alone, but by 
 every word that proceedeth out of 
 the mouth of God." 
 
 To those who deny these funda- 
 mental truths, the following argu- 
 ment has no force or value. If, how 
 ever, we do believe in a personal God 
 and in our own immortality, then, 
 indeed, it is no difficult matter to 
 show that our faith in the Bible as a 
 message from Heaven is a Keason- 
 able Faith. 
 
 For the sake of convenience, let 
 us divide the subject in this way- 
 first, Has God given a supernatural 
 
A MESSAGE FROM HEAVEN. 27 
 
 revelation to men? and, secondly, If 
 He has done so, is the Bible that 
 divine, supernatural revelation? Let 
 us take up these questions sepa- 
 rately: And, first, Has God given 
 man a supernatural revelation of 
 Himself and His will? I answer 
 that the need for such a revelation 
 would seem to indicate that it would 
 be given. If it be true that men can 
 only reach their true destiny by 
 knowing God and doing His will, 
 how necessary it is that God should 
 in some way make Himself and His 
 will known to us? 
 
 If we turn to nature for light and 
 instruction, we can indeed learn 
 much of the power and wisdom of 
 the Creator. "The heavens declare 
 the glory of God, and tho firmament 
 showeth His handiwork," but of love 
 and mercy, of righteousness and 
 duty, nature teaches us little or 
 nothing. When, we question her in 
 regard to these things; when we 
 inquire concerning the disposition 
 
28 A MESSAGE FROM HEAVEN. 
 
 of the Almighty toward us; when 
 we seek information about our rela- 
 tions to Him, and the duty He re- 
 quires of us, the answers which 
 nature gives are confused and enig- 
 matical, like the answers of the old 
 heathen oracles, which might mean 
 one thing or the opposite thing, ac- 
 cording to the wishes and prejudices 
 of the questioner. 
 
 Do you ask nature whether God 
 regards us with love, or hatred, or 
 indifference? As you gaze with ad- 
 miration upon the full -laden yellow 
 wheat, bending gracefully in the 
 summer breeze, or yielding its rich 
 store to the husbandman; or, as you 
 watch the silent, changeful beauty 
 of earth and sky, when the sun is 
 going down beyond distant hills ; or, 
 as you think of fragrant flowers, and 
 luscious fruits, and abundant har- 
 vests of all the beautiful and benefi- 
 cent things which nature provides 
 then indeed it does seem as if she 
 proclaimed with clear voice, in un- 
 
A MESSAGE FROM HEAVEN. 29- 
 
 mistakable tones, the great truth 
 that God is Love. 
 
 But now, when we turn from these 
 suggestions of peace and comfort; 
 when we regard the loathsome ver- 
 min, the poisonous reptile, the fierce 
 wild beast; when we look upon na- 
 ture in her wild, destructive moods 
 in the tempest, driving the mariner 
 upon a rocky coast; in the earth- 
 quake, destroying man and his works ; 
 in the avalanche, sweeping away 
 without mercy whole villages of 
 Alpine peasants; or when we think 
 of what nature can do in her times 
 of bitterness and hard cruelty when 
 the pestilence desolates the happiest 
 homes; or when the heavens with- 
 hold the early and the latter rains, 
 and the husbandman's toil is of no 
 avail, and the earth refuses to bring 
 forth her increase and famine comes 
 among the people then nature ap- 
 pears to contradict herself, and we 
 read upon her stern countenance 
 nothing of our Maker's love; but as 
 
30 A MESSAGE FROM HEAVEN. 
 
 she frowns upon us, she seems to 
 utter the awful message God is 
 hate. 
 
 So, again, if we inquire of nature 
 whether God is just and righteous in 
 his judgments, the answer is con- 
 fused, uncertain, contradictory to 
 our ears. We see indeed, oftentimes, 
 the working out of evil consequences 
 to those who sin; and we see certain 
 virtues rewarded with health and 
 plenty; but again we look, and be- 
 hold the innocent are suffering with 
 the guilty, or the wicked are pros- 
 pering in the world, while the good 
 man is in misery and want. 
 
 But if external nature gives us no 
 clear rule of life, no definite infor- 
 mation of God and of His dealings 
 with us, may we not learn all that is 
 needful for us to know from the light 
 of reason, and the law written within 
 on the heart and conscience? 
 
 No doubt much is given here; God 
 has placed a witness of Himself in 
 every breast. There /.s a law written 
 
A MESSAGE FROM HEAVEN. 31 
 
 on the heart. The conscience is a 
 divine voice the thoughts do accuse 
 or else excuse each other. Ideas of 
 sin and of justice rise intuitively in 
 the mind, and in the honest search 
 for truth many things come to light 
 which reveal something of the nature 
 and of the will of God. 
 
 But how dim and confused are the 
 notions thus obtained, and how un- 
 availing they are to bring peace to 
 the troubled soul. When the con- 
 science accuses of sin, and dark mis- 
 givings arise about the future, and 
 the heart trembles in fear of divine 
 wrath, what can reason tell you 
 of forgiveness and cleansing? -And 
 amid the various different theories 
 of life and duty; amid all the con- 
 flicting views of man's obligations 
 and of his destiny, how is the soul 
 to find certainty and rest? 
 
 No; the world by wisdom cannot 
 know God. And no philosopher has 
 ever been wise enough to construct 
 a scheme of deliverance from the 
 
32 A MESSAGE FROM HE A YEN. 
 
 power of sin that has any permanent 
 practical value. 
 
 What then? Is it possible that 
 God has left us to the guidance of 
 these flickering lights and inarticu- 
 late voices? With this great need 
 crying in our souls; with this press- 
 ing necessity to know our Maker and 
 to know His will, has He left us to 
 wander in darkness and perish in 
 ignorance? Will He never definitely 
 and clearly speak to man and har- 
 monize the seemingly contradictory 
 revelations of nature? Will he never 
 point out the path by which the race 
 may arrive at a higher and nobler 
 state of existence? 
 
 These are questions which rise in 
 the human mind in all ages, and the 
 instinctive answer which the univer- 
 sal human heart gives to them is, 
 that there is, that there must be such 
 a direct supernatural revelation. 
 
 It is this natural and universal 
 expectation of a definite and positive 
 -communication from Heaven that 
 
A MESSAGE FROM HE A YEN. 33 
 
 has led men to put faith in magicians 
 and astrologers and soothsayers. It 
 was this that gave the Oracles of 
 Greece their influence in the ancient 
 world. It is this instinctive belief 
 this belief that the Heavens are not 
 brass this belief that God will send 
 a message to His intelligent crea- 
 tures it is this that accounts for all 
 heathen religions, with their fetiches 
 and sacrifices, their altars and 
 priests; and it is this that in Chris- 
 tian lands leads people who deny 
 the Bible to believe in dreams and 
 omens, and to resort to clairvoyants, 
 and fortune-tellers and spiritual me- 
 diums. 
 
 Now, when we find a belief uni- 
 versal, in all ages and among all races 
 of men, we may be sure that it points 
 to some fact of vast and universal 
 interest. This is one of the great 
 arguments for the being of God. 
 Men may and do differ as to the 
 nature of God, but that there is a 
 God, all tribes and generations of the 
 
34 A MESSAGE FROM HEAVEN. 
 
 human race have asserted. Now, if 
 there is no fact to correspond to this 
 idea, where did the idea come from? 
 How does it happen that the Bush- 
 men of Africa, and the Esquimaux 
 of Labrador, and the most enlight- 
 ened nations of Europe and America 
 all agree in the firm, unshakable be- 
 lief that there is a God? We feel 
 that the only explanation of this uni- 
 versal belief is to be found in its 
 truth. 
 
 And in the s'ame way, the fact that 
 the belief in revelation is universal 
 is strong evidence that there is a 
 revelation. 
 
 But if it be conceded that there is 
 nothing incredible in the fact of a 
 supernatural revelation; that the Cre- 
 ator can, if He chooses, communicate 
 His will to His creatures; and if it be 
 still further admitted that the great 
 need and the universal expectation of 
 such a message make it, to say the 
 least, highly probable that He has 
 done so; then our second question 
 
A MESSAGE FROM PIE A YEN. 85 
 
 remains "Is the Bible that Mes- 
 sage?" Is it indeed, and no other, 
 the Word of God? How do we know 
 that its contents were revealed from 
 Heaven? May we not find a divine 
 message in other books which claim 
 to be inspired? 
 
 These are certainly fair questions 
 questions which it is well to ask, 
 and which should be thoughtfully 
 considered and carefully answered. 
 
 No intelligent Christian need be 
 afraid to examine the foundations of 
 his faith. If there is no good reason 
 for accepting the Bible, then every 
 honest man ought to reject it. If its 
 claims to be the Word of God are 
 not well founded, then it is folly to 
 take it for our guide, or to build any 
 hope upon its promises. 
 
 Without attempting any elaborate 
 or exhaustive argument to prove the 
 divine origin of the scriptures, I wish 
 simply to call attention to two facts 
 which point that way, and I beg of 
 you to follow out, in your own minds, 
 
36 A MESSAGE FROM HE A YEN. 
 
 the line of thought which they sug- 
 gest. 
 
 The first fact is, that the Bible 
 touches upon and covers the very 
 points which we most need to know, 
 and which we would naturally expect 
 a divine revelation to contain. 
 
 We have spoken of universal ideas, 
 as indicating that there must be some 
 corresponding reality of immense 
 importance to all men. But we also 
 noticed that these universal ideas are 
 of the most general and indefinite 
 character, and never include those 
 particulars and details which, for our 
 eternal well-being, it is essential that 
 we should know. Now, if there be 
 a supernatural revelation at all, is it 
 not certain that it will give us just 
 those particulars that, indeed, the 
 filling out of these universal ideas, 
 which are of such surpassing interest 
 to us, will be the one grand design 
 of a message from Heaven? 
 
 Thus the idea of God is universal; 
 but who is God? What are His attri- 
 
A MESSAGE FROM HEAVEN. 37 
 
 butes? What is His disposition to- 
 wards us? Does He love His crea- 
 tures, or hate them? Does He regard 
 us as a father regards his children, 
 or as a taskmaster regards his slaves, 
 or is He altogether indifferent to our 
 welfare? How can we approach 
 Him? With what rites should He 
 "be worshipped? 
 
 To these questions, nature and rea- 
 son, which give us the bare idea of 
 God, can yield no answer. But, 
 surely, if there be a st^per-natural rev- 
 elation, we shall find the answer 
 there. Surely the first thing we 
 would look for in a message from 
 Heaven would be some definite infor- 
 mation on these important points. 
 
 Again, the idea of right and wrong- 
 is a universal idea. All men, the 
 world over, make a distinction in 
 morals. No tribe of men has yet 
 been discovered, however ignorant 
 and degraded, that does not consider 
 some acts right and others wrong. 
 Yet while all, without exception, 
 
38 A MESSAGE FROM HEAVEN. 
 
 recognize the distinction, they differ 
 widely as to its application, because 
 nature gives us no sure standard, no 
 rule of righteousness; so that the 
 Hindoo mother thinks it right to 
 throw her babe into the Ganges river; 
 and the Thugs of India regard mur- 
 der as a noble and praiseworthy act; 
 and the American Indian is troubled 
 in conscience and convicted of sin, 
 if he has no human scalps to hang 
 upon his belt. In some lands, lying 
 is a virtue, and the best liar is the 
 worthiest man; and in others, the 
 expert thief is the most highly re- 
 garded. 
 
 Nor are these confusions and con- 
 tradictions to be found only among 
 the ignorant and superstitious, but 
 even the wisest and most enlightened 
 ethical teachers, w^ho have had only 
 the light of nature to guide them, 
 have come far short of any consist- 
 ent and universal standard of morals. 
 Aristotle, and Cicero, and Socrates, 
 and Gautama, and Confucius, the 
 
A MESSAGE FROM HEAVEN. 39 
 
 names which represent the high- 
 est attainments of the natural man, 
 are fatally inconsistent, not only 
 with each other, but each with him- 
 self. In all their moral systems, 
 true and important principles are 
 omitted, while false or puerile ones 
 are given a prominent place. 
 
 Thus, while nature reveals to us 
 the fact that there is a difference 
 between right and wrong, she does 
 not enable us to know the right from 
 the wrong. And yet it is surely of 
 vital importance to us to obtain this 
 knowledge, and, therefore, is it not 
 certain that a message from Heaven, 
 if there be such, will contain the 
 instruction we need upon this point? 
 
 A third universal idea is that of a 
 future state of rewards and punish- 
 ments. This idea is closely related 
 to the one we have just considered, 
 and is as universal as that. Having 
 the idea of sin, men have the idea of 
 retribution. There is an expectation 
 of a coming judgment, which pre- 
 
40 .1 MESSAGE FROM HEAVEN. 
 
 vails everywhere, and always has 
 prevailed among men. 
 
 Yet how to escape misery, and 
 how to secure happiness in the life 
 to come; how to get rid of sin, and 
 how to avoid its consequences; what 
 we must do to be saved upon all 
 this nature throws no clear light; 
 and so we see men resorting to all 
 sorts of absurd rites and ceremonies 
 to placate the offended deity, to in- 
 duce him to put away his displeasure; 
 and sacrifices are offered, and pen- 
 ances are performed, and praying 
 machines are turned, for the purpose 
 of quieting the conscience and get- 
 ting rid of the oppressive burden of 
 sin. 
 
 So, too, plans are proposed by wise 
 men and philosophers for overcom- 
 ing the power of sin and purifying 
 society by means of education, or 
 legal enactment, or social reforma- 
 tion. But sin remains, and the sense 
 of guilt and ill -desert remains, and 
 the burden of a dark foreboding 
 
A MESSAGE FROM HE A YEN. 41 
 
 presses upon the soul. Nature, while 
 revealing the fact of sin, provides no 
 remedy, brings no relief. 
 
 Can we doubt, then, that if our' 
 Maker shall see fit to give us any 
 supernatural revelation, it will have 
 much to say of salvation from sin? 
 Will it not be sure to teach us how 
 to obtain righteousness? Will it not 
 bring life and immortality to light, 
 and point out the path by which we 
 can escape from the power of evil, 
 and secure personal holiness and 
 everlasting life? 
 
 Is not this a true account of what 
 we need of what we have a right 
 to expect in a supernatural revela- 
 tion, if we have one at all? And 
 now, as a matter of fact, it is just 
 upon these three great subjects, in 
 which all men are by nature deeply 
 interested, that the Bible discourses. 
 From beginning to end its themes 
 are GOD, and MORALITY and SALVA- 
 TION. 
 
 The Bible assumes the reality, the 
 
42 A MESSAGE FROM HE A YEN. 
 
 truth, of these universal ideas, and 
 then proceeds to fill them out in all 
 necessary details. Here we are told 
 all about God that we need to know. 
 And what a representation it is 
 glorious majesty, unfailing wisdom, 
 incorruptible justice, fatherly love, 
 tender pity. Such is the God of the 
 Bible a being of infinite perfections. 
 Here, also, are laid down universal 
 principles of morality; principles 
 which are summed up in the com- 
 prehensive law, "Thou shalt love 
 the Lord thy God with all thy heart, 
 and thy neighbor as thyself," a law 
 which can be applied as a rule of con- 
 duct in all conceivable circumstances 
 and under all imaginable conditions. 
 And above all, here is revealed ONE 
 who is not only in His own life a per- 
 fect illustration of this perfect law, 
 but is also declared to be a compe- 
 tent deliverer from the power of sin, 
 and a mediator between God and 
 man, able to save to< the uttermost 
 all who come unto God by Him. 
 
A MESSAGE FROM HE A YEN. 43 
 
 Thus we find in the Bible an an- 
 swer to the most anxious question- 
 ings of the soul. We find informa- 
 tion concerning the very things of 
 which we would expect a message 
 from Heaven to inform us. This is 
 the first fact which seems to vindicate 
 the claim of the Bible to be divinely 
 inspired. 
 
 The second fact is this: That the 
 acceptance of the Bible as divine, 
 and careful obedience to its precepts, 
 lead to the very best results in human 
 society. 
 
 Error and falsehood, the world 
 over and in all human experience, 
 inevitably work misery and degra- 
 dation. False principles of life, 
 systems founded upon lies and deceit, 
 must lead to darkness and death. 
 And certainly if the Bible be a lie; 
 if its answers to our questions are 
 false; if it is a mere human inven- 
 tion, while claiming to be a revelation 
 from Heaven such a stupendous 
 lie, touching, as it does, such vital 
 
44 A MESSAGE FROM HEAVEN. 
 
 points, must result in confusion 
 worse confounded to all who are 
 deceived by it. 
 
 But this is not the effect of faith 
 in the Bible. On the contrary, we 
 see that men are made better and 
 nobler and purer, and more intelli- 
 gent, and more useful, and more 
 loving, just in proportion to the 
 heartiness with which they accept 
 this book, and the consistency with 
 which they make it the rule and 
 guide of their life. And we see that 
 society becomes enlightened and 
 moral and prosperous, just in propor- 
 tion as the Bible and the teachings 
 of the Bible are honored and obeyed. 
 Is it probable that such results would 
 follow from the propagation of a 
 fraud and a lie? 
 
 To sum up: We find a pressing 
 necessity in the nature and condition 
 of men for a supernatural, divine 
 revelation, or message from Heaven. 
 And we find also a universal expec- 
 tation of and belief in the reality of 
 
A MESSAGE FROM HEAVEN. 45- 
 
 such a message. Then, when we 
 come to examine the Bible, we find 
 it dealing with and answering the 
 very questions which men, by na- 
 ture, are led to ask most urgently. 
 And we find that wherever those 
 answers which the Bible gives are 
 accepted as true and divine, and are 
 consistently acted upon, there the 
 purest morality, the clearest light, 
 and the highest freedom prevail. But 
 how can we account for all this, un- 
 less the Bible is what it claims to be, 
 a message from Heaven? 
 
 Is it reasonable to suppose that 
 any merely human production could 
 effect all this? What other book is 
 like it? What could take its place? 
 Surely the Bible alone is God's word. 
 It is Our Father's Message to His 
 children. It is a treasure above all 
 earthly wealth a treasure inexhaus- 
 tible. Indeed, the more we use it, 
 the richer it grows, and in its deep 
 mines of precious truth, we may dig 
 and search all our lives, and every 
 
46 A MESSAGE FROM HEAVEN. 
 
 day find something new for our com- 
 fort or our instruction. 
 
III. 
 The Everlasting Kingdom. 
 
 - 
 
III. 
 
 HEB. xii, 28. "Wherefore we, receiving a kingdom 
 which cannot be moved, let us have grace whereby 
 we may serve God acceptably with reverence and 
 godly fear." 
 
 THE history and triumphs of the 
 Christian Church indicate its divine 
 origin and spiritual vitality. 
 
 The proposition is not that because 
 the church is a great and successful 
 institution, therefore it is of God. 
 We all know that mere earthly suc- 
 cess is no proof of the divinity of 
 Christianity. Whether a religion is 
 of God, or of the devil, cannot be de- 
 cided by a majority vote. But the 
 character, the quality of the success 
 which a religion achieves does go far 
 toward indicating its truth and its 
 value. 
 
 The kind of obstacles it has sur- 
 mounted; the nature of the difficul- 
 
50 THE EVERLASTING KINGDOM. 
 
 ties it has encountered and overcome ; 
 the general effect upon mankind of 
 its real triumphs, and the methods 
 by which these triumphs have been 
 won, will necessarily influence our 
 judgment of its claims. Let us, then, 
 rapidly review the history of the 
 church, and the accepted facts of 
 that history will vindicate to every 
 candid mind the assertion that the 
 Christian Church is the Church of 
 the Living God. 
 
 In the text, as in many other places 
 in the New Testament, the church is 
 spoken of as a Kingdom. But this 
 idea of a Kingdom of God, a Heav- 
 enly Kingdom in the earth, did not 
 by any means originate with the 
 Christian dispensation, or in the 
 teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. This 
 radiant conception of a sublime mon- 
 archy, universal, divine; of an all- 
 powerful king reigning among men 
 in righteousness and love, is inter- 
 woven in all the texture of sacred 
 history and of prophecy. 
 
THE EVERLASTING KINGDOM. 51 
 
 The ancient Jewish theocracy, and, 
 later, the Throne of David, were but 
 types and f or e-shado wings of the 
 imperishable, human-divine power 
 yet to come. Through long genera- 
 tions devout and godly men, wearied 
 with the confusions of earth, had 
 hoped and prayed for the establish- 
 ment of this promised Kingdom, and 
 had anxiously looked for its appear- 
 ing. Abraham foresaw it and was 
 glad. David, in his inimitable lyrics, 
 had sung of its glories. Isaiah, in 
 ringing tones, had declared that it 
 would surely come. Jeremiah had 
 consoled himself and the faithful of 
 his time, in the midst of the miser- 
 ies and injustice to which they were 
 exposed, with the same hope "A 
 King shall reign and prosper, and 
 shall execute judgment and justice 
 in the Earth." Micah had told of 
 its glory and its extent, and Daniel 
 had explicitly declared: "The God 
 of Heaven shall set up a Kingdom 
 which shall never be destroyed; it 
 
52 THE EVERLASTING KINGDOM. 
 
 shall stand forever." Nay, he had 
 gone further, and shown that the 
 "Lord's saints" were to constitute 
 this Kingdom, and that one like the 
 Son of Man was to reign in it. And, 
 finally, the immediate herald and 
 fore-runner of the King himself ap- 
 peared, and John the Baptist an- 
 nounced, "The Kingdom of Heaven 
 is at hand." 
 
 Thus, in proclaiming the establish- 
 ment of a Kingdom, Jesus and His 
 Apostles introduced no new and 
 strange idea, but simply declared 
 the actual fulfillment of the types 
 and prophecies of many centuries. 
 
 But the special point in regard to 
 to this Kingdom which I would 
 emphasize, is that characteristic of 
 it which is mentioned in the text 
 namely, that it "cannot be moved." 
 
 This Kingdom is an everlasting 
 Kingdom. Earthly thrones arise and 
 disappear. Earthly powers decay. 
 The great monarchies of former days 
 have passed utterly away, The pride 
 
THE EVERLASTING KINGDOM. 53 
 
 and pomp of the mightiest princes 
 cannot long withstand the destruc- 
 tive influences that sooner or later 
 are sure to undermine every earthly 
 thing; but the Kingdom which Christ 
 established endureth forever. The 
 external form of the Kingdom may 
 change; the superficial additions 
 which men have made may be swept 
 away; but the Kingdom itself, its 
 King, its laws, its principles are un- 
 changeable and indestructible. The 
 heathen have raged. against it. The 
 kings of the earth have set them- 
 selves, and the rulers have taken 
 counsel together against- the Lord 
 and against His Anointed, and yet, 
 unmoved amid all storms, unshaken 
 by the fiercest assaults, the King- 
 dom of God has continued, its power 
 ever increasing, and its conquests 
 extending on every side. 
 
 I. At first the Jews, with bitter 
 hatred and fanatical zeal, tried to 
 strangle it at its birth; and then, 
 immediately, the mighty power of 
 
54 THE EVERLASTING KINGDOM. 
 
 pagan Home was brought to bear 
 against it. Yet, although persecuted 
 and well nigh crushed, though rav- 
 aged with fire and sword, the infant 
 church, without the aid of earthly 
 arms, steadily advanced, until pagan 
 Rome became Christian Rome, and 
 the Emperor himself was proud to 
 be called the "Defender of the 
 Faith." 
 
 Later on, assailed by the wild, 
 barbarous tribes of the heathen 
 north, the fierce and cruel worship- 
 pers of Woden and Thor, its appa- 
 rent overthrow was changed into 
 sublime triumph, as the victorious 
 Gothic hordes, who had overcome 
 the legions of Rome and seized the 
 very throne, submitted in turn to 
 the all -conquering power of Chris- 
 tian truth, and the Kingdom of God 
 extended its boundaries to the north- 
 ern shores of Europe. 
 
 The Mohammedan powers of Asia 
 next armed themselves against the 
 Kingdom, and, for awhile, it seemed 
 
THE EVERLASTING KINGDOM. 55 
 
 as if the Cross must yield to the 
 Crescent. Slaying without mercy 
 all who opposed them, and treating 
 with the utmost cruelty those who 
 would not abjure Christianity and 
 accept the false Prophet, they pene- 
 trated to the very heart of Christian 
 Europe, and held possession of some 
 of the fairest lands and some of the 
 richest cities on the continent, But 
 the tide was rolled back, and now 
 all men can see that Islamism has 
 had its day; its glory and its terror 
 have departed, and the vast Turkish 
 empire, which has so long embodied 
 and maintained its principles, is 
 rapidly crumbling to pieces under 
 the silent but mighty influences 
 which the Kingdom of God is exer- 
 cising in the affairs of men. 
 
 II. But this Kingdom has proved 
 its stability by withstanding other 
 assailants no less vindictive, no less 
 powerful than these. From the very 
 first the "wisdom of this world" has 
 arrayed itself against "the truth," 
 
56 THE EVERLASTING KINGDOM. 
 
 and from one generation to another 
 has renewed its attacks upon the 
 Kingdom of Heaven. 
 
 As early as the days of Paul and 
 John, and for many years after, 
 the different sects of Gnostic and 
 ManichaBan philosophers, with their 
 strange combination of Paganism, 
 Judaism, and Christian mysticism, 
 led astray many foolish souls, and, 
 at length, even in the church itself, 
 absurd and mystical errors threat- 
 ened to supplant the pure teaching 
 of Scripture and to destroy the holy 
 power of Christ's kingdom of truth. 
 But neo-platonism is a thing of the 
 past. Gnosticism no longer endan- 
 gers the integrity of Christian doc- 
 trine. The Manichaeans exist as but 
 a name in history, while the Word 
 of the Lord, the Kingdom of Heaven, 
 endureth, and shall endure forever. 
 
 Again, in the thirteenth and fif- 
 teenth centuries, when the world had 
 awakened from the profound sleep 
 of the dark ages; when learning be- 
 
THE EVERLASTING KINGDOM. 57 
 
 gan to prevail in Europe, and the 
 ancient classics were studied, and 
 art and poetry were revived, men 
 thought that they could do without 
 Christianity that they had found a 
 new and better way. The old truths 
 were laughed at,, as foolish fables, 
 and the world's wisdom declared 
 that the sweetness and light, the 
 beauty and strength contained in the 
 literature of Greece and Rome were 
 sufficient for the regeneration of men, 
 and that now Christianity, with other 
 superstitions, must disappear, and 
 the Kingdom of Heaven be dismissed 
 as one of the great infatuations of 
 the race, of which men, with their 
 new enlightenment, ought to be 
 ashamed. 
 
 In the eighteenth century the grave 
 and earnest Deism of such men as 
 Hume, in England, and Lessing, in 
 Germany, set itself to overthrow the 
 Kingdom by argument and philoso- 
 phy, while the shallow and frivolous 
 materialism of Bolingbroke and Vol- 
 
58 THE EVERLASTING KINGDOM. 
 
 taire and Tom Paine sought its des- 
 truction by wit and ridicule. 
 
 But in less than a hundred years 
 the enemies of the Kingdom had 
 taken up a new position, and were 
 making their attacks on a different 
 ground; and then serious and rever- 
 ential skepticism became fashion- 
 able, and the sentimentalism of Re- 
 nan, with its fascinating beauty of 
 style, was brought forward as the 
 complete refutation of Christian the- 
 ology, and many weak minds were 
 turned from the truth. 
 
 And now, in these last days, come 
 the apostles of science. Carried 
 away with the conceit of their dis- 
 coveries in the realms of natural 
 law; puffed up by the success of their 
 investigations; blinded by their ex- 
 clusive devotion to material things, 
 they declare, with great flourish of 
 trumpets, that to them, at length, 
 the Kingdom of Heaven must yield, 
 and scientific culture must be ac- 
 cepted as a substitute for Christian- 
 
THE EVERLASTING KINGDOM. 59 
 
 ity, for securing the progress and 
 salvation of humanity. 
 
 But, above nature is the super- 
 natural; beyond the material is the 
 spiritual; beyond the world and the 
 stars is God; and there is no more 
 possibility that the scientific infidel- 
 ity of to-day will prevail, than that 
 Hell will conquer Heaven. The 
 Kingdom of God is an everlasting 
 Kingdom, and true science can only 
 help to strengthen its foundations, 
 and to extend its boundaries. We 
 hear much talk of the conflict be- 
 tween science and religion. There 
 is no such conflict. The man of 
 science may contend against the 
 Bible; and the ecclesiastic may pro- 
 test against giving attention to scien- 
 tific facts; and so between these two 
 men there may be conflict. But the 
 scientist is not science, and the 
 ecclesiastic is not religion, and be- 
 tween these two there is the absolute 
 harmony of their common source, 
 
 Let science, then, pursue her in- 
 
63 THE EVERLASTING KINGDOM. 
 
 vestigations, and we will bid her 
 God-speed. Let her bring forth all 
 light, and all knowledge, and read 
 to us all the record of the rocks and 
 of the stars, and she will but build 
 up the Kingdom of God. True 
 science is the handmaid of religion, 
 and every fact is in exact and beau- 
 tiful harmony with the doctrines of 
 Christianity. 
 
 Believing, as we do, that the King- 
 dom of God not only includes the 
 past and the present, but is destined 
 with ever-widening influence to em- 
 brace the unfolding future, we ex- 
 pect, with full assurance, that all 
 true discoveries which men -may 
 make, in the earth or in the heavens, 
 will only help- to glorify our King, 
 and to justify our faith in Jesus as 
 "Lord over all, blessed forever." 
 
 III. But besides having survived 
 the persecution, and overcome the 
 opposition of earthly rulers and 
 kingdoms; besides having withstood 
 the more subtle assaults of vain 
 
THE EVERLASTING KINGDOM. 61 
 
 philosophy and "science, falsely so 
 called," the Kingdom of God has 
 manifested its vitality and given 
 assurance of its permanence, by 
 purging itself of the corruptions and 
 errors which have at times threat- 
 ened to eat out its life, and utterly 
 to destroy its influence in the world. 
 This is the strongest and most con- 
 vincing proof of durability. The 
 power of self-reformation indicates 
 a real vitality. 
 
 Before the time of Martin Luther, 
 the church had sunk to the lowest 
 depths of depravity. The light of 
 truth had become very dim; the fra- 
 grance of virtue very faint. Mor- 
 ality and religion were most unnat- 
 urally divorced. 
 
 Open, shameless licentiousness, 
 and cruelty and dishonesty pre- 
 vailed everywhere. The Popes were 
 tyrants and murderers ; the cardinals 
 were libertines and intriguers; the 
 bishops lived in luxurious, sinful 
 pleasure; the priests were idle, vic- 
 
<>2 THE EVERLASTING KINGDOM. 
 
 ious, good-for-nothing; the people, 
 corrupted by the public sale of 
 Indulgences for all sorts of sins, 
 degraded by the wretched idolatry 
 to which their religion had degene- 
 rated, and led on by the example of 
 their spiritual shepherds, were super- 
 stitious , depraved , immoral > In deed , 
 the Kingdom of God had apparently 
 become the corrupter of mankind. 
 
 Has, then, this Kingdom proved 
 itself a failure? Are its claims 
 false? Is it unequal to the task 
 assigned it? And must it now be 
 swept away to make room for some 
 new instrument for the help of poor 
 humanity? Or, if it be possible to 
 restore it to its original purity and 
 make it effective for good, is it nec- 
 essary that the Almighty should 
 bring to bear upon it, from without, 
 some unique, miraculous energy? 
 
 No; it is still the Kingdom of God. 
 Nor has it ever been deserted by its 
 King; and, beneath all the corrup- 
 tion, and superstition, and ignorance 
 
THE EVERLASTING! KINGDOM. 6$ 
 
 of those sad times, vital forces are 
 at work vital forces which are in- 
 herent in the very essence of the 
 Kingdom. Silently the truth is win- 
 ning its way in many humble souls; 
 until, presently, from the very 
 heart of the church, the light shines 
 forth, and a clear, strong voice is 
 heard asserting the supremacy of 
 Jesus Christ and declaring the true 
 principles of his Kingdom. 
 
 And so the Reformation began; 
 and righteousness and truth and the 
 pure worship of God were once more 
 established among men not by the 
 application of any new force; not by 
 any external pressure; but by the 
 revival of that immortal divine en- 
 ergy already and always in the 
 Kingdom, itself. 
 
 Thus, also, in the last century, 
 when worldliness and loose mor- 
 als, indifference and skepticism 
 abounded in the church; when the 
 Christian religion seemed to be little 
 more than a dry theology, with na 
 
64 THE EVERLASTING KINGDOM. 
 
 practical bearing on the daily life of 
 those who professed and called 
 themselves Christians; when the 
 influence of the Kingdom of God 
 in the affairs of men could scarcely 
 be discerned; then it was that from 
 out the bosom of the apparently 
 lifeless church came Whitefield, 
 Komaine, Toplady and Wesley, as- 
 serting and proving the undying 
 vital power of Christian truth. And, 
 in consequence, the slave trade was 
 overthrown, prisons were reformed, 
 Sunday - schools were established, 
 Bible societies were organized, mis- 
 sionaries were sent to all parts of 
 the world: all the forms of mod- 
 ern Christian activity, which have 
 accomplished such wonders, were 
 brought into being; and Christian- 
 ity became again a real force in 
 the world. And all this was the 
 result, not of the preaching of 
 any new truth, not of the intro- 
 duction of any new and unknown 
 ^element into the Kingdom of God: 
 
THE EVERLASTING KINGLOM. 65 
 
 it followed naturally and necessa- 
 rily upon the reassertion of the 
 same old truths and principles upon 
 which the Kingdom was founded, 
 and which have constituted its real 
 essence throughout all the ages. 
 
 Thus, the Kingdom of God has 
 conquered every foe surmounted 
 every obstacle. Hostile armies, in- 
 tellectual power, internal corruption, 
 have been unable to withstand its 
 glorious progress. Mighty, irresist- 
 able, indestructible, it has advanced, 
 "fair as the moon, clear as the sun, 
 and terrible as an army with ban- 
 ners," until to-day its crucified King, 
 the peasant of Galilee, wields an 
 authority and exercises an influence 
 over mankind far greater and more 
 extensive than any earthly ruler ever 
 dreamed of. 
 
 Have we not, then, every reason 
 to believe the word of prophecy, and 
 to expect confidently the "sounding 
 of the seventh angel," and the "great 
 voices in Heaven saying: The king- 
 
66 THE EVERLASTING KINGDOM. 
 
 doms of this world are become the 
 kingdoms of our Lord and of his 
 Christ; and he shall reign forever and 
 ever "? 
 
 Surely we have received "a King- 
 dom which cannot be moved." We 
 are the subjects of a King whose 
 throne is everlasting. 
 
 Amid all discouragements, under 
 all adverse circumstances; confused, 
 blinded, perplexed, it may be, in the 
 tumult of this evil world, and by the 
 smoke and dust of the mighty battle 
 with the powers of darkness, let us 
 still keep our faith firm in this great 
 truth; and with undaunted courage 
 and high hope and unshaken con- 
 fidence in the King of Kings, join 
 in the Psalmist's triumphant cry, 
 "The Lord reigneth, let the earth 
 rejoice!" Let us be faithful, loyal 
 subjects, serving our King "accept- 
 ably, with reverence and godly fear," 
 that we may share in those glorious 
 victories of His Kingdom with which 
 all the future is crowded. 
 
IV. 
 What Think Ye of Christ? 
 
IV. 
 
 JOHN i, 14. " And the Word was made ( became) 
 flesh and dwell among us, (and we beheld his 
 glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the 
 Father,) full of grace and truth." 
 
 MATTHEW begins his gospel by 
 tracing the human genealogy of Our 
 Lord to Abraham, the father of the 
 Jews, showing that He was the son 
 of David, the long-promised Messiah. 
 Mark begins with a reference to the 
 prophets and then immediately in- 
 troduces John the Baptist as the 
 fore-runner of Christ; and Jesus 
 himself at once appears, a full-grown 
 man, to be baptized in the Jordan. 
 Luke, beginning with the annuncia- 
 tion to Zacharias, proceeds in a series 
 of exquisite lyrics, to give the cir- 
 cumstances connected with the con- 
 ception and birth of the holy babe, 
 and when he comes to the genealogy, 
 
70 WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST? 
 
 he traces it back to Adam, and thus 
 connects Jesus with the whole race 
 and shows that he is indeed the Son 
 of Man. While the gospel written 
 by John begins the wonderful story, 
 not in time, but in eternity, in t hat- 
 immeasurably remote period before 
 the foundation of the world, or ever 
 the sun and the stars had any being. 
 When we take up the Old Testa- 
 ment and read the first verse, the 
 opening sentence of Revelation "In 
 the beginning God created the heav- 
 ens and the earth," the mind is car- 
 ried back over the long centuries of 
 human history through the dim 
 ages of prehistoric times back to 
 those vast eras of geologic trans- 
 formation, during which the earth 
 was being prepared, slowly and pain- 
 fully, with great throes and upheav- 
 als, for the habitation of man still 
 further back, through untold myri- 
 ads of years to that mysterious time 
 when the earth was "without form 
 and void, and darkness was upon 
 
WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST? 71 
 
 the face of the deep;" nor yet is the 
 beginning reached, for who can say 
 that this same earth had not already 
 existed for countless ages, and 
 through many various changes of 
 form and use, before it was reduced 
 to this chaotic condition? At last, 
 wearied with the effort to reduce the 
 infinite to our finite measurement of 
 time, the mind rests in the eternal 
 and uncreated existence of GOD. 
 
 There we find the beginning of the 
 world, and there we must find the 
 beginning of thought. And now 
 when we turn to the first sentences 
 of John's gospel, we learn what is 
 the true starting point of Christian- 
 ity. It does not begin with the birth 
 in Bethlehem; nor with the preach- 
 ing of John the Baptist; nor with 
 the inspired utterances of Messianic 
 prophets; nor with Abraham; nor 
 yet with Adam, but Christianity 
 begins in the beginning. It begins 
 with God. 
 
 For when Jesus was conceived by 
 
72 WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST? 
 
 the Holy Ghost and born of the Vir- 
 gin Mary, THE WORD became flesh, 
 and, "In the beginning was the Word, 
 and the Word was with God and the 
 Word was God. The same was in 
 the beginning with God. All things 
 were made by Him, and without 
 Him was not anything made that 
 was made. In Him was life, and 
 the life was the light of men." 
 
 So it was that the Eternal Word, 
 the Almighty Creator, the Fountain 
 of Light and the Source of Life, 
 submitted Himself to the limitations 
 of humanity. Not regarding His 
 equality with God a thing to be 
 grasped, He emptied Himself and 
 took the form of a servant and was 
 made in the likeness of men. And 
 thus, as we look upon the smiling 
 infant cradled in Mary's arms; as 
 we listen to the boy talking so wisely 
 with the doctors in the temple; as 
 we think of the young carpenter, 
 working at his father's bench in 
 Nazareth; as we follow the weary 
 
WHAT THINK YE OF C HEIST f 73 
 
 footsteps of the ''man of sorrows" 
 "by the shores of the Galilean lake, 
 over the hill-sides of Judaea, or 
 through Jerusalem's busy streets ; 
 or as we stand and gaze upon the 
 Crucified, lifted up that He might 
 draw all men unto Him, we are 
 contemplating, not merely a supe- 
 rior man, not simply an inspired 
 prophet, not even the first of created 
 beings, but the Creator Himself 
 God manifest in the flesh. 
 
 This is the great mystery of the 
 Incarnation, a mystery, profound and 
 unfathomable, the most amazing of 
 all miracles, appealing, not to the 
 senses, but to faith; not made known 
 to us by the testimony of men; not 
 discovered by the investigations of 
 reason, but revealed from Heaven, 
 and proved to our faith by the char- 
 acter of Him who declares Himself 
 to be the Son of God. 
 
 At the very outset we admit that 
 the Incarnation is incomprehensible, 
 that it cannot be explained, that the 
 
74 WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST? 
 
 human mind cannot understand it. 
 How the Word could become flesh; 
 how Jesus could be perfect man and 
 at the same time perfect God, we do 
 not and cannot know. And all the 
 fine-spun, subtle arguments, and 
 hair-splitting definitions of philos- 
 ophers and theologians cannot solve 
 the mystery are apt, indeed, to 
 confuse the mind and to destroy the 
 simplicity of faith. 
 
 Let us, therefore, rather look with 
 earnest attention upon Jesus Him- 
 self, as He stands before us scarred 
 with the wounds of His crucifixion. 
 Let us devoutly listen to the words 
 which fall from His lips, and so our 
 doubts will be silenced and we shall 
 exclaim, as Thomas did, "My Lord 
 and my God." 
 
 But there are those whose faith is 
 staggered by the greatness of the 
 mystery. Because they cannot un- 
 derstand the Incarnation, because 
 they cannot explain it, they will not 
 believe it. But surelv that is no 
 
WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST? 75 
 
 reason for unbelief. Can yon under- 
 stand God? And will yon therefore 
 deny that there is a God? Can you 
 explain the universe and how it 
 came into being? And will you 
 therefore refuse to believe in the 
 existence of matter? Nay; are not 
 you yourself an incomprehensible 
 mystery? Whence came your im- 
 material mind? How does it act 
 through and upon your material 
 body? What is thought? What 
 are love and hope and anger and 
 desire? Can you fathom the depths 
 of human nature, or analyze the 
 soul of man? And will you there- 
 fore say that there is no mind, that 
 there is no soul? 
 
 But if God is a mystery, and the 
 world is a mystery, and if humanity 
 itself is a mystery, then should we 
 not expect that God coming into the 
 world, God "made in the likeness of 
 men," would be of all mysteries the 
 most profound and inexplicable? 
 And why should we refuse to believe 
 
76 WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST f 
 
 in the God-man, because we cannot 
 understand Him, any more than we 
 refuse to believe in God because w^e 
 cannot understand Him, or any more 
 than we refuse to believe in man 
 because we cannot understand him? 
 Nor is this mystery one to w^hich 
 the human mind has any natural or 
 necessary aversion. On the con- 
 trary, the idea of the Incarnation of 
 the Deity is prominent in almost all 
 the heathen mythologies, and wo 
 trace its partial and often grotesque 
 development in the false religions of 
 many widely separated races. The 
 Greeks and Romans attributed hu- 
 man and even brutal features and 
 characteristics to their gods. And 
 Jupiter and Mercury and a host of 
 other deities often walked the earth 
 and took part in the affairs of men. 
 The Hindoo believes that already his 
 great god Vishnu has been nine 
 times incarnate, and that yet there 
 is to be a tenth incarnation of that 
 deity, when all the workers of in- 
 
WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST? 77 
 
 iquity shall be destroyed. While in 
 the religious myths of the ancient 
 Toltec inhabitants of Mexico we 
 even find the story of a miraculous 
 conception and birth of their supreme 
 god; born, however, not as a babe, 
 but as a mighty warrior, full grown 
 and completely armed. 
 
 All these confused suggestions of 
 tho incarnation, weak, foolish, con- 
 tradictory as they are, yet indicate 
 the longing of the human mind for 
 intercourse with God, and the deep, 
 though vague, conviction that God 
 may and does condescend to man's 
 estate, in order that that intercourse 
 may be secured. And when we turn 
 to the Bible account of the origin of 
 man, and of his relation to God, we 
 see how natural this longing is. 
 
 Here we learn that man is the off- 
 spring of God; that God breathed 
 into his nostrils the breath of life, 
 and so made him in His own image. 
 And although fallen and depraved 
 through sin, although separated by 
 
78 WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST? 
 
 disobedience and rebellion from his 
 Father, man still has a glimmering 
 perception of his divine kinship, and 
 feels with vague instinctive yearn- 
 ing after God. 
 
 And here, too, in this account of 
 the creation of man we find the nat- 
 ural ground or basis of that Incar- 
 nation which is the glory of our 
 Christian faith. Being made in the 
 divine image, and endowed with 
 God-like faculties, his life the very 
 in-breathing of God, man was de- 
 signed and prepared from the first, 
 by the original structure of his soul, 
 for union with his Maker. A union 
 which finds its complete realization 
 in the God-man, Christ Jesus. 
 
 Let us look at this divine- 
 human person, as He appears in the 
 gospels. Let us hearken with rev- 
 erence to what He says of Himself, 
 and so confirm our faith in the Incar- 
 nate God and justify that large hope 
 which every Christian may cherish, 
 and which makes his future bright 
 
WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST? 79> 
 
 with a glory like unto that of his. 
 Lord. 
 
 The historical Jesus is now uni- 
 versally acknowledged. No scholar 
 is found reckless enough to deny 
 that the main features of the gospel 
 history are true. However bitterly 
 or however sadly the skeptic 
 may refuse to accept the super- 
 natural and the divine in Jesus of 
 Nazareth, he is compelled to admit 
 Jesus Himself to a place in history. 
 The footprints of the Galilean 
 prophet are so deep, so plain and 
 distinct, even to this day, that the 
 very blindness of unbelief cannot 
 refuse to see them. 
 
 As Simeon held the infant Jesus 
 in his arms in the temple, he de- 
 clared that the child was set for a 
 sign that should be spoken against. 
 And so, indeed, He has been a sign 
 from that day to this. He is a sign 
 to w^hich the eyes of men are ever 
 turned, whether they will or no. 
 He may be spoken against, He may 
 
SO WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST? 
 
 be reviled, He may be insulted, He 
 may be patronized, He may be re- 
 jected, but He cannot be ignored. 
 There He stands, compelling the 
 attention of mankind, and forcing 
 upon all minds the question, " What 
 think ye of Christ?" 
 
 The man is and must be acknowl- 
 edged, even though the God be de- 
 nied. "EcceHomo!" cries modern 
 unbelief, and glorifies the ideal 
 humanity of Jesus; but when we 
 would add "Ecce Deus !" it turns 
 away in pity or in scorn at our super- 
 stition. Yet Jesus Himself, this 
 ideal man, claims for Himself, in 
 unmistakable language, all that we 
 claim for Him. 
 
 To the multitude at Jerusalem He 
 declares, "My Father worketh hith- 
 erto and I work," and when the 
 Jews naturally accept this as an 
 assumption of* equality with God, 
 He does not rebuke them, or charge 
 them with misrepresenting or mis- 
 understanding Him. On the con- 
 
WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST? 81 
 
 trary, He confirms their interpre- 
 tation of His words by insisting that 
 all should honor the Son even as 
 they honor the Father. 
 
 A little later in His ministry He 
 stands in the very court of the tem- 
 ple of God and declares "Before 
 Abraham was I AM," which was such 
 an unequivocal claim to Godhood 
 that the people immediately rushed 
 upon Him to stone Him for blas- 
 phemy. Not long after, in the same 
 place, He calmly asserts, "I and my 
 Father are one." 
 
 On the night before His crucifixion 
 He tells His disciples, " He that hath 
 seen me hath seen the Father." So, 
 also, when He is arraigned before 
 the Supreme Court of the Jews on 
 the charge of blasphemy, in that He 
 had made Himself equal with God, 
 He enters no denial; He admits the 
 facts, and rests His defense upon the 
 truth of His claim, which He now 
 reiterates in the presence of His 
 judges, "Hereafter shall ye see the 
 
82 WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST? 
 
 Son of Man sitting on the right hand 
 of power and coming in the clouds 
 of Heaven." But His judges would 
 not admit that His claim was true, 
 and so He was crucified, and from 
 their standpoint rightfully convicted 
 of blasphemy. 
 
 But even these direct and explicit 
 assertions of divinity are not so 
 startling as His quiet assumption of 
 divine prerogatives. Thus in the 
 Sermon on the Mount, He represents 
 Himself as the supreme arbiter of 
 man's destiny "Many will say unto 
 me in that day, Lord, Lord, have w T e 
 not prophesied in thy name * * and 
 then I will profess unto them I 
 never knew you; depart from me ye 
 that work iniquity." 
 
 In the nineteenth chapter of Mat- 
 thew He speaks of Himself as sit- 
 ting upon the throne of His glory, 
 thus, in effect, claiming to be the 
 King of Glory. And, in the highly 
 dramatic account of the last judg- 
 ment, in the same gospel, it is He, 
 
WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST? 83 
 
 Jesus, the Son of Man, that shall 
 come "in His glory, and all the holy 
 angels with Him." It is He that 
 shall sit upon the throne as univer- 
 sal monarch, and His lips shall pro- 
 nounce sentence upon the assembled 
 nations. 
 
 So moreover, not once or twice, but 
 many times, consistently through- 
 out His ministry, He presents Him- 
 self as the source of life, the only 
 dependence of the soul, the complete 
 satisfaction for all human need, for 
 eternity as well as for time: "Come 
 unto me and I will give you rest." 
 " 1 am the bread of life." "" I am the 
 living bread which came down from 
 Heaven; if any man eat of this bread 
 He shall live forever.'' "I am the 
 Resurrection and the Life." "I am 
 the Way, the Truth, and the Life." 
 
 Now, all this and much more that 
 might be quoted from the words of 
 Jesus, make it perfectly plain that 
 He Himself, at all events, claimed 
 to be God Incarnate. And in view 
 
84 WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST? 
 
 of the fact that Jesus makes this 
 claim, we are shut up to one of three 
 alternatives in our estimate of Him. 
 Either (1) He was an impostor, inten- 
 tionally and wickedly deceiving the 
 people; or (2) He was a self -deceived, 
 visionary enthusiast, so weak minded 
 and fanatical as to believe not only 
 that he was a god, but that he was 
 GOD; or else (3) He was indeed what 
 He claimed to be, and has a right to 
 all that we ascribe to Him when 
 w^e adore and worship Him as our 
 Supreme Lord and Everlasting King. 
 Let us look at the first of these 
 alternatives: Can it be that Jesus 
 was an impostor? Is it conceivable 
 that He purposely deceived His dis- 
 ciples, and deliberately misled those 
 who trusted in Him, and pretended 
 to powers which He did not possess? 
 Is it within the limits of possibility 
 that the Jesus of the gospels was 
 acting a part and living a lie? No! 
 it is manifestly impossible. It is 
 utterly beyond all honest belief. 
 
WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST? 85 
 
 All His conduct was blameless, 
 not only according to the standard 
 of His time, but even according to 
 the infinitely high standard of His 
 own teaching. The most careful 
 scrutiny fails to detect a flaw in His 
 life and character, so that if His 
 claim of divinity was a pretense, it 
 was a lie proceeding from the purest, 
 noblest heart that ever beat within 
 a human breast. And it was a lie 
 never repented of, and persisted in 
 through persecution and death, by 
 one whose hatred of sin, and whose 
 love of truth and righteousness be- 
 gan a moral revolution in the world. 
 
 Should the bramble bear grapes, 
 or the thistle produce olives, even 
 then we could not believe that the 
 holy principles and exalted morality 
 of Christianity have proceeded from 
 the teachings of a charlatan and 
 trickster. It would be a miracle, 
 more astounding than that of the 
 Incarnation itself, if the purest sys- 
 tem of morals that the mind of man 
 
86 WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST? 
 
 can imagine, and the holiest thoughts, 
 and the most tender, loving and un- 
 selfish emotions that have ever had 
 a place in human hearts, should have 
 originated in a gross falsehood, a 
 wretched fraud. Indeed it would 
 be more than a miracle, it would be 
 the destruction of all law, the anni- 
 hilation of all logic, for the very 
 statement of the hypothesis contains 
 a self-contradiction which the mind 
 refuses to entertain. We need not 
 dwell on the argument. The most 
 reckless opponent of Christianity 
 does not now dare to impugn the 
 motives, or to question the sincerity 
 of Jesus. Whatever else may be in 
 doubt, we know that He was honest 
 and true and pure-hearted above all 
 the children of men. 
 
 But if He was not a deceiver, is it 
 not possible that He was deceived? 
 May it not be, that, carried away by 
 His religious enthusiasm, He at 
 length came to believe that He was 
 more than human? This is the 
 
WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST? 87 
 
 
 
 favorite theory of modern skeptics. 
 They represent Jesus as a good man, 
 one of the best and noblest of men, 
 but, unfortunately, to some extent 
 the victim of a delusion. At times 
 his enthusiasm bordered on fanati- 
 cism, and so he came to occupy a 
 false position and to imagine himself 
 possessed of superhuman powers and 
 divine authority. 
 
 But this theory is just as super- 
 ficial and unscientific as that of His 
 being an impostor. It is full of con- 
 tradictions and impossibilities, and 
 disregards the most evident facts of 
 His life and the most marked fea- 
 ture of His character. 
 
 In an age when fanaticism was 
 epidemic, and although He was the 
 object, by turns, of popular adula- 
 tion and opposition, He remains, 
 under all circumstances, calm and 
 :self-possessed, His whole bearing 
 and manner indicating no trace of 
 fanatical extravagance. 
 
 When the multitude in their en- 
 
88 WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST? 
 
 
 
 thusiasm would have taken Him by 
 force to make Him a King, He man- 
 ifests no excitement, He is evidently 
 under no delusion; but, quietly send- 
 ing away His disciples, He dismisses 
 the crowd and retires into a moun- 
 tain to pray. 
 
 When James and John, in their 
 indignant zeal, would call down fire 
 from heaven to destroy the Samar- 
 itan villagers who would not receive 
 Him, He gently rebukes them and 
 goes to another village; and even 
 when He breaks out in terrible in- 
 vective against the Scribes and Phar- 
 isees, His words are full of the dig- 
 nity and power of one who stands 
 upon the truth and justice of His 
 cause and is assured of the author- 
 ity with which He speaks. 
 
 Indeed, from first to last, there 
 is no faintest suggestion of an 
 unbalanced mind or of a disordered 
 imagination. On the contrary, all 
 His teachings are sublime in the 
 combined simplicity and profund- 
 
WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST f 89 
 
 ity of the truths which they contain. 
 
 Was that powerful intellect which 
 laid the foundations of Christian 
 theology and Christian life, and 
 which now, after eighteen centuries, 
 dominates the thought of the civil- 
 ized world was that mind, which 
 originated the unparalleled dis- 
 courses of the gospels, so bewil- 
 dered and uncertain as to fall into 
 such gross self-esteem, and such 
 absurd vain-glory as His assump- 
 tions would involve if they were 
 unfounded? 
 
 Did He, whose keen penetration 
 discovered the most subtle forms of 
 self-deception in others, Himself fall 
 into a delusion more extravagant 
 than any that He exposed? Did He, 
 who rose superior to, and swept 
 away all the superstitions of His 
 age and country, cherish a still more 
 absurd superstition in regard to 
 Himself? 
 
 When He claimed to have fed tlfe 
 multitudes with a few loaves and 
 
90 WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST? 
 
 fishes, or when He summoned forth 
 the dead Lazarus from the tomb, it 
 is simply impossible that He should 
 have been laboring under a delusion. 
 And when He told the disciples of 
 John to tell their master "The 
 blind see, the lame walk, the lepers 
 are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead 
 -are raised," it is absolutely certain 
 that He knew what he was saying. 
 
 Only insanity could be deluded 
 into the belief that such things 
 were, when they were not; and if 
 Jesus is insane, then let us look to 
 the madhouses for the regeneration 
 of the world, and let us depend upon 
 the fanatics and the lunatics for the 
 discovery of truth. 
 
 In fact, the skeptic cannot account 
 for Jesus Christ. On any theory 
 which sets out with His mere human- 
 ity, He remains a strange, confusing, 
 unaccountable anomaly. You can 
 make nothing of Him; He is not an 
 impostor, 'He is not a self-deceived 
 enthusiast, and yet He claims the 
 
WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST? 91 
 
 honor due to God alone and speaks 
 with the authority of Heaven. 
 
 But when we take Him at His 
 word when we admit His high 
 claim when we believe that in Him 
 44 the WORD became flesh," then all 
 is consistent and harmonious in the 
 story of His life and work. Mystery, 
 of course, remains, as indeed we 
 know it must, but all contradiction 
 disappears, and mind and heart find 
 rest in "the truth as it is in Jesus." 
 
 This, then, is the glorious, hope- 
 inspiring fact of the Incarnation. 
 "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, 
 for He hath visited and redeemed 
 His people." 
 
 Heaven bends to earth, and Heav- 
 en's King becomes our brother, that 
 we, through faith in the Son of God, 
 may realize that we also are sons of 
 God, and thus be lifted to a new 
 and noble position; a position of 
 dignity and peace even now, and 
 bright with promised splendor in the 
 ages to come. 
 
92 WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST? 
 
 It is true that the Eternal Word 
 was ever the life and light of men. 
 It is true that through all the centu- 
 ries before the angels sang to the 
 trembling shepherds, the Word was 
 in the world, though the world knew 
 Him not giving to as many as re- 
 ceived Him power to become the 
 sons of God. To Him Patriarchs 
 and Prophets gave testimony. In 
 Him the righteous and faithful of 
 all nations sought and found peace 
 with God. 
 
 But, when, in the fulness of time, 
 the Word became flesh, and, in the 
 person of Jesus, dwelt among us, then 
 life and immortality were brought 
 to light, and grace and truth were 
 manifested to the eyes of men. 
 
 Then it was made evident that 
 man is destined to be complete only 
 in God. And then began that new 
 life of humanity, which is to go on 
 expanding from generation to gene- 
 ration, until all shall be gathered 
 together in one, in Christ. 
 
V. 
 The Three Witnesses. 
 
V. 
 
 PROV. ii, 1-5. "My son, if ihou wilt receive my 
 words and hide my commandments with thee, so 
 that thou incline thine ear unto wisdom and apply 
 thine heart to understanding; yea, if thou criest 
 after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for under- 
 standing; if thou seekest her as silver, and search- 
 est for her as for hid treasures; then shalt thou 
 understand the fear of the Lord and find the 
 knowledge of God." 
 
 have in these words of the 
 wise King a very urgent exhortation 
 to study and search out truth, and 
 it is distinctly declared that the path 
 of honest and diligent inquiry leads 
 to the knowledge of God, which is 
 the substance of true religion. Let 
 a man cry after knowledge ; let him 
 incline his ear to wisdom and apply 
 his heart to understanding; let him 
 seek truth as silver, and search for 
 her as for hid treasures then, 
 surely, without possibility of dis- 
 appointment or failure, he shall un- 
 
96 THE THREE WITNESSES. 
 
 derstand the fear of the Lord and 
 find the knowledge of God. 
 
 It is a great error to suppose that 
 Christianity shuns inquiry or shrinks 
 from investigation. Whatever may 
 liave been the case at some former 
 periods, or whatever may be the case 
 now, in corrupt portions of the 
 Christian church, it is a slander to 
 assert that Christianity itself fears 
 the light of reason, or endeavors to 
 maintain its influence by withstand- 
 ing the progress of science and the 
 development of the human intellect. 
 On the contrary, Christianity is the 
 sworn friend of education. Chris- 
 tianity inspires and urges men to 
 cultivate to the fullest extent all the 
 powers of intellect with which the 
 Creator has endowed them. Our 
 religion teaches and prompts us to 
 search out the secrets of nature and 
 of life. It arouses the curiosity, 
 and gives men such hints of the 
 power and capacity of the human 
 mind that the effect of its influence 
 
THE THREE WITNESSES. 97 
 
 is ever to encourage the effort to 
 discover truth. 
 
 The church and the school go 
 hand in hand, and the knowledge 
 of God naturally awakens a desire 
 to know the works of God. And so 
 we find Christian men endowing col- 
 leges, and establishing schools, and 
 our institutions of learning are 
 largely filled with the children of 
 those whose Christianity leads them 
 to appreciate the importance of 
 developing the mental powers. And 
 as our religion influences men to the 
 study of all other truth, so especially 
 does it urge them to the study and 
 investigation of the great truths 
 upon which Christianity itself is 
 based, and which it is its business 
 to proclaim. 
 
 If the Christian religion cannot 
 stand inquiry; if it cannot answer 
 when it is questioned; if it has no 
 established facts to bring forward in ' 
 support of its claims then, by all 
 means, let us give it up. 
 
98 THE THREE WITNESSES. 
 
 It does not authoritatively demand 
 a blind, irrational faith, but it seeks 
 the assent of the reason as well as 
 the trust of the heart. And so when 
 men call Christianity a superstition, 
 a priestcraft; when they represent it 
 as the enemy of science, or as seek- 
 ing to maintain its position by im- 
 peding the march of the intellect, 
 they speak ignorantly and falsely. 
 
 The scriptures, throughout, repeat 
 in various forms the exhortation of 
 the text. They appeal to nature, to 
 history, to the human consciousness, 
 to every department of research and 
 knowledge for the confirmation of 
 their claims; and the whole tendency 
 of the teaching of Prophets and 
 Apostles, and of the Lord Jesus 
 Himself, is to set men to the careful 
 examination of the grounds of their 
 faith. So far then from depending 
 upon darkness and ignorance for its 
 support, the Christian religion ever 
 seeks the brightest light; and so far 
 from being the foe of science and of 
 
THE THREE WITNESSES. 99 
 
 the free exercise of thought, it ever 
 encourages the search for truth and 
 courts the most thorough investiga- 
 tion of its own transcendent claims;, 
 And this attitude of Christianity 
 is, of itself, strong evidence that its 
 claims are well founded; for if they 
 are not, then it presents the absurd,, 
 the impossible spectacle of a false 
 system, exciting a desire for truth 
 which could only be gratified by the 
 destruction of that system. If Chris- 
 tianity be false, then the men who are 
 most deeply interested in maintain- 
 ing this false system are most eagerly 
 pursuing the very course which will 
 expose and overthrow their error. 
 If Christianity be false, then we 
 have the strange fact of a vast false- 
 hood cherishing in its bosom the 
 suicidal principle of an eager love of 
 truth, and yet not only living on, but 
 developing and growing in every 
 direction, by the very force of that 
 principle which would naturally 
 destroy it. 
 
100 THE THREE WITNESSES. 
 
 But while Christianity seeks inves- 
 tigation, it demands, and justly de- 
 mands, that that investigation shall 
 be full and honest. All the facts 
 must be taken into consideration, 
 and the aim must be simply to arrive 
 at the truth, whatever that truth 
 may be. Sneers and ridicule and 
 sarcastic wit are not arguments,. and 
 fierce assaults upon detached pas- 
 sages of scripture, or upon solitary 
 facts taken out of their connection 
 are not the methods of impartial 
 inquiry. And there is the trouble 
 with infidelity. It attacks Christian- 
 ity. It carries forward its so-called 
 investigations with the avowed pur- 
 pose of overthrowing "the faith." 
 It allows this purpose to sway its 
 judgment of all facts, and so is 
 utterly unfair and unscientific in its 
 criticism. 
 
 Let us now look at the facts of 
 Christianity, which the inquirer must 
 face I mean the great, undeniable 
 facts which stand out before every 
 
THE THREE WITNESSES. 101 
 
 intelligent man with such promi- 
 nence that they cannot be ignored. 
 These facts are, first: The Book 
 the Scriptures of the Old and New 
 Testaments. Second: The Person- 
 Jesus, the Christ. Third: The Insti- 
 tution the Christian Church in its 
 historical development. Our claim 
 is, that these facts can only be 
 accounted for by the further fact of 
 -a personal God revealed in the Bible, 
 incarnate in Jesus Christ, and still 
 present arid efficient, by the Holy 
 Spirit, in the Christian Church. 
 
 And the inquiry is, can these facts 
 be accounted for in any other way? 
 Can any rational and adequate ex- 
 planation of them be given, if a 
 personal God be denied and the 
 supernatural be excluded? 
 
 1st. The Book a book which is 
 -entirely unique in all the literature 
 of the world. It is, indeed, a liter- 
 ature in itself, rather than a single 
 book. Written by nearly fifty differ- 
 ent authors, through a long period 
 
102 THE THREE WITNESSES. 
 
 of fifteen hundred years, under cir- 
 cumstances as widely different as a 
 king's throne and a prisoner's dun- 
 geon with a marvelous variety of 
 style, and each writer having his 
 own special and immediate object in 
 view it is yet a unit in its grand 
 purpose, and all its teachings con- 
 verge upon one central point and 
 illustrate one prevailing theme the 
 Salvation of Man from the power 
 and punishment of sin, through the 
 limitless love and the stupendous 
 sacrifice of a personal Lord and 
 Deliverer, who is at once the seed of 
 the woman and the Son of God. 
 This is the thrillmg subject of the 
 whole book, from Genesis to the 
 Revelation. It is with this momen- 
 tous topic that th-e history, the 
 poetry, the prophecy, the legislation 
 of the Bible are concerned. And 
 the most hostile criticism, the most 
 thorough and exhaustive examina- 
 tion by the keenest scholars in all 
 the centuries has failed to establish 
 
THE THREE WITNESSES. 103 
 
 Contradiction or inconsistency in any 
 material point in this astonishing 
 book. Now, how can this fact be 
 explained? How is it that Moses, 
 who lived fifteen hundred years 
 before Christ, and wrote for a tribe 
 of enfranchised slaves, wandering 
 through an inhospitable desert; and 
 David, who lived five hundred years 
 .after Moses and wrote for a civilized 
 and well-organized nation; and Zech- 
 ariah, who lived five hundred years 
 after David and wrote for that nation 
 in the time of its humiliation and 
 captivity; and Paul, who lived five 
 hundred years later still, and wrote 
 for gentile as well as Jew, for all 
 classes and conditions of men, and 
 with a far-reaching forward intention 
 toward generations yet unborn- 
 how is it, I say, that now, more than 
 three thousand years after the first 
 of them was penned, and more than 
 eighteen hundred years since the 
 last of them appeared how is it 
 .that all these so various writings are 
 
104 THE THREE WITNESSES. 
 
 bound up in one volume, forming a 
 perfect and consistent whole, so 
 complete and symmetrical, so mani- 
 festly one in design and teaching that 
 the majority of people never think 
 of them except as one book, and all 
 speak of them as The Bible? And 
 furthermore, how is it that now, 
 after all these centuries, and amid 
 political and social and religious and 
 literary circumstances , altogether 
 new and undreamed of by its wri- 
 ters, this Bible is still full of vigor 
 and freshness and practical applica- 
 tion to human need? 
 
 And the wonder grows, as we con- 
 sider the amazing influence which it 
 has exercised and still continues to 
 exercise over the minds and lives of 
 men. Translated into more than 
 two hundred languages, and scat- 
 tered over the whole earth in mill- 
 ions and millions of copies, it is 
 eagerly read and pondered in the 
 hovel and in the palace; studied with 
 absorbing interest by the acutest 
 
THE THREE WITNESSES. 105 
 
 minds, the most profound and accu- 
 rate scholars the world has known; 
 and commented upon in many thou- 
 sands of volumes of learned exposi- 
 tion, it has also been the loved com- 
 panion and unfailing friend of the 
 ignorant and humble. 
 
 The sorrowing have been comfort- 
 ed; the tempted have been strength- 
 ened; the erring have been brought 
 back to virtue; the young have been 
 inspired to seek noble ends; strong 
 men in the thick of life's battle have 
 been armed to resist evil; the aged 
 have had the lingering days of infirm- 
 ity made bright and peaceful; the 
 dying have been enabled to triumph 
 over all the terror of the grave, by the 
 words of this incomparable book. 
 And that, not in exceptional instan- 
 ces and under peculiar circum- 
 stances, but through many centuries 
 and in all lands where the Bible has 
 found its way. And to-day, in the 
 midst of the much boasted light and 
 progress of this nineteenth century, 
 
106 THE THREE WITNESSES. 
 
 this ancient book is more widely 
 read, more carefully studied, and 
 more practically and powerfully 
 influential than ever before. 
 
 Certainly all this constitutes a fact 
 which has no parallel. It is a 
 unique fact, which the inquirer must 
 face, and for which he is bound to 
 give some adequate explanation. 
 We Christians say, in the language 
 of the Bible itself, that "holy men 
 of old spake as they were moved by 
 the Holy Ghost." We hold that the 
 supernatural influence of the Divine 
 Spirit enlightened the minds and 
 guided the thoughts and expressions 
 of these writers, and so their unity 
 and consistency are the unity and 
 consistency of absolute and divinely 
 revealed truth. And the astonish- 
 ing and beneficent power of their 
 words is due to the efficacy of the 
 Spirit that underlies them. In a 
 word, it is God's Book, and hence its 
 peculiar position in the literature of 
 the world. 
 
THE THREE WITNESSES. 107 
 
 Now, if you reject this theory, if 
 you refuse to accept this explana- 
 tion, how will you account for these 
 facts, under what natural laws will 
 you group them? There is no other 
 book, or set of books, in any degree 
 like the Bible. The sacred writings 
 of other religions can no more be. 
 compared with this book than oil- 
 lamps and tallow candles can be 
 compared with the sun in the Heav- 
 ens. These can be, and have been, 
 accounted for in their origin and 
 development and influence, accord- 
 ing to well-known laws of human 
 nature, but although all along, from 
 age to age, unbelievers have been 
 trying to account thus for the facts 
 connected with this book and its 
 history, they have utterly failed. 
 The theories of one infidel have 
 been shown to be absurd by the 
 arguments of another. Indeed the 
 only rational and adequate account 
 of the origin and power of the Bible 
 is that which the Christian gives 
 
108 THE THREE WITNESSES. 
 
 when he calls it The Word of God. 
 
 The second outstanding fact which 
 confronts him who would inquire 
 into the claims of Christianity, is 
 the person of Jesus of Nazareth. 
 The undisputed, the indisputable 
 particulars of his life and character 
 are, in brief, these: 
 
 He lived in Galilee, an unknown, 
 unnoticed Jewish peasant, until he 
 was about thirty years' of age. He 
 then appeared in public as a teacher 
 of religious truth, and very speedily 
 attracted the attention and excited 
 the interest of all classes of the 
 people throughout the length and 
 breadth of Palestine. For about 
 three years he continued his work, 
 going from place to place with a 
 small retinue of plain men, fisher- 
 men and tax-gatherers, and in the 
 synagogues and in the streets, by 
 the roadsides and on the seashore, 
 on the mountains of Galilee and in 
 the temple at Jerusalem, he quietly 
 and simply gave utterance to the 
 
THE THREE WITNESSES. 109> 
 
 most profound truths which the 
 mind of man is able to contemplate; 
 solving questions over which philos- 
 ophers have puzzled for ages with a 
 few words, so plain that a child can 
 understand them, and in such a tone 
 of calm assurance that it is evident 
 that in his mind there was no doubt 
 or hesitation. And these plain and 
 forceful words fall upon the ear to- 
 day as freshly as when they were 
 first spoken. 
 
 He claimed to be the Son of God 
 and the Judge of the World. 
 
 He claimed perfect holiness for 
 himself, and the power to deliver 
 others from sin. He claimed to 
 work miracles, and by a word to 
 heal the sick, to restore sight to the 
 blind, to give hearing to the deaf- 
 even to raise the dead to life. The 
 honors which most men seek, he 
 refused, even when they were 
 pressed upon him, and led an hum- 
 ble life of poverty and toil, while 
 he rebuked the eager desires of his. 
 
110 THE THREE WITNESSES. 
 
 followers for the earthly success 
 and prosperity of his mission. 
 
 He declared that his kingdom was 
 not of this world, but he also de- 
 clared that it should ultimately 
 include the \vorld, and that it should 
 continue for ever. The morality he 
 taught was the highest and purest 
 imaginable, and his own life did not, 
 in any particular, fall below his 
 doctrine. At times he was very 
 popular, and multitudes followed 
 him admiringly, and w^ould have 
 been glad to put him at their head 
 in an insurrection against the Roman 
 power. 
 
 But at last, having disappointed 
 the carnal expectations of the peo- 
 ple, and roused the bitter enmity of 
 the ecclesiastical rulers by his fear- 
 less denunciation of their greed and 
 hypocrisy, he was betrayed by one 
 of his own disciples, and put to 
 death by crucifixion as a blasphemer 
 a traitor. 
 
 Before his death he had told his 
 
THE THREE WITNESSES. 11* 
 
 disciples that he must soon be killed, 
 but that he should rise again the- 
 third day. 
 
 This declaration they seem not to 
 have understood at the time, but af- 
 terwards they believed that he did 
 rise ; they believed that they saw him 
 and talked with him, and that finally 
 they beheld him pass away through 
 the clouds into Heaven. And this 
 their belief was so strong and confi- 
 dent and precious that, to maintain it, 
 and to persuade others of its truth, 
 they willingly gave up every worldly 
 interest, and exposed themselves to 
 ignominy and persecution and death. 
 
 Such, in brief outline, are the 
 facts of Christ's life, which all must 
 admit. Not one of them can be 
 successfully denied, for they are as 
 indubitably a part of authentic his- 
 tory as the story of the French Rev- 
 olution or the life of George Wash- 
 ington. The question then is, What 
 will you do with these facts? What 
 rational account will you give of 
 
112 THE THREE WITNESSES. 
 
 them? The Christian, of course, 
 asserts that the words of Christ 
 were true, that His claims were well 
 founded, that He is indeed the Son 
 of God and the Divine Savior of 
 men, that He is God manifest in the 
 flesh, that He is risen from the dead, 
 and that the disciples did see and 
 talk with Him after His resurrection, 
 as they claimed. 
 
 But if you say that this is not scien- 
 tific, that science cannot admit the 
 supernatural, then you must substi- 
 tute some other more satisfactory, 
 more scientific explanation of the 
 facts. And with this problem infidel- 
 ity has of late years been very busy. 
 The most elaborate, ingenious and 
 complete attempts to account for the 
 person of Christ are those of Strauss 
 and of Renan. But who believes now 
 that either of them is a true theory? 
 They are so full of contradictions 
 and absurdities that the intelligent 
 enemies of Christianity can get but 
 little comfort from them. 
 
THE THREE WITNESSES. 113 
 
 And still the facts are unaccounted 
 for. Still the question remains 
 unanswered "What think ye of 
 Christ?" Do you say, "he was a 
 good and great man, an earnest re- 
 former, and a teacher of truth that 
 is all"? But that does not, by any 
 means, settle the matter, for now 
 your answer must be questioned in 
 the light of all the facts: You say 
 he was a great and good man. Ah ! 
 but he claimed to work miracles. 
 You say he was merely a reformer 
 and a teacher of truth. But he 
 claimed to raise the dead, and that 
 he himself should rise, and that he 
 should sit upon the throne of the 
 Universe and judge all nations. 
 "Well," you answer, "he was vis- 
 ionary and enthusiastic in these 
 things and fell, of course, into some 
 errors and extravagances." But is 
 it conceivable that one so remark- 
 able for self-possession and calm- 
 ness, for practical wisdom and 
 shrewd common sense is it con- 
 
114 THE THREE WITNESSES, 
 
 ceivable that one whose words are 
 the clear expression of the most 
 profound and far-reaching truth 
 should have been the subject of 
 such vulgar delusions? 
 
 If it be true that He who preached 
 the Sermon on the Mount, and told 
 the story of the Prodigal son, and 
 uttered the Lord's Prayer and lived 
 the life of gentle, loving purity re- 
 corded in the gospels if it be true 
 that the Jesus of history imagined 
 that He raised dead people .to life, 
 or that He fed great multitudes with 
 a few loaves and fishes, then we 
 may as well throw away all that 
 has ever been written on the science 
 of the human mind; then, indeed, 
 there is not, and cannot be any such 
 science, for here are facts which 
 give the lie to all experience and 
 observation, and stand outside of 
 any possible consistent theory. 
 
 For, notice: it is not simply that 
 this great, strong, clear intellect was 
 deceived into the belief that some 
 
THE THREE WITNESSES. 115 
 
 one else wrought miracles that 
 would be hard enough to credit- 
 but the infidel theory is that this 
 most powerful mind was constantly 
 under the absurd delusion that he 
 himself not only could, but actually 
 did that which no human power can 
 do and that not once or twice, but 
 hundreds of times, all through his 
 ministry. The fact is, that the 
 denial of the divine and the super- 
 natural in the life of Jesus of Naz- 
 areth, involves a belief in wonders 
 more strange and inexplicable than 
 any of the miracles attributed to 
 him. And the unbeliever exhibits 
 amazing credulity in accepting the 
 contradictions which are evident in 
 any theory of a merely hitman Jesus. 
 The other obtrusive fact which 
 must be met in any honest inquiry 
 concerning the claims of Christianity 
 is the Christian Church. And the 
 problem is to account for its peculiar 
 origin, its unexampled career, and 
 its present unparalleled position. 
 
11(3 THE THREE WITNESSES. 
 
 A few obscure men, humiliated 
 and disheartened by the shameful 
 death of their leader, suddenly be- 
 come filled with an all-absorbing 
 enthusiasm for the cause which but 
 a moment before they deemed lost. 
 They boldly and emphatically de- 
 clare that their Lord has risen from 
 the dead. They stake their lives 
 upon this, and with wonderful zeal 
 and wisdom and courage they seek 
 to persuade all men to accept the 
 fact and to entrust to this crucified 
 and risen Jesus all their interests 
 for time and eternity and though 
 the civil and ecclesiastical rulers 
 oppose and persecute them, though 
 often the people are excited to fierce 
 enmity, yet still their numbers rap- 
 idly increase. Their influence ex- 
 tends north, south, east and west; 
 until, within three hundred years, 
 their faith, so ridiculed and despised 
 at the beginning, has become 
 the state religion of the Roman 
 Empire. 
 
THE THREE WITNESSES. 117 
 
 And now, through eighteen hun- 
 dred yeajs this institution of the 
 Christian Church has been growing 
 and expanding far and wide through 
 the earth. Threatened with des- 
 truction by the fire and sword of its 
 enemies assailed again and again 
 by the most subtle and ingenious 
 arguments of infidelity shaken to 
 its very center by the corruption, 
 the hypocrisy, the treason of false 
 disciples, manifesting often, on its 
 human side, a folly and blindness 
 which would have been fatal to any 
 other institution, it not only lives to- 
 day, but lives with a fuller life, and 
 exhibits a more healthy and benefi- 
 cent activity than at any former 
 period of its history. Wherever its 
 banners are carried and its teachings 
 accepted, the most happy results are 
 quickly seen. Morality, science, art, 
 freedom, the family, the school, the 
 orphan asylum, commerce, manufac- 
 tures, prosperity these are the in- 
 cidental and secondary accompani- 
 
118 THE THREE WITNESSES. 
 
 ments of its more specific work for 
 the salvation of immortal souls. 
 
 The civilization which is spreading 
 among the nations, and which has in 
 it the elements of indefinite expan- 
 sion and adaptability to all races of 
 men, is emphatically a Christian 
 civilization. And the instrumental 
 cause of all that is being done for 
 the elevation of mankind, is this 
 Christian church, built upon the 
 prophets and apostles, Jesus Christ 
 Himself being the chief corner stone. 
 
 Xow, what we claim is, that those 
 w r ho will not accept our explanation 
 of these facts, that those who will 
 not admit the supernatural in the his- 
 tory of the church, shall account for 
 the facts in some other way. And 
 here again, after all the attempts 
 that have been made, the problem 
 remains unsolved by infidelity. Gib- 
 bon tried to solve it historically, 
 and Leckey tried to solve it philo- 
 sophically, but their positions have 
 been proved untenable, and their 
 
THE THREE WITNESSES. 119 
 
 theories do not cover the facts in the 
 case. And what Gibbon and Leckey 
 have failed to do, men of less learn- 
 ing and less ingenuity certainly will 
 not accomplish. 
 
 Facts are persistent and indomita- 
 ble, and they can be neither sneered 
 nor ignored out of existence. And 
 these facts of Christianity these 
 facts which cannot be denied the 
 Bible, Jesus Christ, the Christian 
 Church, stand forth as the most 
 prominent, the most obtrusive facts 
 of human life and history. Vague 
 talk about the power of superstition 
 :and the general credulity of men, will 
 not explain them, neither are they sci- 
 entifically accounted for by ridicul- 
 ing the story of Jonah and the Whale. 
 These facts are too vast and too con- 
 spicuous to be disposed of in any such 
 way. In truth, the more diligently 
 we study them, the more thoroughly 
 we investigate them, the less satis- 
 factory, the less adequate does any 
 natural explanation of them appear. 
 
120 THE THREE WITNESSES. 
 
 The Bible is itself a greater miracle* 
 than any that it records; and Jesus 
 Christ is a greater miracle than any 
 that He claimed to work; and the 
 Christian Church is a greater miracle 
 than any that are said to have oc- 
 curred in its history. 
 
 And so we come back to the point 
 from which we started, and unhesi- 
 tatingly assert that what Christian- 
 ity especially seeks is light LIGHT! 
 
 Our holy religion asks of the world 
 a full, thorough, honest, searching, 
 scientific investigation, and the 
 brighter the light the more glori- 
 ous will her heavenly truths appear. 
 
 Let no man fear the future. No 
 matter what storms may gather no 
 matter what foes may arise no 
 matter how many scoffing infidels 
 may oppose themselves the church 
 of the Living God will move onward 
 in majestic progress to complete and 
 universal triumph. 
 
 The old, old faith by which the 
 apostles lived and the martyrs died 
 
THE THREE WITNESSES. 121 
 
 the old faith of Augustine arid 
 Anselm and a'Kempis the old faith 
 of our fathers and mothers will 
 yet live and grow older and older, 
 and still its youth will ever be re- 
 newed, and our children, and our 
 children's children shall rejoice in 
 the blessings it brings. As it has 
 taught us the way of life, and brought 
 to our souls the sweet peace of par- 
 don; as it has united us in tender 
 love with Jesus our Savior; as it has 
 strengthened us in the hour of temp- 
 tation and comforted us in all our 
 griefs; as it illumines our souls with 
 the glad, bright hope of Heaven so 
 will it continue to do for countless 
 generations yet unborn. 
 
 The truth as it is in Jesus is the 
 Eternal Truth of God. 
 
VI. 
 The Experimental Proof. 
 
VI. 
 
 PSALM xxxiv, 8. "0 taste and see that the Lord is 
 good." 
 
 IN the Christian religion every- 
 thing turns on faith. Christ Him- 
 self tells us "He that believeth 
 shall be saved, and he that believeth 
 not shall be condemned." Paul de- 
 clared faith to be the one essential 
 condition of salvation, as when he 
 says to the jailor of Philippi, "Be- 
 lieve on the Lord Jesus Christ and 
 thou shalt be saved." 
 
 It is true that the Scriptures also 
 insist upon the necessity of good 
 works and righteousness of life, and 
 teach, with utmost plainness, that 
 without personal holiness no man 
 can see the Lord. 
 
 But this two-fold teaching does: 
 'not involve any contradiction or 
 
126 THE EXPERIMENTAL PROOF. 
 
 inconsistency, because virtue and 
 benevolence and all the qualities of 
 holiness form a part of that salvation 
 of which faith is the only condition. 
 They are results of faith just as cer- 
 tain as the pardon of sin and admis- 
 sion to Heaven. 
 
 When a man sincerely believes in 
 Christ he becomes good, and his 
 goodness is a part of his salvation, 
 and a most necessary part. Indeed 
 there is no salvation of which good- 
 ness does not form a part. So that 
 no matter how emphatically a man 
 may assert that lie believes in Jesus, 
 if his life is persistently evil, we 
 know that he is deceiving himself 
 and that he has no true faith. If an 
 evil-living man is counting on par- 
 don and the joys of Heaven on the 
 ground of his faith in Jesus, he is 
 cherishing a false hope, because his 
 want of personal righteousness shows 
 that his faith is not genuine that it 
 is not effecting, and cannot effect, 
 Ms salvation. 
 
THE EXPERIMENTAL PROOF. 127 
 
 Still, salvation by faith, and by 
 faith alone, is the great central doc- 
 trine of Christianity ; everything else 
 turns on this, so that the one urgent 
 exhortation which is ever on the 
 lips of the preacher of the gospel is 
 just this Believe ! Believe ! Believe 
 on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou 
 shalt be saved saved from sin first, 
 and then from that misery which, is 
 the consequence of sin. We go into 
 all the world and to every creature, 
 we proclaim the good news of a free 
 salvation, and he who believes is 
 saved, and he who refuses to believe 
 is condemned, "because he hath not 
 believed in the name of the only 
 begotten Son of God." 
 
 And right here, at this central 
 point, is the difficulty with many 
 who are not Christians. They say, 
 " Such a condition of salvation is not 
 fair, because one's beliefs are not 
 under the control of the will. m One 
 cannot, therefore, be held respon- 
 sible for his beliefs. I have looked 
 
123 THE EXPERIMENTAL PROOF. 
 
 into this matter and my mind is not 
 convinced, and consequently it is out 
 of the question for me to believe. 
 It is all very beautiful, and it would 
 be very pleasant to know that it is 
 all true, but I honestly do not and 
 cannot believe it. Why should I be 
 punished for what I cannot help?" 
 
 Now let us consider whether this 
 position is sound or not whether, 
 indeed, it is a fact that the unbe- 
 liever cannot believe: 
 
 Beliefs are sometimes produced 
 by arguments addressed to the un- 
 derstanding, sometimes by the testi- 
 mony of men upon whose intelli- 
 gence and honesty we rely; but the 
 scientific method of experiment is 
 the method which in these days is 
 especially relied upon to reach con- 
 viction and certainty. 
 
 Now to my mind the philosoph- 
 ical argument for the truth of the 
 Christian religion is simply conclu- 
 sive. The process of reasoning by 
 which it can be shown that the 
 
THE EXPERIMENTAL PROOF. 129 
 
 church is a divine institution; that 
 the Bible is the product of inspi- 
 ration, and that Jesus Christ is 
 the Son of God, appears to me 
 to be sound, logical and unan- 
 swerable. But to you it does not 
 seem so. You have considered the 
 arguments for and against Chris- 
 tianity, and you are convinced 
 that the church is a merely human 
 society; that the Bible is not the 
 Word of God in any special sense, 
 and that Jesus was self-deceived, 
 and from these arguments, you 
 say that you can come to no other 
 conclusion. 
 
 So, again, the testimony of Chris- 
 tians would be enough to satisfy my 
 mind of the truth of our religion. 
 Myriads of men and women, of high 
 intelligence and undoubted honesty, 
 in every age of the church, have 
 asserted that God lias revealed Him- 
 self to their faith; that they have 
 had experiences which make it im- 
 possible for them to doubt. Their 
 
13J THE EXPERIMENTAL PROOF. 
 
 testimony is like that of Meyer's 
 St. Paul- 
 
 " Whoso has felt the Spirit of the Highest, 
 ''Cannot confound, nor doubt Him, nor deny: 
 
 "Yea, with one voice, O world, though thou deni- 
 
 est, 
 "Stand thou on that skte, for 011 this am I. 
 
 "Rather the Earth shall doubt when her retriev- 
 ing 
 
 "Pours in the rain and rushes from the sod, 
 "Rather than he for whom the great conceiving 
 
 "Stirs in his soul to quicken into God. 
 
 "Ay, though thou then shouldst strike him from 
 his glory, 
 
 "Blind and tormented, maddened, and alone, 
 "Even on the cross would he maintain his story, 
 
 "Yes, and in hell would whisper, I have known." 
 
 Their hearts, their desires, their pur- 
 poses, their whole lives have been 
 changed under the influence of the 
 Holy Spirit, and it is an influence of 
 which they have been and are per- 
 fectly Conscious. But while to me 
 this evidence is perfectly convincing, 
 in your mind, perhaps, it does not 
 produce conviction. You believe 
 that these people are mistaken, that 
 
THE EXPERIMENTAL PROOF. 131 
 
 they are self-deceived, that the re- 
 sults which they attribute to super- 
 natural causes and divine influences 
 are really due to causes perfectly 
 natural, and so you cannot receive 
 their testimony. 
 
 And "Now," you say, "what 
 more can I do? I cannot force my 
 mind to accept that which my reason 
 rejects." True, but neither can I go 
 back of my Master's words, "he that 
 believeth shall be saved, and he that 
 believeth not shall be condemned," 
 and yet I am perfectly sure that not 
 one single individual in all the uni- 
 verse will ever be condemned for 
 what he cannot help. 
 
 The fact is that you are mistaken 
 when you say you cannot believe. 
 You can believe, if you will take the 
 necessary steps to reach belief. 
 
 I do not mean that you are to go 
 deeper into the argument for Chris- 
 tianity, although I doubt whether 
 you have quite exhausted that meth- 
 od of inquiry. Nor do I mean that 
 
132 THE EXPERIMENTAL PROOF. 
 
 you should reconsider the force and 
 significance of the testimony of be- 
 lievers, although the probability is 
 that you have not given that testi- 
 mony its due weight. But I do 
 mean that you should adopt the plan 
 suggested in the text, which, after 
 all, is the only method by which any 
 true saving faith can be acquired. 
 
 TRY Christianity. Test it by per- 
 sonal experiment. "0 taste and see 
 that the Lord is good." There is 
 really no other way of getting at the 
 bottom of it. Argument and the 
 testimony of others are, indeed, of 
 great value: they confirm the waver- 
 ing; they strengthen the weak; they 
 lead the hesitating to try the exper- 
 iment. In the minds of infidel and 
 skeptic they awaken doubts as to 
 the validity of their doubts. But 
 they can never produce a living faith. 
 Even if you were fully convinced in 
 your reason that all that the Bible 
 contains is the very truth of God, 
 still, unless you are able to say, "I 
 
THE EXPERIMENTAL PROOF. 133 
 
 have tasted and seen," you have no 
 real faith. 
 
 Just here, then, is where your 
 responsibility in this matter of faith 
 comes in. Is it honest for you to 
 say that you cannot believe until 
 you have used every possible means 
 to acquire belief? And yet, as a 
 matter of fact, the one only proper 
 and sure method, the straight-for- 
 ward, common-sense, scientific meth- 
 od you have utterly neglected. 
 
 .Christianity is not merely a phi- 
 losophy, a theory to be accepted or 
 rejected by logical argument. It is 
 a mode of life, a principle of con- 
 duct, to be tested by experiment. 
 And if you do really desire to 
 believe, is it not foolish to refuse to 
 make the experiments by which 
 alone a true and saving faith can be 
 reached? 
 
 And this leads us to notice that 
 the exhortation to "taste and see" 
 has an equal application to many 
 who are not thorough untelievers, 
 
134 THE EXPERIMENTAL PROOF. 
 
 but who accept intellectually the 
 essential doctrines of Christianity, 
 and acknowledge the supernatural 
 origin of the Bible and the divinity 
 of Christ, yet hold back, hesitating, 
 refusing to become Christians, be- 
 cause there are details which they 
 do not quite understand, and because 
 there are some doctrines which they 
 can hardly believe. 
 
 When conscience urges them to 
 turn to Christ for salvation, they set 
 to work first to argue away their 
 doubts, and to get their theory of 
 religion all complete and consistent 
 before they will accept the offered 
 mercy, or declare themselves on the 
 Lord's side. One says: "I would 
 like to be a Christian, but I do not 
 understand how there can be sin in 
 a universe created and governed by 
 an infinitely holy, wise and powerful 
 God." And he thinks he must solve 
 that mystery before he can be a true 
 Christian. Another cannot satisfy 
 himself in regard to the doctrine of 
 
THE EXPERIMENTAL PROOF. 135 
 
 predestination, and he will not trust 
 Christ as his Savior until that matter 
 is settled. A third stumbles at the 
 doctrine of eternal punishment, and 
 will not go a step further until that 
 obstacle is removed. They stand 
 and argue and debate and object, as 
 if their Christianity depended upon 
 the clearing up of all those dark and 
 mysterious subjects. 
 
 To all such the text speaks, "0 
 taste and see that the Lord is good." 
 Stop talking, stop arguing, and put 
 God to the test. Try the experi- 
 ment, and you will soon believe all 
 that it is necessary for you to believe ; 
 and your belief will not be a dead 
 theory, but a living and life-giving 
 principle which, under the Spirit's 
 leading, will, in the end, include all 
 truth. While even now your exper- 
 iment will bring peace to your soul 
 and make your w^hole life nobler and 
 more worthy. 
 
 We now come to the important, 
 practical question How are these 
 
130 THE EXPERIMENTAL PROOF. 
 
 experiments to be made? What 
 tests can we properly apply to Chris- 
 tianity in order to discover by per- 
 sonal experience whether it be true? 
 Of course we must be careful to test 
 Christianity as it really is in the 
 Scriptures, and not as it is in our 
 notions. 
 
 When the Jews demanded that 
 Christ should give them a sign from 
 Heaven, that is, that He should pro- 
 duce some wondrous spectacle in the 
 sky, they were applying no proper 
 test to His claims. He was not a 
 mere wonder-worker. His miracles 
 were all wrought to illustrate and 
 enforce spiritual truths, and when 
 they clamored for a mere wonder to 
 impress their senses, they were not 
 testing Jesus according to what He 
 claimed to be, but according to their 
 own unworthy and carnal notions of 
 what the promised Messiah should 
 be and do. So, also, when Professor 
 Tyndall suggested that the utility of 
 prayer should be tested by all the 
 
THE EXPERIMENTAL PROOF. 137 
 
 churches praying for a certain thing, 
 to see whether it would be granted, 
 he simply displayed his ignorance of 
 the Christian doctrine of prayer of 
 its nature and use, as taught in the 
 Scriptures. His proposed tes t would 
 have proved nothing, one way or the 
 other, in regard to the real value of 
 prayer. It would only have illus- 
 trated the folly of Professor Tyn- 
 dall's notion of prayer. A notion 
 which is no less foolish and unsciip- 
 tural because, unfortunately, many 
 good Christians seem to hold and 
 advocate it. 
 
 And so in regard to Christianity 
 as a whole, if you were to demand 
 that the Almighty should write a 
 declaration of its truth on this wall 
 in letters of fire, that would be no 
 proper test at all, for Christianity 
 has never pretended that anything 
 of the kind would ever be done. 
 And, if it should be done, it would 
 prove nothing as to the real vnlue 
 and efficacy of our religion it would 
 
133 THE EXPERIMENTAL PROOF. 
 
 have no power to convince a single 
 mind of any spiritual truth; or if 
 you demand that worldly prosperity 
 and success should be the results of 
 becoming religious, and decide that 
 religion is a delusion because these 
 results do not, in many instances, 
 follow the practice of piety; or if 
 you insist that God should make 
 you perfect and sinless before you 
 will believe His word or put your 
 trust in Him; these experiments 
 would be utterly worthless, because 
 utterly inapplicable. You would be 
 merely testing your own precon- 
 ceived idea of what God ought to be, 
 and of what Christianity ought to 
 effect, and not at all the God and the 
 Christianity of the Bible. 
 
 Still another wrong and unwar- 
 rantable test, which many will insist 
 upon applying to Christianity, is 
 this: they require that the Spirit of 
 God should so work upon them as to 
 produce some sudden and over- 
 whelming excitement of the feelings, 
 
THE EXPERIMENTAL PROOF. 139 
 
 and they demand that before they 
 yield to Christ their faith and obedi- 
 ence, they shall be made conscious 
 of some mystical supernatural influ- 
 ence, which shall bear them along as 
 on a flood toward God and truth. 
 And since this proof is not given 
 them, they will not believe they 
 will not obey. But this is no proper 
 test for, while it is true that the 
 Holy Spirit does in some instances 
 manifest His presence and His power 
 in such manner, as in the case of the 
 Apostle Paul, yet far more frequently 
 it is through the ordinary operations 
 of the mind and in the common 
 events of life, and by the clear 
 teachings of the Bible, that He 
 speaks to the human soul and leads 
 it to submit to His heavenly [guid- 
 ance. And surely we may not 
 demand of Him a method of con- 
 version which He has not promised 
 to follow. 
 
 But now let us look at some of 
 the tests which may be legitimately 
 
140 THE EXPERIMENTAL PROOF. 
 
 and effectually applied to Christian- 
 ity. 
 
 It is recorded that when Jesus was 
 on the earth, He gave this invitation 
 and made this promise "Come 
 unto me all ye that labor and are 
 heavy laden and I will . give you 
 rest." And to this day Christianity 
 makes much of this, and asserts 
 distinctly and confidently, staking 
 its truth upon the assertion, that 
 any man who will go to Christ and 
 ask His help will find rest and peace 
 for his soul. Now, you have sins 
 that burden you. Does not con- 
 science often remind you of them? 
 Do they not at times lie heavy on 
 your soul? You cannot, I am sure, 
 think peacefully and joyfully of the 
 hour when you must stand before 
 your Maker and give account of the 
 deeds done in the body. The 
 thought of judgment, and of the 
 dark uncertainty that shrouds the 
 future, oppresses you with a vague 
 feeling of dread. Here, then, you 
 
THE EXPERIMENTAL PROOF. 141 
 
 may test God. Now you can try 
 Christianity, and find out for your- 
 self whether it be true. Go to Jesus 
 Christ with all your weary burden. 
 Go, even if you are not sure that He 
 can hear you or help you, and cry 
 " thou ^iat takest away the sin of 
 the world, take away my sin," and 
 if you mean it if you are willing to 
 part with all the sweetness of sin as 
 well as with its bitterness then, if 
 there is any truth in our religion, 
 that prayer will be heard, and you 
 w r ill soon be able to exclaim, in the 
 assurance of a triumphant faith, "I 
 know that my Redeemer liveth." 
 
 Or you have sorrows that are 
 heavy to bear. They have no ele- 
 ment of brightness or hope in them, 
 but they darken all your life with 
 their deep, unintelligible misery. 
 Now you can apply the acid and see 
 whether the shining metal be indeed 
 pure gold. Take your heavy-laden 
 soul to Jesus Christ, and plead His 
 promise, and ask for light and com- 
 
142 THE EXPERIMENTAL PROOF. 
 
 fort, and then, if Christ be true, you 
 will find rest. And even in your 
 sore affliction you will discover a 
 wise and loving purpose. Through 
 the mist of your tears you will recog- 
 nize your Father's face, and the 
 peace of God, which msseth all 
 understanding, will keep your heart 
 and mind. 
 
 Again, Jesus declares that the 
 Heavenly Father will give His Holy 
 Spirit to those who ask Him. And 
 He says, "Blessed are the pure in 
 heart, for they shall see God." Now, 
 do you really desire to believe? 
 Would you indeed be convinced? 
 Would you know the truth of this 
 Savior? Then make the experiment. 
 Ask for the Holy Spirit to enlighten 
 and guide you. Purify your heart. 
 Walk in the ways of holiness. Aim 
 steadily at truth in speech and con- 
 duct. Set about a life of careful 
 obedience to the precepts of the 
 Bible; and then, unless Christianity 
 is a falsehood and a failure, you 
 
THE EXPERIMENTAL PROOF. 143 
 
 shall see God you shall come to a 
 clear, trusting, confiding knowledge 
 of Him. The twilight of doubt, nay, 
 the very night of unbelief, will be- 
 come the bright noonday of assured 
 faith. 
 
 These and such as these are the 
 proper practical tests by which to 
 try Christianity. In this way you 
 may "taste and see that the Lord is 
 good." And not until you have 
 thoroughly and faithfully made these 
 experiments and found them to fail, 
 can you honestly claim that you 
 cannot believe in Christ. If the 
 arguments for Christianity do not 
 convince you; if the testimony of 
 Christians to the reality of their 
 experiences is insufficient evidence 
 for you; yet this method, this best 
 and only sure method, still remains. 
 Taste, and you will see that the 
 Lord is good. 
 
 Some of us have made this per- 
 sonal trial of Jesus Christ and His 
 promises, and now we believe, not 
 
144 THE EXPERIMENTAL PROOF. 
 
 because it is reasonable, not because 
 we have been told by others, but 
 because we have experienced His 
 love and His truth. Our experiment 
 has been successful and satisfactory. 
 Now, will not you make the trial? 
 
 Is it not the part of a wise man, 
 is it not the part of a fair-minded 
 man, to prove all things and to hold 
 fast that which is good? 
 
VII. 
 Sin. 
 
VII. 
 
 1 JOHN iii, 4. "Sin is the transgression of the 
 Law." 
 
 SIN is an ugly word and stands 
 for an ugly thing. It is not a pleas- 
 ant or attractive subject to contem- 
 plate. To drag out into the light 
 and hold up to view, to look at and 
 meditate upon the sinfulness of the 
 human heart, and all the horrid con- 
 sequences of that sinfulness, is by 
 no means an agreeable occupation. 
 And because it is not agreeable, 
 many people object to its being done 
 under any circumstances. 
 
 Why not dismiss so gloomy a sub- 
 ject? they say. Why give it any 
 prominence whatever ? Certainly 
 there is present actual misery and 
 sorrow enough in the world, without 
 affrighting us with this grim spectre 
 
148 SIN. 
 
 of guilt and its ghostly train of at- 
 tendant woes. The preacher should 
 seek to make life brighter, not dark- 
 er. Pleasant themes should be pre- 
 sented in the pulpit. The church 
 should be a place of joy and peace. 
 Religion should be made attractive. 
 The love of God should be dwelt 
 upon. His fatherly goodness and 
 tender pity should be set forth with 
 emphasis, and only those subjects 
 that are calculated to draw and win 
 men should be preached about. 
 
 Ah ! how glad would we be if the 
 facts of the case would warrant such 
 a course. But, alas, they will not, 
 and the minister who adopts that 
 pleasant theory as the plan of his 
 ministry is recreant to his duty, dis- 
 loyal to his Master, and unfaithful 
 to his people. 
 
 It is our business, as ambassadors 
 of the Great King, to speak from 
 the Word of God concerning the life 
 of men; and since both the Word of 
 God and human life are full of this 
 
SIN. 149 
 
 subject; since it is the most conspic- 
 uous fact in human experience, and 
 the Bible refers, to it on every page, 
 certainly, if we leave out sin and its 
 punishment, we cannot be true to 
 our commission. 
 
 And, besides, if we do shut our 
 ^yes to these facts; if we refuse 
 to consider them; if we succeed 
 in dismissing from our minds all 
 the painful thoughts, the fears 
 and misgivings to which they give 
 rise; we do not in this way oblit- 
 erate the facts. We do not get 
 rid of sin. We do not escape its 
 punishment. We are simply like 
 the debtor, who has not the moral 
 courage to examine his accounts, 
 and who, rather than think about 
 the disagreeable subject of his debts, 
 allows his affairs to run to still 
 greater confusion, and to final and 
 irretrievable ruin. Or we are like 
 one afflicted with some secret dis- 
 ease, who refuses to call in the 
 physician, or to take any medicine 
 
150 SIN. 
 
 because it makes him unhappy to be 
 reminded that he is sick. 
 
 To avoid the consideration of facts, 
 simply because they are painful or 
 disquieting, is weak and cowardly, 
 and it does no good. 
 
 Moreover, we can only rise to an 
 adequate conception of God's love in 
 the recognition of our own sinfulness. 
 We can only experience the full joy 
 of salvation, as we realize what it 
 is from which we are being saved. 
 
 The fair, radiant, joy-giving pic- 
 ture of Jesus Christ as our Savior 
 and friend, can only shine forth in 
 its full beauty and lustre, from the 
 dark background of that estate of 
 sin and misery from which He re- 
 deems us. 
 
 Let us, therefore, honestly, man- 
 fully, fearlessly, look at this terrible 
 and universal fact, and endeavor, in 
 the light of revelation and experi- 
 ence, to understand what sin is, so 
 that we may the better know how 
 we can be saved from it. 
 

 SIN. 151 
 
 Many crude and incorrect notions 
 prevail in regard to the nature of 
 sin, and this error and confusion 
 lead to very sad practical results. 
 
 Thus, there are those who esteem 
 :as sin only such acts as are against 
 the law of the land; to commit mur- 
 der, to steal, to forge another man's 
 name these crimes, and such as 
 these, cover all that the word sin 
 means to them. 
 
 Others advance a step beyond this, 
 and include in their idea of sin all 
 acts that are contrary to the law of 
 public opinion, and the customs and 
 morals of civilized life. They admit 
 that drunkenness, impurity, pro- 
 fanity, lying, indeed vices of all 
 kinds are sinful. But, if they avoid 
 immorality, then they cannot be 
 charged with sin. 
 
 Still others, having deeper insight 
 and taking a wider view, find sin, 
 not only in the outward act, but in 
 the thoughts and feelings and desires 
 of the heart, even when these are 
 
152 SIN. 
 
 not expressed in action. They re- 
 cognize the fact that envy and cov- 
 etousness, and hatred, and lust, no 
 matter how secretly they may be- 
 hidden from the eyes of men, are 
 in themselves sinful and corrupt, and 
 defile the man who indulges them. 
 And so they make it their aim to be 
 rid of all such evil thoughts and 
 feelings and desires, and with that 
 they are satisfied. They say: "If 
 we do not harbor ill will to those 
 who have injured us; if we are not 
 envious of those who are better off'* v 
 if we keep our minds clean and inno- 
 cent, surely we cannot be called sin- 
 ners." 
 
 In this way men set up their own 
 theories, and try themselves accord- 
 ing to a standard of their own cre- 
 ation, and then complacently assume 
 that they are without sin. And yet, 
 while they thus justify themselves, 
 they cannot altogether escape the 
 conviction that after all they are not 
 quite what they ought to be not- 
 
SIN. 1C3 
 
 quite what they were intended to be. 
 Conscience is not entirely satisfied. 
 The uneasy question whispers itself 
 in their hearts "What lack I yet?" 
 
 When we turn to God's Word, 
 when we leave all human notions 
 and theories, and seek simply to 
 discover what God has revealed 
 concerning sin, we see how shallow 
 and inadequate all these theories 
 are. The Bible teaches us that not 
 only are crimes and vices and evil 
 -thoughts sin, but the neglect of 
 active practical goodness is equally 
 sin. If we fail to do good to our 
 fellow men; if we fail to glorify God 
 by acknowledging Him and worship- 
 ing Him; this failure is sin. "He 
 that knoweth to do good and doeth 
 it not, to Him it is sin." It is de- 
 clared that the heathen are con- 
 demned, because when they knew 
 God they did not glorify Him as 
 God. 
 
 Nor does the Bible stop here. It 
 goes still further; it penetrates still 
 
154 SIN. 
 
 deeper, and discovers sin in the 
 absence of certain thoughts from the 
 mind, and in the absence of certain 
 emotions from the heart. Accord- 
 ing to the Word of God, if we fail 
 to entertain and cultivate a positive, 
 sincere, hearty love for God and for 
 our fellow men, then, no matter how 
 devout we may be in the forms of 
 worship, and no matter how liberal 
 our charitable gifts may be, we are 
 still sinners and under the condem- 
 nation of the law. 
 
 Thus we see that, if the Bible be 
 true, though a man be not guilty of 
 any crime; though he have no vices; 
 though he cherish no hard feelings, 
 no evil thoughts; though he give all 
 his goods to feed the poor; though, 
 in the fervor of his religious devo- 
 tion, he give his body to be burned 
 as a supreme act of worship, he may 
 still, in spite of all this, be guilty 
 before God a sinner, condemned 
 and lost. 
 
 Let us now try to see just why it 
 
SIN. 155 
 
 is that this must be true, and so be 
 able to "justify the ways of God to 
 men." 
 
 Our text declares that " Sin is the 
 transgression of the law," or as it is 
 in the revised version, "Sin is law- 
 lessness " disregard of law. But 
 what is the law, the transgression or 
 disregard of which is sin? Our Lord 
 Jesus Himself says "Thou shalt 
 love the Lord thy God with all thy 
 heart, and with all thy soul, and 
 mind and strength this is the first 
 .and great commandment, and " the 
 second is like unto it, namely: thou 
 shalt love thy neighbor as thy self. 
 On these two commandments hang 
 all the law and the prophets." Now 
 this law, thus endorsed and empha- 
 sized by Jesus Christ, is not a mere 
 arbitrary decree, of an Almighty 
 King. It is not simply a command. 
 It is rather the statement of the rule 
 or order of our true life. It is the 
 revelation of the divine plan of our 
 existence. It declares the method by 
 
156 SIN. 
 
 which, according to the original con- 
 stitution of our nature, we are to 
 accomplish the purpose for which 
 we were created. 
 
 We find in all the works of God 
 clear evidence that they were made 
 to fulfill certain ends, and the 
 scheme or plan of existence, by 
 which each thing accomplishes the 
 end designed, is the law of its 
 being, impressed upon it at its crea- 
 tion. Thus the rivers flow in their 
 channels, and the forests give their 
 shade, and the orchards bring forth 
 fruit, and fire gives forth light and 
 heat, and the atmosphere encom- 
 passes the earth to soften the rays 
 of the glowing sun, and all the hosts 
 of Heaven move on in their ap- 
 pointed orbits; and each fulfills its 
 destiny and accomplishes the design 
 of its creator. Each thing in the 
 universe is under law, and obedient 
 to law, and exists only according to 
 the plan of existence ordained for it 
 from the beginning. And it is in 
 
SIN. 157 
 
 consequence of this obedience to 
 law that we have the sublime and 
 beautiful harmony of nature, all 
 things working together in perfect 
 accord. For we know that all appa- 
 rent conflicts and contradictions in 
 the material universe; all the so- 
 called strife of the elements; all the 
 fickleness of the winds; all the 
 eccentricities of meteors and comets, 
 are very different, indeed, yet really 
 harmonious notes in one grand 
 chorus of praise to the Creator and 
 Ruler of all. 
 
 From that far-off beginning, when 
 God created the heavens and the 
 earth, all things have thus fol- 
 lowed, unswervingly, the law of 
 their being, and till the earth shall 
 be consumed and the heavens rolled 
 up as a scroll, all things will and 
 must continue in absolute perfect 
 submission to law. 
 
 But man is not a thing. He is a 
 power. Made in the image of God, 
 endowed with intelligence and will, 
 
158 SIN. 
 
 he is able to break the law of his 
 Toeing; he is able to choose a plan of 
 existence different from that which 
 his Creator designed; he is able to 
 disregard the original constitution 
 of his nature. And it is this ability, 
 this freedom to choose between 
 obedience and disobedience, that 
 places him in the scale of being 
 above all created things. It is this 
 that makes possible his immortal 
 .glory and dignity. It is this that 
 drew from Heaven the Son of God 
 to die for his salvation. 
 
 As we have seen, the great primal, 
 fundamental law of man's existence 
 is love a law which could only be 
 arranged for beings capable of dis- 
 regarding it. Men were made to be 
 in conscious intelligent harmony 
 with their fellowmen; not simply to 
 abstain from injuring one another; 
 not simply to bargain and traffic 
 with one another; not simply to live 
 together in outward intercourse; but 
 to recognize and live in accordance 
 
SIN. 150 
 
 with the fact that all their highest 
 interests are common interests; to 
 see in every other member of the 
 human race a brother and to treat 
 him as such; to feel and to manifest 
 an active practical affection for all 
 men; to seek, each one, not his own, 
 but the things of others. So, too, 
 men were made to have conscious 
 fellowship with God their Creator; 
 not simply to live on His bounty, 
 and to depend upon His goodness; 
 not simply to obey in outward act 
 His decrees, and to speak His praise 
 with the lips. But they were made 
 to enter into His plans; to sympa- 
 thize with His thoughts; to rejoice 
 in His holy purposes; to love what 
 He loves; to hate what He hates; to 
 delight in all His will; to give love 
 for love. 
 
 This i the design of man's cre- 
 ation, and this is the plan according 
 to which his chief end is to be 
 attained. And what a glorious plan 
 it is. Think of the countless mill- 
 
160 SIN. 
 
 ions of all generations living from 
 age to age in perfect love and har- 
 mony with each other; filling the 
 earth with the sweetness of univer- 
 sal peace and brotherhood; all hu- 
 man tongues musical with words of 
 pure affection; all human activities 
 fragrant with deeds of unselfish 
 kindness. Think of this harmonious, 
 united humanity, together with the 
 principalities and powers, the angels 
 and archangels, the spiritual intelli- 
 gences that throng the heavenly 
 places, all held in one by a common 
 sentiment of supreme absorbing af- 
 fection for the Eternal Author of 
 their beini?; the God and Father of 
 all. 
 
 Such is the ideal of human exist- 
 ence. Such is the law for man. 
 And now is it not evident that any- 
 thing in man's will, in his desires, in 
 his conduct, that tends to interrupt 
 this harmony; anything that is not 
 in strict accordance with this law is 
 nn? For sin is the transgression of 
 
SIN. 161 
 
 the laic, and the law for man is love, 
 and so any thought, or word, or act, 
 in disregard of love, is and must be 
 sin. Not crime alone which vio- 
 lently assails another's rights and 
 happiness, and openly flouts the 
 divine command; not vice and im- 
 morality alone ; not evil thoughts and 
 corrupt passions alone, but selfish- 
 ness, mere passive indifference to 
 God and our fellow men is lawless- 
 ness, and therefore sin. 
 
 Indeed, we may go still further 
 and see that this neglect of the law 
 must necessarily result in misery. 
 Because we have this wonderful 
 power of transgressing the law of 
 our being, we do not, therefore, 
 dethrone God, we do not escape the 
 reign of law. There is another law 
 that supplements the one we have 
 broken and revenges it. "The soul 
 that sinneth, it shall die." And 
 under the operation of this law we 
 bring ourselves, when we rebel 
 against the law of love. And this 
 
162 SIN. 
 
 also is no arbitrary decree. This 
 also is the statement of a natural 
 and necessary sequence, resulting 
 from the very constitution of the 
 soul. It is the declaration of a 
 principle, without which the uni- 
 verse is unthinkable. By way of illus- 
 tration, think of the solar system in 
 the intricate yet beautiful harmony 
 of its movements. Think of the 
 planets, with their attendant satel- 
 lites, their moons, their rings, each 
 revolving on its own axis, and all, in 
 their respective orbits, circling about 
 the central sun. Obedient to the law 
 of their being, they act and react 
 upon one another through the ages, 
 fulfilling their destiny, and suggest- 
 ing to the poetic mind the music of 
 the spheres. But now imagine one of 
 these worlds, suddenly endowed 
 with self-will and the power of 
 choice; imagine it refusing to revolve 
 any longer on its axis, refusing to 
 remain in its orbit, refusing to be 
 obedient to law does not science 
 
SIN. 163 
 
 teach us that it would immediately 
 come under another law, even a law 
 of destruction? Do not we know 
 that it would but plunge itself into 
 ruin and desolation? . 
 
 Or, to come nearer home, we know 
 in our own experience what disas- 
 trous effects result from the disre- 
 gard of law. Thus it is a law of our 
 physical life that we should breathe 
 pure air, and we know that if, in 
 transgression of this law, we take 
 into our lungs certain foul and poi- 
 sonous gases, then our lungs will be 
 destroyed, or their functions sus- 
 pended. So, again, it is a law of 
 our mental, our intellectual life, that 
 the mind grows strong and vigorous 
 by the contemplation of truth, by 
 occupying itself with pure and noble 
 subjects of thought; and we know 
 that if, instead of obeying this law, 
 we keep before the mind falsehood 
 and error, if we indulge impure and 
 licentious thoughts, our intellectual 
 faculties soon become enfeebled and 
 
164 SIN. 
 
 corrupt, and often imbecility or mad- 
 ness is the final result of such dis- 
 regard of law. And we also know 
 that no human power can change 
 these laws or prevent these results. 
 
 And now, in view of these facts, 
 is it not certain that the transgres- 
 sion of this highest law of man's 
 spiritual being must lead to results 
 proportionately disastrous? . Is it 
 not certain that the disregard of this 
 law of love, by which alone we can 
 accomplish our true destiny, must 
 produce confusion and misery in our 
 souls, and end in desolation and 
 death? This is the teaching of rea- 
 son. This is the warning of con- 
 science. This is the plain, explicit 
 declaration of the Word of God. 
 
 Such is our lost, hopeless condi- 
 tion. We have disregarded the true 
 plan of our life. We have set our- 
 selves against the design of our cre- 
 ation. We have broken the LAW OF 
 LOVE, and so we have come under 
 the law of wrath and destruction. 
 
SIN. 165 
 
 From the operation of this law 
 no human strength can deliver us. 
 No man; no angel or archangel; no 
 wisdom less than the infinite wisdom 
 of God, could devise a means of 
 escape from the awful effects of this 
 law. But, blessed be God, a way of 
 escape is provided. A way so sim- 
 ple, so plain that the wayfaring man 
 though a fool need not err therein 
 for "God so loved the world that he 
 gave his only begotten Son, that 
 whosoever believeth on him might 
 not perish, but have everlasting 
 life." "Believe on the Lord Jesus 
 Christ and thou shalt be saved." 
 
 How Christ can save His people 
 from their sins; how He can make 
 us the blessed, immortal children of 
 God, and at the same time maintain 
 the order of the universe and the 
 law of sin and death; how He can 
 restore in us the law of love and 
 life, there is not time now to con- 
 sider; nor indeed could we ever in 
 this world fully solve the mystery. 
 
166 SIN* 
 
 But, unless He, the purest, the- 
 noblest, the truest, the wisest being 
 that ever trod the earth was a false, 
 fanatical impostor; unless the myri- 
 ads who have found righteousness 
 and peace in Him have been grossly 
 deceived, He can and will accom- 
 plish this great salvation for all who 
 believe on Him and trust themselves 
 to Him. "I am the way, the truth 
 and the life," He declares; "none 
 cometh unto the Father but by me," 
 but " Whosoever cometh unto me I 
 will in no wise cast out." 
 
 Do you know of any other deliv- 
 erer? Where is he? What is his 
 name? Do you see any other door 
 of hope opening before you? In 
 \yhat direction does it lie? 
 
VIII. 
 Eegeneration. 
 
VIII. 
 
 JOHN iii, 3. " Verily, verily I say unto thee, except 
 a man be born again he cannot see the Kingdom of 
 God." 
 
 A WITTY French woman once said: 
 4 'My consent was not asked when I 
 was born"- implying that the re- 
 sponsibility of her life and her des- 
 tiny did not rest upon herself, but 
 upon her Maker. And in this she 
 gave expression to what is, I believe, 
 a very common thought among men. 
 They silence the reproaches of con- 
 science, they quiet their apprehen- 
 sions of judgment, they repel the 
 advances of religion, on the ground 
 that, after all, they are what God 
 made them. They have had no 
 choice in regard to their inherited 
 tendencies, and very little in regard 
 to their circumstances. And, there- 
 fore, as a man's character and con- 
 
170 REGENERATION. 
 
 duct are the result of heredity and 
 environment, i. e., as our thoughts 
 and feelings and actions are due to 
 qualities with which we were born, 
 and to circumstances over which we 
 have no control, we cannot be held 
 responsible, and we need not worry 
 ourselves about the future. And so 
 repentance and faith and all this fuss 
 about religion are idle and foolish. 
 Let us live on naturally, according 
 to our own bent and inclination, and 
 the future will take care of itself. 
 
 So men talk, and turn their backs 
 upon Christianity and the Church. 
 But their position is utterly false 
 and irrational, because the premises 
 upon which they base their argu- 
 ment are not true to the facts. 
 
 No man is entirely the product 
 of inheritance and circumstances. 
 There is a third something which 
 goes to make up the character of 
 each individual, and that is his own 
 personal will, or power of choice. 
 Heredity and environment may ac- 
 
REGENERATION. 171 
 
 count for, and be responsible for a 
 great deal, but not for everything. 
 Every man knows that his natural 
 inherited disposition and tempera- 
 ment have been more or less modi- 
 fied by resistance or cultivation; and 
 every man knows that again and 
 again he has broken through or 
 changed his circumstances, accord- 
 ing to his own free individual choice; 
 and so, in this margin of personal 
 freedom, there is abundant room for 
 responsibility. In spite of all argu- 
 ments to the contrary, men know 
 that they are responsible for many 
 of their thoughts and feelings and 
 actions. 
 
 But let us suppose that this re- 
 sponsibility is, after all, a very small 
 matter; that man's power of will is 
 so circumscribed and insignificant 
 that he really is not able to do much 
 with himself; 4hat he really cannot 
 make himself much better or much 
 worse than his birth and his circum- 
 stances have made him; that in his 
 
172 REGENERATION. 
 
 daily life, he is certainly unable 
 to reach, or even to approach the 
 standard of truth and purity and 
 unselfishness, which his own judg- 
 ment approves as his proper ideal. 
 
 This, indeed, is simply the teach- 
 ing of the Bible. It is what is 
 meant, by the statement in our 
 "Confession of Faith," that "Man, 
 by his fall into a state of sin, hath 
 wholly lost all ability of will to any 
 spiritual good accompanying salva- 
 tion"; i. 0., by the sin of Adam, and 
 the general corruption of his ances- 
 tors, each individual man has, by the 
 law of heredity, received such a bias 
 of his whole nature toward evil, that 
 he is utterly incapable of leading a 
 good and holy life. But if this be 
 so, why is not the French woman 
 right? "My consent was not asked 
 when I was born." And having been 
 thus, through no choice of my own,, 
 born to such a devilish inheritance, 
 how can I help it, and how am I to 
 blame if I go to the devil? 
 
REGENERATION. 17$ 
 
 It were aside from the object of 
 this sermon to consider what the 
 answer to that question would be, 
 if there were no gospel. Whether 
 your involuntary birth as a member 
 of a lost and ruined race would, of 
 itself, have involved your personal 
 loss and ruin, is a question which, 
 in the present connection, is of no 
 importance. As a matter of fact, 
 there is a gospel of salvation to the 
 lost. And that gospel proclaims 
 the possibility, for every man, of a 
 second birth. So that, even though 
 it be true that you have been born 
 of the flesh, without your consent, 
 to a corrupt, sinful nature which in- 
 clines you irresistibly toward evil, 
 yet there is now the opportunity 
 offered you of being born again of 
 the Spirit of God, and this second 
 birth is a matter within your own 
 choice. That is, you may, if you 
 choose, take a fresh start; you may 
 begin life anew, with your nature so 
 transformed and made over that 
 
174 REGENERA T10N. 
 
 your inclinations and desires will 
 henceforth be toward God and good- 
 ness. 
 
 In spite of the drawbacks and 
 hindrances which result from your 
 first birth, you will be able to ad- 
 vance toward the ideal of perfect 
 manhood. And having, by this sec- 
 ond birth, inherited the divine nature, 
 you may know that, according to 
 the law of heredity, you will become 
 like God; or, as Paul puts it, "con- 
 formed to the image of His Son." 
 
 This is the gospel. This is the 
 .good news salvation for the lost; 
 escape for those in bondage. This is 
 the doctrine of Regeneration a new 
 .and holy birth for those born in sin. 
 
 Surely, then, if God has made this 
 provision for us ; if He has indeed so 
 loved the world as to give His only 
 begotten Son, that whosoever believ- 
 eth in Him might not perish, but 
 have everlasting life, it is evident, is 
 it not, that, if we do perish, we can- 
 not lay the blame upon heredity? 
 
REGENERATION. 175- 
 
 We cannot plead that we were born 
 sinners and could not help ii. Here 
 is an opportunity to choose, and if 
 we do not choose aright it is our 
 own fault, Indeed, how can we 
 hope to escape, if w^e neglect so 
 great salvation? 
 
 If you should be thrown, without 
 your consent, into a deep and turb- 
 ulent flood, with no ability to stem 
 the current, and in your extremity a 
 strong swimmer should appear and 
 offer to bring you safely ashore, 
 would you say "No; I was thrown 
 in here. My consent was not asked, 
 and I have no responsibility in the 
 matter"? Surely, since rescue was 
 at hand and you refused it, your 
 death would be on your own head. 
 Or, to use another illustration: here 
 is a man born into the world a help- 
 less, deformed cripple. We pity 
 him, but we do not blame him. 
 Poor fellow; his consent was not 
 asked when he was born; but now, 
 suppose he were given the chance of 
 
176 REGENERATION. 
 
 Toeing made over of being born 
 again, with straight, strong limbs, 
 and having this opportunity, should 
 refuse it, would he not now be as 
 much a subject for blame and con- 
 tempt as for pity would we not 
 rightly feel that the responsibility of 
 his misery was henceforth upon 
 himself? And to us, poor moral and 
 spiritual cripples, incapable of holi- 
 ness, hampered and bound down by 
 sinful proclivities, comes the Son of 
 God, offering health and strength. 
 He declares to all who are born in 
 sin, the necessity, and therefore the 
 possibility of a second birth by 
 which a new and holy nature may 
 be imparted to us. 
 
 This is the force and application 
 of the words of the text. Very 
 solemnly and impressively does 
 Jesus make this announcement to 
 Nicodemus: "Verily, verily," He 
 begins an expression which He uses 
 only on occasions of the greatest 
 importance "Verily, verily, I say 
 
REG EN ERA TION. 177 
 
 unto thee, except a man be born 
 again, he cannot see the Kingdom 
 of God." 
 
 You notice that it is an absolute 
 and universal condition. It applies 
 to all classes and conditions of men. 
 He does not say, "Except an im- 
 moral man be born again;" or, "Ex- 
 cept n, vicious man be born again;" 
 but He teaches clearly and unmis- 
 takably that every man, whether he 
 foe moral or immoral, whether he be 
 respectable or disreputable, whether 
 he be a murderer or a philanthropist ; 
 yes, Nicodemus himself, the eminent 
 Jewish ruler, as well as Zacheus the 
 publican, or the thief on the cross 
 every man, by reason of the very 
 fact that he is a man, needs to be 
 born again. 
 
 And it is an absolute necessity. 
 There is no perhaps about it. Christ 
 ^cloes not tell Nicodemus that it 
 would be better for a man to be born 
 again, or that he would probably 
 stand a better chance of getting to 
 
178 EEGENERA TION. 
 
 Heaven. But He declares positively 
 and without qualification, "Except 
 a man be born again, he cannot see 
 the Kingdom of God." And so the 
 Church teaches this doctrine of Re- 
 generation, or the new birth, as one 
 of the essential, fundamental truths 
 of the Christian religion. 
 
 We do "not say that a man cannot 
 be saved unless he believes the doc- 
 trine as we expound it that would 
 be narrowness and bigotry; but we 
 do say that a man cannot be saved 
 unless he experiences the fact; and 
 in saying that, we only say what 
 Jesus Christ has most solemnly and 
 positively asserted. 
 
 Having thus declared the necessity 
 of being born again, we must now 
 consider what, practically, this nec- 
 essary experience is. And first, it is 
 not simply a reformation of the outer 
 life, an improvement in one's morals. 
 That often takes place while the man 
 himself remains exactly the same 
 man he always was. Any one of a 
 
REGENERATION. 179 
 
 hundred motives may lead a man to 
 change his manners and his conduct ; 
 but that is not being born again, any 
 more than changing one's clothes is 
 being born again. 
 
 Neither is regeneration simply the 
 acceptance, by intellectual belief, of 
 the doctrines and truths of Chris- 
 tianity. Many a man changes his 
 views of theology, without experi- 
 encing any change of heart. To 
 become orthodox is not to be born 
 again to be thoroughly sound in all 
 the philosophy of religion is not to 
 enter the Kindom of God. Indeed, 
 the devils believe and tremble. A 
 change of conduct, then, or a change 
 of belief, or both together, will not 
 meet the condition which our Savior 
 names, but there must be a change 
 of heart, of the affections, of the 
 will. There must be such a radical, 
 deep -reaching transformation of the 
 whole inner life, that new purposes 
 will be formed, new desires will 
 yearn and sigh in the heart, new 
 
180 REGENERATION. 
 
 hopes and ambitions, never felt be- 
 fore, will begin to stir in the breast. 
 There will be a new light cast upon 
 everything. And the man thus born 
 again will see all things, time and 
 eternity, and God and himself and 
 his fellowmen and life and death as 
 they never appeared to him in his 
 natural state. Above all, he will be 
 conscious of a personal relation with 
 the Lord Jesus Christ, which is full 
 of peace and joy; he leaning upon 
 the Savior with faith and love, and 
 Christ bestowing upon him grace 
 and salvation. In a word, he is a 
 new man; old things have passed 
 away, behold all things have become 
 new. Let me illustrate: Here, we 
 will say, is a man who has been lead- 
 ing a vicious, criminal life, indulging 
 his passions, and even recklessly 
 breaking the laws of the land. After 
 a while he finds that his health is 
 failing, and, besides, he is in great 
 danger of being arrested for his 
 crimes and cast into prison, and so. 
 
REGENERATION. 181 
 
 being a man of strong will power, 
 lie determines to reform and settle 
 down to a respectable life, and act- 
 ually does reform, simply because 
 he is convinced that it pays better 
 to be decent. Or. here is a man too 
 fond of his cup. He is in the habit 
 of getting drunk seven nights in the 
 week, and when in liquor he beats 
 his wife and ill-uses his children, 
 but he is a big, burly fellow, with an 
 arm and a fist like a sledge-hammer, 
 and some of his friends persuade 
 him to go into training for a prize- 
 fight. And now what a change takes 
 place in his life. No more getting 
 drunk for him. For weeks and 
 months he leads an abstemious, 
 sober life, getting himself into con- 
 dition, and the poor wife and puny 
 children think they are in Heaven. 
 And yet it is easy to see that neither 
 of these men has really been changed 
 at all in his nature. The change is 
 all outside, on the surface; the heart 
 remains just what it was before. 
 
182 REGENERATION. 
 
 But suppose that the Word of God 
 should come to these men and their 
 consciences should be aroused, and 
 they should feel the awful guilt of 
 their sin, and be led to cry to God 
 for mercy, and the Spirit of God 
 should awaken in them a hatred of 
 sin and a desire for holiness, and 
 then, earnestly seeking to be God- 
 like, they should, by the grace of 
 God, walk in right ways, trusting in 
 Jesus Christ for pardon and right- 
 eousness: then they would indeed be 
 new men men made over, born 
 again of the Spirit. Or, once more, 
 here is a selfish man, moral, a church- 
 goer, a most respectable citizen, but 
 selfish, close-fisted. Bye-and-bye 
 he comes to see that if he can only 
 gain a reputation for liberality it 
 will greatly advance his own inter- 
 ests, he will secure more honor and 
 a better position and even make 
 more money, and so he begins to 
 open his purse and to give lavishly 
 to this and the other good cause; 
 
REGENERA TTO N. 183 
 
 and men praise him, and wonder at 
 the great change that has come over 
 him; but we, knowing why he has 
 become liberal, know that he is just 
 the same man; that he has not 
 changed at all. But suppose that 
 in that selfish, worldly heart the 
 Spirit of God had been at work, and 
 the love of Christ in dying for him 
 had awakened his gratitude, and the 
 needs and miseries of his fellowmen 
 had begun to press upon him, and 
 the Divine Spirit had brought him 
 Into such conscious fellowship with 
 Christ, that his strongest desire was 
 to be like Him and to follow in His 
 footsteps, doing good to all men as 
 he had opportunity. If all this were 
 the cause and reason of his unwont- 
 ed liberality, then, indeed, would 
 the man himself be changed, and we 
 might well say that he was "born 
 again." Thus we see that when 
 Jesus says "Except a man be born 
 again, he cannot see the Kingdom of 
 God," He means something very 
 
184 REGENERATION. 
 
 real, very definite; He means that, 
 as an essential condition of enter- 
 ing Heaven, a man must be rad- 
 ically changed, made over, so that 
 he is practically a new man, taking 
 a fresh start in life, with a new, 
 heaven-born nature. 
 
 And now we come to the import- 
 ant question: How is this great ex- 
 perience to be reached? Already 
 this question has been really an- 
 swered in what we have said of the 
 nature of regeneration, but I think 
 it will be well for us, even at the 
 risk of some repetition, to answer it 
 again at this point. How can a man 
 be born again? Not by a direct ex- 
 ercise of will power. The will, in- 
 deed, has much to do with it indi- 
 rectly, as leading up to it and in 
 the way of submission, but no man 
 can will himself to have a new heart 
 and a holy character, any more than 
 he can will himself to have a new 
 body and a healthy constitution. 
 Neither can this change be pro- 
 
REG EN ERA TION. 185 
 
 duced by reason and argument; for, 
 though a man should convince him- 
 self, or be convinced that it were the 
 wise and right thing for him to have 
 all these holy desires and godly affec- 
 tions which mark the regenerate man, 
 that would not effect the transfor- 
 mation of his nature. And certainly 
 joining the church does not secure 
 the new birth. One might as well 
 join the Free Masons or the state 
 militia, as to unite with the church 
 for the sake of obtaining a new heart. 
 No, the process is a far simpler one, 
 far more direct. It is just to ask for 
 it, as a free gift, from God. Regene- 
 ration is the work of the Holy Spirit; 
 it is the result of a supernatural, 
 divine influence exerted upon the 
 heart, and God alone can accomplish 
 it. How it is done in what way 
 God acts upon the soul of man we' 
 know not. ' ' The wind bio weth where 
 it listeth; we hea'r the sound thereof, 
 but cannot tell whence it corneth or 
 whither it goeth. So is every one 
 
186 REG EN ERA TION. 
 
 that is born of the Spirit." 
 
 It is, no doubt, a great mystery 
 this new birth even as the natural 
 birth is a great mystery. There is 
 much about it that we cannot compre- 
 hend, far less explain; but this we do 
 know, that "God sent not His Son 
 into the world to condemn the \vorld, 
 but that the world through Him might 
 be saved." And we know that when 
 we believe upon Jesus Christ as our 
 Redeemer and Mediator, and in His 
 name pray for light and peace, God 
 always, without one single exception, 
 answers that prayer, and His Spirit 
 renews the heart; "for," says Christ 
 Himself, "if ye, being evil, know 
 how to give good gifts unto your 
 children, how much more shall your 
 -heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit 
 to them that ask him." Yes; God 
 is our Father, and as a father He 
 yearns over us and desires our per- 
 fection and our happiness. And He 
 is 'our Father still, even when, like 
 the prodigal son, we have gone 
 
REGENERATION. 187 
 
 away from Him into a far country, 
 and are living without regard to His 
 law, careless of His love. And so, 
 because He is our Father, whenever 
 we call upon Him, He will hear us. 
 When we ask Him to bless and save 
 us, He is more than willing to grant 
 us His Holy Spirit and to lead us 
 into all truth. And no man ever yet 
 went humbly to God, and with ear- 
 nest sincerity prayed as David did 
 "Create in me a clean heart, God, 
 and renew a right spirit >. within 
 me" no man, I say, ever honestly 
 made that request of his heavenly 
 Father and was refused. The prom- 
 ise is full, clear, and unequivocal 
 "Ask, and ye shall 'receive; seek, 
 and ye shall find; knock, and it shall 
 be opened unto you." 
 
 Of course, if you do not feel the 
 need of any change in your nature; 
 if you are satisfied with your present 
 condition; if you do not want to be 
 born again, you will not ask; but if 
 you believe the word of Christ, that 
 
188 REGEXERA TION. 
 
 unless you are born again you cannot 
 see the Kingdom of God, then go to 
 Him, in the simple, direct way of a 
 little child, and ask that this great 
 work may be accomplished in you, 
 and without fail your prayer will be 
 answered and you will be saved. 
 
 And now, in closing, let me notice 
 two objections which may be, and 
 often are, made to this doctrine of 
 regeneration. The first lies in the 
 fact that there are many excellent, 
 devout Christians, who have never 
 had any conscious experience of 
 this great change. How is it, then, 
 that they are Christians? I have 
 known not a few church members of 
 unquestionable piety, who were 
 greatly troubled by this, but the 
 answer is perfectly simple, for often 
 the new birth takes place so early in 
 life that it cannot be consciously 
 experienced, any more than the nat- x 
 ural birth is consciously experienced. 
 When a child is born of Christian 
 parents, and given to God in bap- 
 
RE GENE It A TION. 189* 
 
 tism, in infancy, and is brought up 
 in the nurture and admonition of the 
 Lord, we have a right to believe that 
 even from the very first its heart is 
 changed and its earliest thoughts 
 and feelings are under the divine 
 influence. Or, even when this is not 
 the case, it may be that the truth 
 has so gradually found its way into 
 the heart, and the Holy Spirit has so 
 softly and silently done His blessed 
 work, that the man has been indeed 
 born again, but is unable to say 
 when, or how. 
 
 The other objection may be put in 
 this way: "If this regeneration is 
 such a radical change of the whole 
 nature, how comes it that there is 
 not much more difference between 
 Christians and worldly people than 
 there is?" Well, in the first place, 
 there is an immense, an infinite dif- 
 ference between real Christians and 
 those who are not Christians, but 
 being largely a difference in the 
 inner life, in the attitude of the soul 
 
190 REGENERA TION. 
 
 toward God, in the feelings and emo- 
 tions of the heart, it cannot always 
 be seen, it cannot be estimated by 
 those who judge alone from the out- 
 side. And besides, though the 
 change is radical, its results are not 
 completed in this life. When a man 
 is born the second time, he is not 
 born a full-grown Christian, any 
 more than he was born a full-grown 
 man at his first birth. The new birth 
 is but the beginning of a new life, 
 and that life develops gradually, as 
 all life does. It is a growth "first 
 the blade, then the ear, after that 
 the full corn in the ear." And 
 though here we may see only the 
 first tender shoots of righteousness 
 springing out of the new nature, 
 eternity will show the full harvest of 
 a perfect character. 
 
 But let us not stop to argue the 
 matter with our blessed Lord. Let 
 us believe that He knew what He 
 was saying, when He declared to 
 Nicodemus, "Except a man be born 
 
REG EN ERA TION. 191 
 
 again, he cannot see the Kingdom of 
 God." If we have not yet ex- 
 perienced this new birth, let us 
 earnestly and diligently seek it. 
 If we have, let us try to show its 
 fruits in a pure and godly life. 
 
 or rwr 
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