section (the Pirke Aboth, _i.e._, decisions of the Fathers) a set
of maxims which breathe a high and grave morality, which enjoin
temperance, chastity, gentleness, love of country, earnestness in the
study of God's law, contempt for wealth, celebrity, and power; but the
general spirit is cold, formal, casuistical, and the decisions are, on
the whole, determined by considerations of interest and expediency.
In short, errors of every kind,--errors of interpretation, errors in
the foundations of moral truth, errors in the representation of God's
attributes, errors originating in the grossest superstitions, and above
all in narrow, bitter, exclusive prejudices,--bear an overwhelming
proportion to the whole compilation, and belong unquestionably to
that Talmudic atmosphere in which we are told that the pure and lofty
spirit of our Master attained its natural development. It is true
that the second portion of the Talmud, the Gemara, presents those
characteristics in an exaggerated form; but the first part, the Mishna,
is replete with a casuistry so trifling and repulsive as to make a
continuous perusal almost impossible, save to one who has some special
motive for the study. It contains not less than 4,008 mishnaioth,
that is, decisions or precepts, of which the largest proportion is
attributed to Hillel or his followers. Out of this vast collection it
would be difficult to fix upon any consecutive series of maxims, say
fifty, which would approve themselves to the moral sense.
Widely as our Lord's teaching differs from that of the Greek or
the Asiatic, far more does it differ from that of His Hebrew
contemporaries: it belongs altogether to a different sphere, the sphere
in which the human spirit was emancipated from all narrow, dark,
exclusive prejudices, and all its powers developed by that Spirit which
rested on Him without measure, which He received as man, and which He
bestowed as God.
It may be said that if the evidence supplied by knowledge of the
Person of our Lord be of itself complete and adequate for the highest
purpose, further inquiries may be dismissed as superfluous. Nor is
the remark unfair. It is, I believe, quite true that of the myriads
who accept the Christian revelation an immense proportion, including
spirits of every class, are moved chiefly, if not exclusively, by the
personal influence of Jesus, by the intuition, so to speak, which
they thus attain into the manifested truth. The sun shines with its
own lustre, and needs no evidence to prove its existence. But our
nature is full of inconsistencies. Our strongest convictions, after
all, are held with a feeble grasp, and are liable to be wrenched from
us by sudden assaults, most especially when they depend upon what
in modern parlance are called subjective impressions. It is well,
therefore, that even this strongest and deepest of all convictions
should have outward and independent support, that it should appeal to
palpable and ascertainable facts, never indeed surrendering its true
position in the central stronghold of our spirits, but going forth
when challenged, and examining at frequent intervals the state of
its defences and outposts. Let us, then, very briefly consider some
of those evidences which the Christian apologist recognizes as most
important for the confirmation of faith.
Here, undoubtedly, we have first to look at the evidence of miracles,
which has been discussed by Dr. Stoughton, and, among all miracles,
first and foremost--with which all other proofs of miraculous
intervention stand or fall--the miracle of the resurrection.[166] I
take it in this place, not as it is often taken, as an antecedent
evidence to be examined or rejected previous to examination of the
character of our Saviour; but as an evidence of which the true force is
inseparably bound up with the result of that preliminary inquiry. The
mind may indeed submit to logical inferences drawn from undisputed or
demonstrated facts, but it will submit reluctantly, and will, sooner or
later, shake off its shackles, unless those inferences accord with its
sense of moral fitness, of harmony between the outward manifestation
of power and the inward demands of conscience. All moral antecedent
objection to the resurrection of Christ disappears when it is
acknowledged that His character satisfies those conditions. The first
apologist of Christianity--St. Peter at Pentecost--puts this in the
very foreground of his argument: "God raised Him up, having loosed the
pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be holden
of it." It was impossible, considering the relation of the Son to the
Father, and of the Father to the universe. The expectation, in fact, of
the resurrection of one "approved by God" as perfect in holiness, such
as Christians believe their Master to be, is actually admitted to be
so natural that the most subtle opponents of revelation assume that it
must have existed in the minds of the first disciples, bringing them
into a state which prepared them to receive without questioning the
rumours which were gradually moulded into a semblance of historical
consistency. This theory at least proves this,--given the two facts of
God's power and justice, and of Christ's nature, as acknowledged by the
Christian, the resurrection, if proved on other grounds, will find no
obstacle to its reception in our moral consciousness.
But the very fact that such a hope exists, one which, if fulfilled,
transcends all human longings, carrying with it, as St. Paul shows,
the pledge and the only pledge of our personal redintegration, will
but make the inquirer careful to prove every link in the chain of
evidence. And here we have to remark that, so far from having that
assumed expectation, His disciples were utterly in despair after the
crucifixion. With their Master's last breath their last hope departed.
They treated the first accounts which reached them as idle, they did
not believe till they had the evidence of their senses; "then were
they glad, when they saw the Lord." It is a remarkable, not to say
unique, combination of two conditions for the perfect establishment of
an ascertainable fact, that on the one side it should be in perfect
congruity with an eternal principle, and on the other that it should
be witnessed by persons wholly unprepared for its occurrence, and
attested under circumstances which make it impossible to doubt their
sincerity. That the attestation was given, that it was confirmed by
outward effects otherwise psychologically inexplicable, by an immediate
and complete change in the character of the disciples, and by the rapid
triumph of the religion so attested, these and kindred points you
will find discussed in every treatise on Christian evidences: they
are, in fact, not open to reasonable doubt. Weigh more especially the
attestation of St. Paul, both as one who knew previously all that could
be alleged against the belief, as one whose strong intellect and strong
prejudices rendered him inaccessible to mere subjective impressions,
and as a man of whose conversion no rational, no intelligible account
has ever been given which does not involve the fact of a personal
manifestation of Christ, and then you will have all that can be needed
for steadfast conviction, evidence complete and adequate for its
purpose, proving that Jesus was shown "to be the Son of God with power
by the resurrection from the dead." (Rom. i.)
With an equal interest the student of evidence will now turn back to
the inquiry into the teaching of prophecy. At the outset it sufficed to
know the broad fact that the characteristics of the coming Christ were
believed by His contemporaries to have been announced in predictions
which, whether of divine origin or not, unquestionably moulded their
anticipations. He is now able to test their accuracy, to satisfy
himself as to their origin, and to study them with a far deeper and
more intelligent interest than would be possible without the previous
appreciation of our Lord's nature. At first his attention will
naturally be caught by separate predictions, by their correspondence
with outward occurrences in the Gospel narration; but as he
advances in the study his whole spirit will be gradually absorbed in
contemplation of their internal coherence, their unbroken continuity,
their ever progressing development. Distinct, accurate, and in the
strictest sense of the word evidential, those predictions are, taken
separately and independently; as such they are recognised by one and
all the sacred writers--by none more fully than by the two who stand
pre-eminent among the disciples of Jesus--by St Paul, who represents
the highest development of the intellectual forces in Christianity, the
acute disputant, the subtle reasoner, the spiritualist philosopher, or,
as he has been lately called, the metaphysician of Christianity--and
by St. John, whose spirit, insphered in the region of love, came into
nearest contact with the divine, who represents the very highest of
all faculties, that of spiritual intuition. Nay, those predictions
are repeatedly and distinctly recognised as conclusive evidences by
our Lord Himself. But their full significance is only discerned when
we contemplate them as parts of a mighty whole, as a continuous and
complete testimony of the Spirit of God. Two lines of light traverse
the realm of spiritual manifestation, the one revealing the divine, the
other the human characteristics of the future Saviour: the one ever
expanding, but from the beginning broad, luminous, equable; the other
advancing, so to speak, with varying progress, ever and anon bursting
out in sudden flashes, each bringing into vivid light some event in
the life, above all each event in the crowning work, of the Saviour.
These two lines gradually converge until they meet in the Incarnation.
From that point of meeting the Christian goes back; then he learns to
combine and to comprehend their intimations. Under Christ's teaching,
prophecy becomes to him a guiding light--an evidence so complete that
if it stood alone he might dispense with other proofs, and feel it
adequate for the support of his faith.
You will, however, remember that besides those predictions which apply
directly to our Lord's person, an inexhaustible treasury of predictions
refer to events in the providential history of the world, and they,
too, are strictly evidential. Even writers to whom the very word
revelation is distasteful, acknowledge in the Hebrew prophets true
seers; that is, men whose spirit was in unison with the everlasting
harmonies of the universe. But it is only when we know Christ as He
reveals Himself, as the Lord of history, that the long series of
prophetic intimations present themselves in their true light to our
minds. The exact explanation of each specific prediction, such as are
found in Isaiah and Daniel, taxes and rewards the industry of students,
but the real interest consists not in the satisfaction of a rational
curiosity, or the bearing upon controversy, but in the help which is
thus supplied, enabling us to realize vividly the presence of Christ
foreordering all events so as to make them work together for the
accomplishment of His will.
If time allowed, I might here dwell on other topics. I might point
out how deep thinkers, Pascal perhaps most powerfully, have shown
that Christianity, and Christianity alone, fully recognises the two
opposite and apparently irreconcilable aspects of our common humanity,
its unspeakable misery and degradation out of God, and its capacity
for restoration and reunion with the Divine, and, again, that it
corresponds to an extent wholly incomprehensible, save on the admission
of its divine origin, with those requirements of man's conscience and
spirit which every system of philosophy recognises, but which one and
all admit that they fail to satisfy. I might dwell upon the fact that
between the acceptance of the entire truth thus made known to us,
and utter negation of the supernatural and divine, the intermediate
positions long defended as tenable have been, both here and on the
continent, all but universally abandoned by the representatives of
modern thought. I might point out that together with that abandonment,
and as a direct result of that abandonment, a dark, drear hopelessness,
not merely as to the immediate issue of the storms which convulse the
atmosphere we breathe as spiritual, social, and intellectual beings,
but as to the future and abiding consequences of those convulsions,
appears to be settling down upon men's minds: a hopelessness for
which there is no remedy save that which depends upon the triumph
of righteousness and truth, a triumph to be achieved only under the
banner of Christ. What I have attempted to do, none can feel as I
do how imperfectly, has been to set before you in orderly sequence
facts within the reach of all; facts of which the truth and power
and far-reaching influences will be felt more and more in proportion
to the earnestness and sincerity of your own inquiry; facts which
once admitted are evidences complete in themselves, and adequate for
their purpose in each stage of our spiritual development: evidences
sufficient to constrain all who believe in God to believe also in the
Son whom He has sent; to know Him as the way, the truth, and the life.
In His school that rational conviction, retaining all its clearness,
will undergo a process at once of development and transfigurement; and
become a living faith.
EXPLANATORY PAPER
BY THE RIGHT REV. THE
LORD BISHOP OF GLOUCESTER AND BRISTOL.
EXPLANATORY PAPER
Having been requested by the Committee of the Christian Evidence
Society to draw up a short paper which might serve as a partial
introduction to the Lectures, and especially might set forth their
general plan and connexion, as originally designed by the Committee, I
have much pleasure in submitting the following brief comments to the
many readers of this valuable series. The Lectures were delivered in
the course of the spring in the present year, to large audiences, in
St. George's Hall, Langham Place, and were specially designed to meet
some of the current forms of unbelief among the educated classes.
They were delivered at the request of the Christian Evidence Society,
and represent a portion of the work undertaken by the Committee of that
Society in the present year.
As they thus stand in such close connection with our Society, it may
not be unsuitable for me to make a few explanatory remarks on the
Society itself, and its general objects, as well as on the plan of the
lectures which have been delivered at its request, and which are now
presented to the reader in a collected and continuous form.
First, then, as to the Society, and its present working and design.
I. The Society was established in the spring of the past year. It had
long been felt by earnest and thoughtful persons, both Churchmen and
Nonconformists, that some combined attempt ought to be made to meet in
fair argument the scepticism and unbelief which for the last few years
have been distinctly traceable in all classes of society.
Into all the causes of this state of things it is not now our object
to inquire. These are, probably, many and various, and may defy any
formal classification. It is, indeed, seldom that those who live in
the stream and current of a quickly moving generation can properly
estimate the variously combined movements around them, or can always
very successfully refer them even to their more proximate causes. We
may, however, very profitably, as thus illustrating the general design
of the lectures, pause to advert to two or three of what would seem to
be leading causes of this present prevalence of doubt and scepticism.
We may, in the first place then, venture to express the opinion that
it does seem to stand in some degree of connection with the historical
criticism, or, to speak more exactly, with the philosophical mode
of treating ancient history, which, especially since the time of
Niebuhr, has so honourably marked the present and the latter half of
the preceding generation. It was obviously impossible that a system
which appeared to yield results judged to be eminently satisfactory and
trustworthy in regard of the general history of the past, should not be
applied to sacred history, and to the various documents which together
make up the Holy Bible. And it _has_ been applied, sometimes cautiously
and reverently, and with a due regard for the religious convictions of
Christian readers, but sometimes also with an eagerness and persistence
which may not unfairly be characterized as both inconsiderate and
unjustifiable. This method of criticism, especially in its more
unfavourable manifestations, may certainly be specified as one of the
earlier causes of that suspended belief in the historical truth of
several portions of the Old and New Testament, which many entertain at
the present time, and make no scruple of avowing and justifying.
We may also as certainly specify as a second cause the tendency to
over-hasty generalization that has of late marked the rapid development
of some of the natural sciences. From true science true religion has
nothing to fear. But it is otherwise when results newly obtained, and
at present, from the very circumstances of the case, imperfectly tested
and verified, are confidently put forward; and when inferences of
perhaps doubtful validity are set, if not in actual opposition to the
statements of Revelation, yet in such a studious juxtaposition, that
comparison is challenged, and by consequence many an early conviction
weakened and impaired. We say by consequence,--for no acute observer of
the heart and its mysteries can have failed to mark how, even in minds
of higher strain there is often a secret sympathy with the attacking
party, not so much on the merits of the case, as from the simple fact
that it _is_ the attacking party; and that while on this side there
is only the passivity of prescription, on the other there is all the
vigour of assault and progress. This obvious fact, which,--like some
other mental facts of a similar nature,--is, we fear, proved by almost
daily experience, has not been sufficiently taken into consideration;
but if estimated properly, it will account for much that is otherwise
perplexing. It will even tend to reassure us, as it will enable us to
assign to its true though hidden reason much of the present startling
readiness with which scientific inferences, supposed generally to be
unfavourable to received views, have received at least some measure
of sympathy and approval It may be, too, that this latent feeling of
sympathy with the attack will be neutralized when it is found that the
defence is not deficient in energy or vigour, and when English fair
play seems to suggest that each side should be allowed to fight it out
without having any advantages arising from prepensions or prejudice.
However this may be, there is no doubt that the cause we have specified
is a real and a prevailing one. Over-hasty scientific generalization is
certainly one of the causes of the present state of modern religious
belief.
One more cause we may also pause to specify, as it involves in it much
that will minister comfort and reassurance. This cause is the eager and
often impatient search for solid ground whereon religion and morality
may be based. With all their faults, men are now certainly seeking for
truth. There may be misapplications of historical criticism, there may
be misuses and misapprehensions of the real testimony of science, but
amid all there is clearly a searching for truth and firm ground. The
processes of destructive criticism are in fact nearly over, and the
difficult process of reconstruction is commencing. The due remembrance
of this will help us in estimating a little more calmly, and perhaps
also a little more fairly, some of the startling phenomena presented by
the present state of religious belief. Let us, for example, take for a
moment into consideration two remarkable characteristics of the present
time,--first, the attempts to form a system of morality independent of
revealed religion; and, secondly, the acceptance on the part of several
earnest and truthful minds of such a system as Positivism. These really
would seem to be at first sight two inexplicable phenomena. Both,
however, are to be accounted for by that searching for something to
rest on, which has just been mentioned. It has been assumed in the
one case, far too hastily, that the uncertainties connected with the
belief in the facts of revealed religion are so great, that no system
of morality could be considered securely founded if it rested only on
the Scriptures. It has been felt by many earnest thinkers that any
such system, to be a true one, ought to rest solely on principles
acknowledged to be of universal application, and on maxims that have
received the assent of all the better part of civilized mankind. If
the teaching of Scripture be in general harmony with such maxims and
principles, its concurrence is not to be slighted; but it is not
deemed as of more real moment than the concurrence of any other form
of religious teaching that has exercised a real influence over any
large portion of the human family. Religion generally is accepted as
a buttress to the rising edifice of morality, but as nothing further.
The tower is being builded really with the desire to reach heaven:
if the sequel be what it was of old, it may still be conceded, with
all fairness, that the attempt is not made in a bad spirit To change
slightly the allusion, the effort is not made in the spirit of the
Titans who piled Pelion on Ossa, but with all the earnestness and
anxiety of hoping, enquiring, and searching, though we are bound to
add, mistaken men.
In the other case, though it may seem to many rash to say one word
to mitigate the severity of the judgment that both is and ever will
be passed on such a system as Positivism, yet, even here, let us be
just and sympathising. There is, no doubt, in Positivism much that is
plainly repulsive, and really calls for severity; still, even in this
system, we may trace the prevailing desire to find something solid,
something which appears to be proof to the changes of opinion or the
fluctuation of creeds. So the attempt is made to secure a scientific
basis, and to place thereon fact after fact, when each has become
verified and established, and so to build onward--we cannot honestly
say upward--until something like a system is so far constructed that
succeeding generations may feel induced to continue it. So even in
this sombre and cheerless system there is, we believe, really at
work a desire to touch ground. To that desire, however, it must be
sorrowfully added, every loftier aspiration, every nobler incentive, is
necessarily sacrificed. Science and scientific truth is used in a way
that warrants the apprehension that--if such is to be the use made of
it--the progress of science may tend, first, to impair, and, next, to
obliterate, the sense of _responsibility_ on which the present and the
future alike so solemnly rest. It is not without reason, then, that
this is dwelt gravely upon by all sober thinkers; nor is it too much to
say that this is now one of the gravest considerations connected with
the advance of modern scientific investigations. The tendencies of such
investigations certainly do _appear_ to hinder the due recognition of
these two momentous principles--first, the sense of responsibility;
and, secondly, the sense of dependence on something higher than law,
order, and evolution. This hindrance, we trust, is only in appearance;
still that appearance is accepted by many as reality, and it is not
without reason that we are again and again reminded that the acceptance
of the truth of the Christian creed will with many depend on its power
of assimilating the doctrine of universal causation, or, to speak more
precisely, of demonstrating that that doctrine is itself only a form of
a yet higher and holier truth.