The time is not perhaps far distant when few will believe in miracles
who do not also believe in an infallible Church; and then, such books as
the present will appeal to a larger circle. But, as things are, the
author would beg all those who worship a miraculous Christ without doubt
and difficulty to pause here and read no further. The book is not
intended for them; it is intended for those alone to whom it is
dedicated, “the doubters of this generation.”
For there are some who feel drawn towards the worship of Christ by love
and reverence, yet repelled by an apparently inextricable connection of
the story of Christ with a miraculous element which, in their minds,
throws a doubt over the whole of His acts, His doctrine, His character,
and even His existence. Others, who worship Christ, worship Him
insecurely and tremulously. They assume that their faith must rest on
the basis of the Bible miracles; and at times they cannot quite suppress
a thrill of doubt and terror lest some horrible discovery of fresh
truth, resulting in the destruction of the miraculous element of the
Bible, may impair their right to regard Christ as “anything better than
a mere man.” It is to these two classes—the would-be worshippers and the
doubtful worshippers of Christ—that the following Letters are addressed
by one who has for many years found peace and salvation in the worship
of a non miraculous Christ.
Not very long ago, but some years after the publication of a work called
_Philochristus_, the author received a letter from a stranger and
fellow-clergyman, asking him whether he could spare half an hour to
visit him on his death-bed, “dying of a disease”—so ran the letter
“which will be fatal within some uncertain weeks (possibly however days,
possibly months). No pains just now, head clear, voice sound. And mind
at peace, but the peace of reverent agnosticism..... Now I have read and
appreciated _Philochristus_. It would comfort my short remainder of life
if you would come and look me dying in the face and say, ‘This theology
and Christology of mine is not merely literary: I feel with joy of heart
that God is not unknown to man: try even now to feel with me.’”
Of what passed at the subsequent interview nothing must be said except
that the dying man (whose anticipations of death were speedily verified)
expressed the conviction that one reason why he had fallen into that
abyss of agnosticism—for an abyss he then felt it to be—was that he had
been “taught to believe too much when young;” and he urged and almost
besought that something might be done soon to “give young men a religion
that would wear.” These words were not to be forgotten; they recurred
again and again to the author with the force of a command. The present
work is an attempt to carry them into effect, an attempt, by one who has
passed through doubts into conviction, to look the doubting reader in
the face and say, “This theology and Christology of mine is not merely
literary. I feel with joy of heart that God is not unknown to man. Try
even now to feel with me.”
The author does not profess to clear Christianity from all
“difficulties.” If a revelation is to enlarge our conceptions of God, it
must involve some spiritual effort on our part to receive the larger
truth; if it claims to be historical, it may well impose on some of its
adherents the labour needed for the judgment of historical evidence; if
it prompts, without enforcing, obedience, it must excite in all some
questionings as to the causes which led the Revealer not to make His
revelation irresistibly convincing. Even the explanations of the
mysterious phenomena of motion, light, and chemistry, involve
“difficulties” in the acceptance of still more mysterious Laws which we
cannot at present explain. Nevertheless we all feel that we understand
astronomy better in the light of the Law of gravitation: and in the same
way some may feel that Christianity becomes more spiritual, as well as
more clear, when it becomes more natural; and that many of its so-called
“difficulties” fade or vanish, when what may be called its celestial and
its terrestrial phenomena are found to rest upon similar principles.