"European Morals," has held him up as an example of what pure
philosophy can do, and has challenged comparison between him and the
most exalted and sanctified of the followers of Christ. We may well
acknowledge the nobleness, the disinterestedness, the simplicity,
and the elevation of his character. No absolute and irresponsible
governor of men has ever been more "clear in his high office." Yet the
concessions, which his panegyrist has made concerning him, separate
him off by a broad line of demarcation from the highest types of
Christian holiness. When his wife died, for his children's sake he
would not contract a second marriage; but he preferred the society of
a mistress. When he persecuted the Christians, an act which we may
perhaps attribute to mistaken conscientiousness, he not only persecuted
them, but he derided their sufferings. Could we in these days even call
a man Christian who could so err? Professed Christians, no doubt, fall
into licentiousness, but then they know they are in act repudiating
their Christianity. Christians, alas! have persecuted those whom they
regarded as heretics. But we must look fairly at the sad history of
persecution before we simply say that Roman emperors did no more. In
the first place, persecution was not inconsistent with the principles
of heathenism, nor is it inconsistent with the principles, if such
there be, of atheism or of atheistic philosophy; but it is wholly
inconsistent with the principles taught by Christ, and can only have
been tolerated when those principles had been perverted or obscured.
In the next place, Christian persecutors, believing that their own
form of Christianity was the only faith that could save mankind,
esteeming therefore those who defiled that faith as more dangerous to
mankind than any robbers or murderers, thought consistently, though
erroneously, that they were bound to stamp out heresy as they would
stamp out pestilence in their cattle sheds, or moral pestilence in
their homes and villages. In the third place, though deeds of violence
always harden the hearts of those that do them, it is well known
that even inquisitors, so far from ridiculing the sufferings of their
victims, often decreed those sufferings with trembling hands and
broken accents, and eyes filled with tears. Persecutors are no types
of Christian excellence; the truest Christianity utterly repudiates
them; but even persecutors have generally been so, not from love of
persecution, but from a deep and painful conviction that persecution
was a duty and a necessity.
It will be replied, and very truly, that for all this, Socrates and
Marcus Aurelius were grand specimens of humanity, rising to a noble
height of moral greatness in an age of cruelty and licentiousness, and
that we cannot expect them to have been all that we should expect from
a Christian apostle or from a Christian king. Granted most heartily
this. It only proves that Christianity has raised our standard of
excellence and has raised the characters of those who embrace and
follow it immeasurably above the highest standard and the noblest
characters of the world, which had never heard of Christ.
I must bring my words, my most feeble and imperfect words in this
high argument, to a close. I have tried to show that the life of
Christ, and the teaching of Christ, as we have them recorded in the
most unsuspicious records,--records which could not possibly have
been the gradual concoctions and concretions of subsequent times,
the careful afterthoughts of enthusiasts or impostors; that the
life and teaching of Christ were original in the highest degree, not
calculated to attract from any pandering to prejudice or to passion,
that they exhibit the most marvellous ideal of simple grandeur or grand
simplicity; that the power which they exercise is from no apparent
effort--not even from reasoning and argumentation,--but from the
strength of truth, and from their satisfaction to human want; that the
power which they exercised, and yet exercise, is the greatest moral
power ever tried upon man; that they have raised, and yet do raise,
men and nations to a greater height of civilization, humanity, and
purity, than anything has ever raised them before. And I ask, How can
we account for the fact that all this has been done by the teaching of
one unlettered Peasant in the most despised corner of a despised land?
Is there any phenomenon in moral science, or in physical science, which
demands a patient and honest investigation more seriously than this?
There are those who think the influence of Christianity is on the wane.
I confess I can see no sign of this; though, without doubt, its enemies
are many, and the wish is father to the thought. But I will just put
my case in one other shape, which will more or less deal with this
question of decay, and then I will end.
If an assembly of 500 or 1,000 persons could be gathered together,
in any city of Europe, or European America, it being provided that
all of them should be intelligent, well-educated, high-principled,
and well-living men and women; and if the question were put to each
of them, "To what influences do you attribute your high character,
your moral and social excellence?" I feel no doubt that nineteen out
of twenty of them would, on reflection, reply, "To the influence of
Christianity on my education, my conscience, and my heart." I will
suppose a yet further question to be put to them, and it shall be this:
"If you were to be assured that the object you hold dearest on earth
would be taken from you to-morrow, and if at the same time you could be
assured with undoubting certainty that Jesus Christ was a myth or an
impostor, and His Gospel a fable and a falsehood, whether of the two
assurances would strike upon your heart with the more chilling and more
hope-destroying misery?" And I believe that nine-tenths of the company,
being such as I have stipulated they should be, would answer, "Take
from me my best earthly treasure, but leave me my hope in the Saviour
of the world." This is the effect produced upon the most civilized
nations of the world by the teaching of four years, and the agony of a
few hours, of One who lived as a peasant, and died as a malefactor and
a slave. "Whence had this man this wisdom and these mighty works?"
THE COMPLETENESS AND ADEQUACY
OF THE
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY.
BY THE
REV. F. C. COOK, M.A.,
CANON OF EXETER; PREACHER AT LINCOLN'S INN.
COMPLETENESS AND ADEQUACY OF THE EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY.
The evidences of Christianity form a department of sacred literature of
vast extent, to which the most valuable contributions have been made in
ages when the faith of the Church was most vehemently assailed, and her
powers were developed by severe and protracted struggles.
It was the subject to which the ablest Christian writers of the first
three centuries devoted their energies, carrying on in no alien
spirit the work of the Apostles, meeting assailants at every point,
demolishing with comparative ease the fabric of heathen superstition;
winning a nobler and more fertile triumph over the intellect of
Greece. Nor was the work thus well begun wholly intermitted during
the ages which intervened between the overthrow of ancient, and the
full development of modern, civilization; a civilization which owes
whatever it has of life and power to its reception and assimilation
of Christian principles.[152] But, as might be expected, the work had
to be begun anew, new difficulties were to be met, new victories were
to be achieved, when the spiritual and intellectual energies of Europe
were set free by the vast upheaval of mind at the Reformation. The
way was opened by representative men. Grotius, who combined in a most
remarkable degree the accurate and profound learning and the clear
dispassionate judgment characteristic of his countrymen, produced the
first complete treatise, "_De Veritate Christianæ Religionis_," soon
adopted as the standard work by Protestants, translated into every
language of Europe, and by our own Pocock into Arabic, for the use of
the East. England followed early in the field, and in the last century
fairly won the place, which she still retains, among the foremost
champions of the Cross. Nor did the persecution which arrested the
progress of the Reformation in France, then, as ever, unhappy in
her struggles for light and air, suppress the workings of spiritual
thought. Of all advocates of the faith, none penetrated more deeply
into its foundation, none ascended with a stronger flight or keener
vision into its highest sphere, none combined more varied gifts of
intellect and spirit than Pascal, a name bright with the gracious
gleam of letters, dear to "science," dearest above all to Christian
truth.[153] Germany, too, great in every field of intellectual power,
has not been unmindful of the duty of maintaining and defending the
deposit of truth--a duty specially incumbent upon her as first leader
in the revolt against usurped authority--not wholly unmindful, though
as yet she is far from having discharged her debt to Christendom, of
late years perplexed and harassed by her reckless abuse of power.
Still in the past, among other great names, Leibnitz, who represents,
perhaps more fully than any one man, the peculiar characteristics
of German intellect, laid the foundations of a system, in which the
true relation between the Christian revelation and God's universe is
examined. And at this present hour men sound in the faith, full of
the love and light of Christ, are bringing the resources of profound
learning and vigorous intellect to bear upon the chaotic turmoil of
anti-Christian influences. Within this present year several works have
appeared in which infidelity is confronted, both in the sphere of
general cultivation, and in the abstrusest fastnesses of philosophy, by
Luthardt, Steinmeyer, and Delitzsch.[154] One of the greatest works at
present incumbent upon the Church of Christ is to bring together into
a compact and systematic body the results of previous investigations,
which from their very extent are inaccessible to the generality of
inquirers. It is a work for which this society has been formed; it will
only be accomplished by the combined efforts of men varying in gifts
and powers, but animated alike by one spirit of fealty and love to our
Lord.
On this occasion I propose, with all possible brevity, to show that
those evidences of Christianity which are accessible to every careful
inquirer are complete and adequate; complete inasmuch as they meet
the fair requirements of our moral and rational nature, and adequate
with reference to their purpose, which is to bring us into contact
with the central and fundamental truths of our religion, and with the
Person of its Founder. It may be assumed that persons who meet to
consider the evidences of revealed religion have previously satisfied
themselves of the existence and the personality of God; or at least
that they have not accepted the theory, once deemed too irrational to
need refutation, that the universe is but an assemblage of forces,
self-existent, and uncontrolled by a conscious will. That is a question
antecedent to our present inquiry. It would be useless to discuss the
proofs of a supernatural intervention with one who held that there
is no supernatural power to intervene. Materialism under any form,
and Christianity in any stage, are mutually exclusive. They are not
even, properly speaking, antagonistic; since antagonism implies a
common field of action, and the recognition of some principle to which
disputants can appeal. We can only argue now with those who admit the
possibility of a revelation, and are therefore willing to examine the
evidences, and to accept the conclusions to which those evidences may
lead.
Our first object will be to see what conclusions are fairly drawn from
those broad facts which first present themselves in the history of
Christianity, and which no one thinks of disputing. Put yourselves, if
possible, in the position of an inquirer to whom the facts might be
new, and who had simply to satisfy himself as to their bearings upon
his own convictions and upon the state of man.
Here is one fact. At the central point of the world's history, central
both in time and in historical import, equidistant from the end of
what men are agreed to call the prehistoric period and our own time,
the man Jesus arose, and claimed to be, in a sense altogether apart
from other men, the teacher and the Saviour of the world. He claimed
a direct mission from God,--nay, more, to be, in a sense hereafter to
be ascertained, the Son of God. He assumed that the truth which He had
to teach was new, inasmuch as it was one which man could not discover
for himself, but at the same time one to which man's conscience
would bear testimony, which could not therefore be rejected without
sin. As credentials of His mission, He appealed to works which those
who accepted Him and those who opposed Him admitted could not be
wrought without supernatural aid.[155] To one work, as the crowning
work of all, He directed His followers to appeal, as one capable of
being attested, and incapable of being explained away, even His own
resurrection from the dead.
And now observe, the fact of this assumption, quite independent of
the evidence by which it was supported, stands absolutely alone in
the world's history. Consider the existing religions of the world.
Three are associated with the names of individuals as their founders.
Of Mahomet we need not speak. His doctrine was avowedly derived from
Judaism, he claimed no special relationship to God, nor did he profess
to work miracles; as coming after our Lord, we might have expected
a far nearer resemblance in pretensions advanced by himself, and to
some extent at a later period advanced by his followers. Two other
men, however, stand before us with characteristics which attract our
warmest interest, and enable us to understand the permanent influence
they have exerted over the countless myriads of Asia. I know nothing
in history more touching than the account of Siddartha[156] (called
Sakya Monni, that is, monk of the royal race of the Sakyas), the
founder of Bhuddism, whose tender and noble spirit was driven by the
contemplation of human misery into desperate struggles to escape from
this prison of the universe even at the cost of personal annihilation;
but observe this, he did not even profess to support his strange gospel
of despair by assertions or attestations which would necessarily imply
the personality of God, and His sovereignty over the universe. If,
again, you consult the four books in which Confucius[157] sets forth
with singular simplicity and force the great principles of moral
truth, you will find that he never presents them as revelations, as
a message supernaturally imparted or attested, but as evolutions of
man's inner conscience, as the product of a faculty inherent equally
in all. Seekers after truth, honest, earnest, and noble seekers, to
whom no Christian should refuse a tribute of admiration, the world
has produced, but you will find no one man, save Jesus only, among
the founders of existing religions, no one indeed within the historic
period, who ever professed to be the _giver_ of a truth at once
absolutely new and attested by works such as God only could enable him
to perform.
And now consider this fact. The appearance of this man Jesus,
unparalleled as it is shown to have been, was nevertheless _expected_.
At present I have not to show that His person, His offices, His work,
together with their permanent effect, had actually been foretold,
or that the predictions referred to Him as accomplisher of a divine
purpose; but this we know, as a fact beyond controversy, that when
He began to teach and work, his countrymen were familiar with a long
series of texts, beginning with the first, and continued to the end,
of their sacred books, in which they recognized descriptions of such
a teacher. You will remember that those descriptions included all
particulars by which an individual could be identified. As for their
accurate coincidence with what is recorded of our Lord, it is scarcely
necessary to argue, since our ablest opponents hold that it is too
close to be accounted for, save on the supposition that the records,
whether consciously or unconsciously, were moulded so to produce the
conformity. With that theory Mr. Row and others have dealt. I do
not believe that it is likely to retain a hold on the minds of our
countrymen, but it is a most striking attestation to an all-important
fact which I request you most seriously to weigh, remembering that of
this man Jesus alone in the world's history can it be asserted that
such an expectation existed.
The next fact, again, is so obvious that men are in real danger of
overlooking its significance. The faith in this Man took root. It took
root at once, and so deeply that storms which might have sufficed to
tear up any human institution, served only to fix it more firmly. This
Man died, His followers were hounded to the death, man's passions,
man's superstitions, man's intellect, during centuries of struggle,
were opposed to this religion, and yet it prevailed. Will you say
it did not prevail universally? Well, what is its actual extent? I
answer, it is co-extensive with the civilization of the world. Is
this assertion too strong? Look at the facts. Beyond the pale of
Christendom, the great races of humanity, which in past ages have
shown equal capacities for the highest culture, have at this present
time no single representative nation, Turanian, Semitic, or Aryan,
in which liberty, philosophy, nay, even physical science, with its
serene indifference to moral or spiritual truth, have a settled home or
practical development. The elements of civilization are there, capable
undoubtedly of being evoked and energized, but as a plain matter of
fact at this present time, after thousands of years for development,
throughout the vast regions of Islamism, Buddhism, and Confucianism,
not to speak of lower forms of paganism, they are stunted, distorted,
and, to all human ken, in hopeless and chaotic ruin. It would not be
difficult to prove that the special evils which have choked the human
mind, and blighted its energies, are in each case distinctly traceable
to evils inherent in those religious systems; but we are dealing now
with facts not depending upon argument, nor demanding lengthened
inquiries. It suffices to state the bare fact that the religion of the
crucified Jesus, with its doctrines that were a stumbling-block to the
Jews, and foolishness to the Gentiles, is at this day conterminous
with human progress, with all advance in liberty, science, and social
culture, with all that is substantially precious in the civilization of
the world.
To these facts others might be added of a similar character, such
as the recognition of our Lord Jesus as the true Master and Teacher
of the world, by men acknowledged in every age of Christendom to be
conspicuous for moral worth and intellectual power; such, again, as the
pre-eminence in Christendom, in every age, of nations which profess at
least to acknowledge Him as their Lord, and as the rapid disintegration
or ruin of communities which have corrupted or abjured His religion.
But the broadest and simplest facts thus stated are sufficient for
the one purpose we have now in view; sufficient to induce every one
who cares to know the truth to go at once to that Man, to ask what He
has to teach. The inquirer will do this, as I should think, before he
enters into the lengthened and very difficult inquiry into the origin
or interpretation of the predictions or the words of which we have
spoken. He will do it because, after all, no evidence has anything
approaching the weight which attaches to the personal influence of
a teacher, in this case, of one who declares Himself to be ready to
receive inquirers, and to satisfy their wants, who claims to be the
living and ever-present Teacher of man. The inquirer will certainly do
this if he feels the same moral wants, and experiences the same moral
difficulties and perplexities which beset the most thoughtful heathen
before the coming of this Man; feelings well expressed in the Phædo of
Plato by Simmias, a good representative of sturdy, even sceptical, but
thoroughly honest seekers after truth. These are his words: "It seems
to me, Socrates, as probably to you also, that to know the certainty
about such questions in this present life is a thing either impossible
or exceedingly difficult; yet that, nevertheless, not to test
thoroughly whatever is said about them, or to desist until we have done
our utmost by inquiring in every direction, would be sheer cowardice.
For some one at least of the following results we ought to attain about
them, either to learn from others how the truth stands, or discover it
for ourselves; or, if neither should be possible, then, at any rate, to
take the best and most irrefragable of human theories, and use it as a
raft, so to speak, to convey us, though in much danger, through the sea
of life, unless, indeed, one were enabled to accomplish the passage,
with no risk of error or mishap, upon the firmer conveyance of a word
from God."[158]
The question now meets us, How can we be sure that we have His
teaching? Where can we find His own words? Where can we learn what He
really did? Have we a thoroughly trustworthy, not to say unquestioned,
record of the words He uttered? of the works He is asserted to have
wrought?
Now there can be no doubt, that of all assaults upon the faith, the
most effective in this age are those which have been made upon the
documents which compose the New Testament. The reason for this is
obvious. An investigation into the authenticity of any ancient book
demands an amount of knowledge and critical ability, a soundness and
keenness of judgment, which are the very rarest of qualifications. Turn
to secular literature, and you will find critics arguing for ages,
without any approximation to a settlement, touching the genuineness
of works attributed to men whose peculiarities of genius and of style
would seem to defy imitation. Who would venture on his own judgment to
determine how much of the Homeric poems belong to
"That Lord of loftiest song,
Who above others like an eagle soars?"
"Quel Signor dell' altissimo canto,
Che sovra gli altri com' aquila vola."[159]
Look at the controversy between Grote, Jowett, and the latest German
critics touching the authenticity of no small portion of the Platonic
dialogues. Taken simply as a question of critical inquiry, no man of
sense would venture to determine, on internal data, the authorship of
any book in the New Testament, without years of laborious preparation.
I will add, no prudent man at all conversant with the history of
criticism would accept assertions, however confident, of critics whose
known and avowed prepossessions would make it _à priori_ certain that
they would be averse to the acceptance of documents which, if genuine,
supply substantial grounds for belief in supernatural works and a
supernatural Person.
What then are we to do? Well, in the first place we may inquire
whether any portion of the documents in that book is admitted to be
wholly unaffected by the corrosive solvent of negative criticism.
This will give us at once a most important set of documents, no
less than those epistles of St. Paul[160] which contain the fullest
exposition of Christ's doctrine, and the most explicit statements of
the supernatural facts on which that doctrine is based; above all,
the fact of the Resurrection. There you will find Christ speaking,
according to His own promise, by His Spirit. But we are not to be
cheated of our heritage by a criticism of which the main negative
results are repudiated, not only by all who believe in any form or
degree of objective revelation, but by a great majority of avowed
rationalists. One by one we recover, with their concurrence, the
other general epistles of St. Paul, the first of St. Peter and of
St. John, the Gospel of St. Mark, the discourses in St. Matthew, the
two treatises of St. Luke, and, though hotly contested, as might be
expected, considering its vital importance, still triumphantly, and I
do not fear to say irrevocably, secured, attested by external evidence
ever more perfect, and by internal evidence[161] daily more convincing,
as you can witness, the Gospel of St. John. I might go farther still,
and point to the reception of nearly all contested portions by some
or other of our opponents, and show the cogency of the reasons which
overcame deep-seated prejudices; but it is sufficient for our
immediate purpose to argue _ex concessis_. If we take at first those
books only which the severest critics, with the exception of certain
scholars of the Tübingen school hold to be indisputable, we have Christ
before us, the characteristics of His Personality, the cardinal events
of His life, the subject matter of His teaching. Even Keim and Rénan
admit that His mark is unmistakably stamped upon those discourses to
which every inquirer will naturally turn at once, when he seeks to know
what Jesus taught.