CAN WE BELIEVE CHRIST AND HIS APOSTLES?
"That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which
we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our
hands have handled of the Word of life * * * that which we
have seen and heard declare we unto you."--1 John i. 1.
We have seen that the companions of Jesus wrote the books of the New
Testament; that their statements of the existence, worship, morals, and
faith of the Christian Church are confirmed by their enemies, and that
multitudes of heathens were turned from vice to virtue by the belief of
the testimony of these men. They testified that Jesus Christ did many
wonderful miracles, died for our sins, and rose again from the dead;
that they saw, and felt his body, and ate, and drank, and conversed with
him for forty days after his resurrection; that he ascended up to heaven
in their sight; that he sent them to tell the world that he will come
again in the clouds of heaven, with his mighty angels, to judge the
living and the dead; that he who believes these things and is baptized
shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned. This is their
statement. The question is, Can we believe them?
1. The first thing which strikes us in their testimony is, that it
stands out utterly different from all other religions. There is nothing
in the world like it, not even its counterfeits. The great central fact
of Christianity--that Christ died for our sins, and rose again from the
dead--stands absolutely alone in the history of religions. The priests
of Baal, Brahma, or Jupiter, never dreamed of such a thing. The prophets
of Mohammedanism, Mormonism, or Pantheism, have never attempted to
imitate it. The great object of all counterfeit Christianity is to deny
it.
There is no instance in the whole world's history of any other religion
ever producing the same effects. We demand an instance of men destitute
of wealth, arms, power, and learning, converting multitudes of lying,
lustful, murdering idolaters, into honest, peaceable, virtuous men
simply by prayer and preaching. When the Infidel tells us of the rapid
spread of Mohammedanism and Mormonism--impostures which enlist disciples
by promising free license to lust, robbery, and murder, and retain them
by the terror of the scimeter and the rifle ball; which reduce mankind
to the most abject servitude, and womanhood to the most debasing
concubinage; which have turned the fairest regions of the earth to a
wilderness, and under whose blighting influence commerce, arts, science,
industry, comfort, and the human race itself, have withered away--he
simply insults our common sense, by ignoring the difference between
backgoing vice and ongoing virtue; or acknowledges that he knows as
little about Mohammedanism, as he does about Christianity. The gospel
stands alone in its doctrines, singular in its operation, unequaled in
its success.
2. The next important point for consideration is, that the Christianity
preached by Christ and his apostles is a whole--a single system, which
we must either take or leave--believe entirely, or entirely reject it as
an imposture. There is no middle ground for you to occupy. It is all
true, or all false. For instance, you can not take one of Paul's
Epistles and say, "this is true," and take another of the same man's
letters, containing the very same religion, and say, "this is false." If
you accept the very briefest of Paul's Letters, that to Philemon,
containing only thirteen sentences on private business, you accept
eleven distinct assertions of the authority, grace, love, and divinity
of our Lord. Nor can you say you will accept Peter's Letters and reject
Paul's; for you will find the very same facts asserted by the one as by
the other; and moreover, Peter indorses "all the epistles of our beloved
brother Paul" as on the same pedestal of authority with the other
Scriptures. You can not say, "I will accept the letters and reject the
history," for the letters have no meaning without the history. They are
founded upon it, and assume or allege its facts on every page. Were the
gospels lost, we could collect a good account of the birth, teaching,
death, resurrection, ascension, and almighty power of the Lord Christ
from Paul's Epistles; and these letters are just as confident in
alleging the miraculous part of the history as the gospels themselves.
Neither can you gain any advantage by saying, "I accept the gospels, but
reject the letters," for there is not a doctrine of the New Testament
which is not taught in the very first of them, the Gospel by Matthew.
Further, the gospels contain the most solemn authentication of the
commissions of the apostles, so that whoever rejects their teaching,
brings upon himself guilt equal to that of rejecting Christ himself.
"Lo, I am with you alway"--"He that receiveth you receiveth me, and he
that receiveth me, receiveth him that sent me"--"Whosoever will not
receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or
city, shake off the dust of your feet. Verily I say unto you, it shall
be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of
judgment, than for that city."
It is, if possible, more absurd to attempt to dissect the morality of
the gospel from its history, and to say, "We are willing to receive the
Christian code of morals as a very excellent rule of life, and to regard
Jesus as a rare example of almost superhuman virtue, but we must
consider the narrative of supernatural events interwoven with it as
mythological," _i. e._, false. Which is much the same as to say, "We
will be very happy to receive your friend if he will only cut his head
off." Of what possible use would the Christian code of morals be without
the authority of Christ, the lawgiver? If he possessed no divine
authority, what right has he to control your inclination or mine? And if
he will never return to inquire whether men obey or disobey his law, who
will regard it? Do you suppose the world will be turned upside down, and
reformed, by a little good advice? Nay, verily, the world has had trial
of that vanity long enough. "We must all appear before the judgment seat
of Christ, that every one may receive the things done in the body,
according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad. Knowing,
therefore, _the terrors of the Lord_, we persuade men."
Take away the miraculous and supernatural from the gospel history, and
there is nothing left for you to accept. There is no political economy
nor worldly morality in it. It is wholly the history of a supernatural
person, and every precept of his morality comes with a divine sanction.
Further, you know nothing of either his life or his morality but from
the gospel history, and if the record of the miracles which occupy
three-fourths of the gospels be false, what reason have you to give any
credit to the remainder? For, as the German commentator, De Wette, well
says, "The only means of acquaintance with a history is the narrative we
possess concerning it, and beyond that narrative the interpreter can not
go. In these Bible records, the narrative reports to us only a
supernatural course of events, which we must either receive or reject.
If we reject the narrative, we know nothing at all about the event, and
we are not justified in allowing ourselves to invent a natural course of
events of which the narrative is totally silent." So, you see, you can
not make a Christ to suit your taste, but must just take the Christ of
the gospel, or reject him.
If you reject the testimony of Christ and his apostles as false, and say
you can not believe them in matters of fact, how can you respect their
morality? Of all the absurdities of modern Infidelity, the respectful
language generally used by its advocates in speaking of Christ and his
apostles is the most inconsistent. He claimed to be a Divine Person, and
professed to work miracles. The Infidel says he was not a Divine Person,
and wrought no miracles. The consequence is unavoidable--such a
pretender is a blasphemous impostor. And yet they speak of him as a
"model man," an "exemplar of every virtue." What! an impostor a model
man? A blasphemer and liar an exemplar of every virtue? Is that the
Infidel's notion of virtue? Why, the devils were more consistent in
their commendations of his character, "We know thee who thou art, THE
HOLY ONE OF GOD." Let our modern enemies of Christ learn consistency
from their ancient allies. We have also learned from our Master to
refuse all hypocritical, half-way professions of respect for his
character and teachings from those whose business is to prove him a
deceiver, and whose object in speaking respectfully of such a One can
only be to gain a larger audience, and a readier entrance for their
blasphemy among his professed disciples. From every man who professes
respect for Christ's character, and for the morality which he and his
apostles taught, we demand a straightforward answer to the questions:
"When he declared himself the Son of God, the Judge of the living and
the dead, did he tell the truth, or did he lie? When he promised to
attest his divine commission by rising from the dead on the third day,
had he any such power, or did he only mean to play a juggling imposture?
Is Jesus the Christ the Son of the Living God, or a deceiver?" There is
no middle ground. He that is not with him is against him.
The case is just the same with regard to the witnesses of his miracles,
death, and resurrection. They either give a true relation of these
things, or they have manufactured a series of falsehoods. How can we
believe anything from persons so habituated to lying as the narrators of
the mighty works of Jesus must be, if those mighty works never were
performed? How can we accept their code of morals if we refuse to
believe them when they speak of matters of fact? Is it possible to
respect men as moral teachers, whom we have convicted of forging stories
of miracles that never occurred, and confederating together to impose a
lying superstition on the world? For this is plainly the very point and
center of the question about the truth of the Bible, and I am anxious
you should see it clearly. A fair statement of this question is half the
argument. The question then is simply this, Was Jesus really the Divine
Person he claimed to be, or was he a blasphemous impostor? When the
apostles unitedly and solemnly testified that they had seen him after he
was risen from the dead, that they ate and drank with him, that their
hands had handled his body, that they conversed with him for forty days,
and that they saw him go up to heaven, did they tell the truth or were
they a confederated band of liars? There is no reason for any other
supposition. They could not possibly be deceived themselves in the
matters they relate. They knew perfectly whether they were true or not.
We are not talking about matters of dogma, about which there might be
room for difference of opinion, but about matters of fact--about what
men say they saw, and heard, and felt--about which no man of common
sense could possibly be mistaken. "That which we have seen with our
eyes, which we have heard, which we have looked upon, and our hands have
handled of the Word of life * * * that which we have seen and heard
declare we unto you." Such is their language. We must either take it as
truth, or reject it as falsehood. It is utter nonsense to talk of the
intense subjectivity of the Jewish mind, and the belief of the apostles
that the Messiah would do wonders when he came, and the powerful
impressions produced by the teaching of Jesus on their minds. We are not
talking about impressions on their minds, but about impressions produced
on their eyes, and ears, and hands. Did these men tell the truth when
they told the world that they did eat and drink with Jesus after he rose
from the dead, or did they lie? That is the question.
3. It is a hard matter to lie well. A liar has need of a good memory,
else he will contradict himself before he writes far. And he needs to be
very well posted up in the matters of names, dates, places, manners and
customs, else he will contradict some well-known facts, and so expose
his forgery to the world. Therefore writers of forgeries avoid all such
things as much as possible, and as surely as they venture on
specifications of that sort they are detected. A man who is conscious of
writing a book of falsehoods does not begin on this wise: "Now in the
fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Cæsar, Pontius Pilate being
Governor of Judea, and Herod being Tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother
Philip Tetrarch of Iturea and of the regions of Trachonitis, and
Lysanias Tetrarch of Abilene, Annas and Caiphas being high priests, the
Word of God came unto John, the son of Zacharias, in the wilderness."
Here in one sentence are twenty historical, geographical, political, and
genealogical references, every one of which we can confirm by references
to secular historians. The enemies of the Lord have utterly failed in
their attempts to disprove one out of the hundreds of such statements in
the New Testament. The only instance of any _public political event_
recorded in the gospel, said not to be confirmed by the fragments of
secular history we possess, is Luke's account of a census of the Roman
Empire, ordered by Augustus Cæsar. Were it so that Luke stood alone in
his mention of this, surely his credit as a historian would be as good
for this fact, as the credit of Tacitus, when he states matters of which
Suetonius makes no mention, or of Pliny, when he relates things not
recorded by Tacitus. But we can account for the want of corroborative
history in this instance, when we know that all the history of Dion
Cassius, from the consulships of Antistius and Balbus to those of
Messala and Cinna--that is, for five years before and five years after
the birth of Christ--is lost; as also Livy's history of the same period.
It is certain that some one did record the fact, for Suidas, in his
lexicon upon the word _apographe_, says, "that Augustus sent twenty
select men into all the provinces of the empire to take a census, both
of men and property, and commanded that a just proportion of the latter
should be brought into the imperial treasury. And this was the first
census."
To object to the gospel history, that everything contained in it of the
doings of Christ and his apostles in Judea, is not recorded by the
historians of Greece and Italy, is much the same as to say that there
are a multitude of facts recorded in D'Aubigne's History of the
Reformation in Germany, of which Hume and Macaulay make no mention in
their histories of England. How should they?--treating of different
countries, and for the most part of different periods, and writing civil
and not church history? Does anybody go to Macaulay to look for the
history of the Westminster Assembly, or to Bancroft for an account of
the Great Revival in New England? Or is the veracity of Baillie, or
Edwards suspected, because political history does not concern itself
much about religion? It is enough that not a single statement of the
gospel history has ever been disproved.
I might give you quotations from the enemies of the Christian faith,
from Josephus the Jew, and Celsus, and Porphyry, heathen philosophers,
and from the Emperor Julian, the apostate--who, having been raised a
Christian, became a heathen, and used all his ingenuity to overturn the
religion of Christ--expressly admitting the principal miracles recorded
in the gospel. But I attach no such importance to the testimony of this
class of persons as to suppose that it should be placed, for one moment,
on a level with the testimony of the apostles, or that their testimony
to the facts of the life and death of Christ needs any confirmation from
such witnesses. We have such overwhelming evidence of the sincerity and
truth of the witnesses chosen by God to bear testimony to the
resurrection of Christ, as we never can have of the credibility of any
secular historian whatever.
You will remember that these are the writers whose accounts of the
existence, the faith and worship, the numbers and morals of the
Christian Church, we have seen so strikingly confirmed by their enemies;
and we now inquire, Can we believe the other part of their history to be
as true? These are the men who taught the heathen a pure Christian
morality, one principal article of which was, "Lie not one to another,
seeing ye have put off the old man with his deeds"--"All liars shall
have their portion in the lake that burneth with fire and
brimstone"--and we are to inquire if they themselves lied; lied
publicly, lied repeatedly, if the very business of their lives was to
propagate falsehood, and if they died with a lie in their right hands.
You will remember that we proved conclusively that the belief of the
death and resurrection of Jesus did turn immense multitudes of wicked
men to a life of virtue, and now we are to inquire if the belief of a
lie produced this blessed result, and whether, if so, there be any such
thing as truth in the world, or any use in it?
4. Of no other series of events of ancient history do we possess the
same number of records by contemporary historians, as of the life,
death, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. We have four direct
systematic memoirs of him by four of his companions; and we have a
collection of letters by four others, in which the events of the memoirs
are continually referred to. At the mouth of two or three witnesses any
man's property and life will be disposed of in a court of justice, but
here we have the testimony of eight eye-witnesses of the facts they
relate, and they refer to five hundred other persons, the greater part
of whom were then alive, who had also seen and heard Christ after his
resurrection. These eight persons give us their separate and independent
statements of those things they deemed worthy of record in the life and
death of Christ, and of the sayings and doings of several of his friends
and enemies. Now every person knows that it is impossible to make two
crooked boughs tally, or two false witnesses agree. You never saw two
lying reports of any considerable number of transactions agree, unless
the one was copied from the other.
It is evident that the gospels were not copied from each other, for they
often relate different events, and when they relate the same occurrence,
each man relates those parts of it which he saw himself, and which
impressed him most. Yet the utmost ingenuity of infidelity has utterly
failed to make them contradict each other in any particular. Here are
eight witnesses to the truth of the same story, four of whom in their
letters make occasional allusions to the facts of the history as being
perfectly well known, and therefore needing only to be alluded to, yet
these cursory references fit into the history with every mark of
truthfulness. Does the history of Matthew, written at Jerusalem, tell us
that Jesus took Peter, and James, and John up into a high mountain
apart, and was transfigured before them? Peter, in his letter, written
from Babylon, says, "We were eye-witnesses of his majesty. We were with
him in the holy mount."--2 Peter ii. 10. If the history tells how Paul
was beaten and cast into prison at Philippi, and his feet made fast in
the stocks, and that, nevertheless, he manfully defended his birthright
as a Roman citizen, and made the tyrannical magistrates humble
themselves, and apologize for their illegal conduct, we find Paul
himself, in a letter to a neighboring church, appealing to their
knowledge of the facts, "that after we had suffered before, and were
shamefully entreated, as ye know, at Philippi, we were bold in our God
to speak unto you the gospel of God with much contention. For our
exhortation was not of deceit, nor of uncleanness, nor in guile. For
neither at any time used we flattering words, as ye know, nor a cloak
for covetousness."--1 Thessalonians ii. 2. Hundreds of such undesigned
coincidences may be found in the New Testament, confirming the veracity
of the several historians and letter writers, and giving that impression
of the naturalness and truth of the story, which can neither be
described nor disputed. The reader who desires to prosecute this
interesting branch of the evidences of Christianity will find an ample
collection of these coincidences in Paley's Horæ Paulinæ.
This agreement of independent writers is the more remarkable, as the
writers were persons of very various degrees of education, of different
professions and ranks of life, born in different countries, and writing
from various places in Italy, Greece, Palestine, and Assyria, without
any communication with each other. Matthew was an officer of customs in
Galilee; Mark a Hebrew citizen of Jerusalem; Luke a Greek physician of
Antioch; James and John owned and sailed a fishing smack on Lake
Tiberias; Jude left his thirty-nine acres of land, worth nine thousand
denarii, to be farmed by his children when he went forth to preach the
gospel; and college-bred Paul carried his sturdy independence in his
breast, and his sail needles in his pocket, and dictated epistles, and
cut out marquees and lug-sails in the tent factory of Aquila, Paul &
Co., at Corinth. Several of his letters were written in a dungeon in
Rome; the last of Peter's is dated at Babylon; Matthew's Gospel was
penned at Jerusalem, and John's Gospel and Epistles were written at
Ephesus. The agreement of eight such witnesses, of such different
pursuits, and so scattered over the world, in the relation of the same
story, in all its leading particulars, together with their variety of
style and manner, and their various relations of minor incidents, yet
without a single contradiction, are most convincing proofs that they all
tell truth. Nothing but truth could be thus told without contradiction.
The fact that some considerable difficulties and many minor obscurities
in these brief though pregnant narratives, prevent the combination of
eight accounts so independent in their sources, and various in their
style, and design, and auditors, into a flowing historical novel, a
homogeneous mass, rounded and squared to our ideas of mathematical
precision, is only an additional proof of their truth to nature, which
abhors mathematical, as much as truth does rhetorical figures. Like the
variety of expression used by American, German, French, and Polish
witnesses in our courts of justice, testifying the same facts in their
native idioms, though in English words, the apparent discrepancy, but
actual harmony, becomes the most decisive test of the absence of any
collusion, and consequently of the verity of the facts which such
various witnesses unite in testifying. Especially will any such apparent
discrepancy resolve itself into our own unskillfulness or ignorance,
when we remember that the mists of ages, and the drapery of a strange
language, and world-wide removal of residence, and the turning of the
world upside down by the progress of Christian civilization, and our
consequent ignorance of the thousand little details of every-day life,
well known to the writer and his immediate readers, and of the force of
expressive idioms, perfectly familiar to them--have rendered us not near
so capable of detecting inaccuracies, as those contemporary writers and
opponents, who allowed them--if they existed--to pass unchallenged. Like
those antique coins, whose rust-dimmed and abbreviated inscriptions
exercise the patience and historic lore of the antiquarian, though
neither are needed to declare the precious material, this very rust of
antiquity, through which his patience has penetrated, becomes one of the
inimitable marks of historic verity. Every year throws some new light on
texts difficult to us from our ignorance of those manners, customs,
names, and places, which Infidel malice and Christian piety have
combined to explore; and from the ruins of Nineveh and the sepulchers of
Egypt we receive unlooked-for testimonies to the minute accuracy of the
penmen of the Bible.
5. The manner in which the apostles published their testimony to the
world bears every mark of truthfulness. Deception and forgery skulk, and
try to spread themselves at first in holes and corners, but he that
doeth truth cometh to the light. Had the apostles been conscious of
falsehood, would they have dared to assert that Jesus was risen from the
dead in the very streets of the city where he was crucified? in the
temple, the most public place of resort of the Jews who saw him
crucified? and to the teeth of the very men who put him to death? If
conscious of falsehood, would they have dared, before the chief priests,
and the council, and all the senate of Israel, to assert that "The God
of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree. Him
hath God exalted with his right hand to be a Prince and a Savior, to
give repentance to Israel, and remission of sins. And we are his
witnesses of these things, and so is also the Holy Ghost which God hath
given to them that obey him."--Acts v. 30. Would Paul, had he been
conscious that he was relating falsehood, have dared to appeal to the
judge, before whom he was on trial for his life, as to one who knew the
notoriety of these facts, "For the king knoweth of these things, before
whom also I speak freely; for I am persuaded that none of these things
are hidden from him: for this thing was not done in a corner."--Acts
xxvi. 26. Would such appeals have been suffered to pass uncontradicted
had the statements of the apostles been false?
The boldness of their manner, however, of telling their story, is
little, compared with the boldness of the design which they had in view
in telling it; which was nothing less than to convert the world. Now the
idea of proselyting other nations to a new religion was absolutely
unknown to the world at that time. The Greeks and Romans never dreamed
of any such thing. They would sometimes add a new god to their old
Pantheon, but the idea of turning a nation to the worship of new deities
was never before heard of. The Jews were so indignant at the project,
that when Paul hinted it to them, they cried, "Away with such a fellow
from the earth, for it is not fit that he should live." And this new and
strange idea, of conquering the world for a crucified man, is taken up
by a few private citizens, who resolve to overturn the craft by which
priests have their wealth, and to bring the kingdoms of the world to
become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ.
Impostors would never have appealed to their power of working miracles
as the apostles did; nor could enthusiasts have done so without instant
exposure. It is remarkable, that while in addressing those who believed
their divine commission, they rarely allude to it (fourteen of the
epistles make no allusion to apostolic miracles), but dwell on a subject
of far greater importance--a holy life--they never hesitate to confront
a Simon Magus, or a schismatical church at Corinth, or a persecuting
high priest and sanhedrim with this power of the Holy Ghost. "Tongues,"
says Paul, "are for a sign, not to them that believe, but to them that
believe not;" and this is true of all other miracles. This marks the
difference between real miracles and those of pretenders; who have
never attempted to establish a new religion by them, or to convert
unbelievers hostile to their claims and able to examine them, without
immediate exposure. But you never heard of an impostor standing up
before the tribunal of his judges and alleging the miraculous cure of a
well-known public beggar, lame from his mother's womb, whom they had
seen at the church gate every Sabbath for forty years, and bringing the
man into court after such a fashion as this, "If we this day be examined
of the good deed done unto the impotent man, by what means he is made
whole, be it known unto you all, and to all the people of Israel, that
by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God
raised from the dead, even by him doth this man stand before you whole."
Such an appeal was unanswerable. "Beholding the man that was healed
standing with them, they could say nothing against it." Nay, they were
compelled to acknowledge "that indeed a notable miracle hath been done
by them is manifest to all them that dwell in Jerusalem--we can not deny
it."--Acts iv.
The denial of the miracles of the gospel is a modern invention of the
enemy. The scribes, and priests, emperors, and philosophers of the first
centuries, who had the best opportunity of proving their falsehood, were
unable to do so. The persecutors and apostates, whose malice against the
Church knew no bounds, never dared to utter a charge of deception
against the apostles. Why, then, you ask, did they not all become
Christians? Because miracles can not convert any man against his will.
Christianity is not merely a belief in miracles, but the love of Christ,
and a life of holiness. There are many readers of this book who would
not turn from their sins if all the dead in Spring Grove Cemetery would
rise to-morrow to warn them from hell. God does not intend to force any
man to become a Christian. He just gives evidence enough to try you,
whether you will deal honestly and fairly with your own soul and your
God, and if you are determined to hate Christ and his holy religion, you
shall never want a plausible excuse for unbelief; as it is written,
"Unto them which are disobedient, Christ is a stone of stumbling and a
rock of offense." These ancient enemies of Christ acknowledged the
reality of his miracles, but attributed them to magical power, or the
help of Satan. The Jews said that he had acquired the power of miracles
by learning to pronounce the incommunicable name of God. Modern Infidels
deny all his miracles save the greatest--the turning of men from their
sins. They can not deny that; they can not ascribe it to the power of
Satan or of magic, for they do not believe in either; but they follow as
nearly in the footsteps of their fathers as possible, when they tell us
that multitudes of men, in every age, and in every land, have been
turned from falsehood to truth by the belief of a lie, and from vice to
virtue by the example of an impostor!
6. But the strongest proof of the truth of the facts of the gospel is
the existence, the labors and sufferings of the apostles themselves.
Nobody denies that such men lived, and preached, and were persecuted on
account of their preaching that Jesus died and rose again. Now, if this
was a falsehood, what motive had they to tell it? It was very
displeasing to their rulers who had crucified him, and who had every
inclination to give them the same treatment. To preach another king, one
Jesus, to the Romans, was to bring down the power of the empire upon
them. Nothing could be more absurd in the eyes of the Grecian
philosophers than to speak of the resurrection of the body. Nor could
any plan be devised more certain to arouse the fury of the pagan
priesthood, than to denounce the craft by which they had their wealth,
and to preach that they are no gods which are made by hands. The most
degraded wretch, who perishes by the hand of the hangman is not so
contemptible in our eyes, as the crucified malefactor was in the eyes of
the Roman people; nor could anything more disagreeable to the Jewish
nation be invented than the declaration, that the Gentiles should become
partakers of the kingdom of God. What then should induce any man in his
senses to provoke such an opposition to a new religion, and to make it
so contemptible and disagreeable to those whom he sought to convert, if
he were manufacturing a lie to gain power and popularity?
The religion they preached was not adapted to please sensual men, nor to
allow its preachers in sensual gratifications. "Our exhortation," says
Paul--and every reader of the New Testament knows that he says
truth--"Our exhortation was not of deceit, nor of uncleanness, nor of
guile." Infidels admit that they preached a pure morality. But it is a
long time since men learned the proverb, "Physician, heal thyself."
"Thou that preachest a man should not steal, dost thou steal? Thou that
sayest a man should not commit adultery, dost thou commit adultery? Thou
that abhorrest idols, dost thou commit sacrilege?" It could not, then,
be to obtain license for lust that these men preached holiness.
There is only one other conceivable motive which should induce men to
confederate together for the propagation of falsehood--the design of
making money by it. But their new religion made no provision for any
such thing. One of their first acts was to desire the church to elect
deacons who might manage its money matters, and allow them to give
themselves wholly to prayer and to the ministry of the word. Twenty-five
years after that they could appeal to the world that "Even to this
present hour, we" (the Apostles) "both hunger and thirst, and are naked,
and are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling-place, and labor working
with our hands; being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it:
we are counted as the filth of the world, and the offscouring of all
things to this day." Their book opens with the story of their Master's
birth in a stable, with the manger for his cradle, and one of its last
pictures is that of his venerable apostle chained in a dungeon, and
begging his friend to bring his old cloak from Troas, and to do his
diligence to come before winter.
Unpopular, pure, and penniless, if the gospel story were not true, how
could it have had preachers? They at least believed it.
The last and most convincing testimony which any man can give to the
truth of a statement of fact is to suffer rather than deny it. Many have
wondered why God allowed his dear servants to suffer so much persecution
in the first ages of the Church. One principal reason was to give future
ages an irresistible proof of the sincerity and faithfulness of the
witnesses for Christ. The apostles lived lives of persecution and
suffering for the name of Jesus; sufferings which they might have
avoided if they had only abstained from preaching any more in this name.
But, said they, "We can not but speak of the things which we have seen
and heard." One who had no personal acquaintance with Jesus, and whose
first interview with him was while he was breathing out threatening and
slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, is converted and called to
be an apostle; and behold the prospect Jesus presents to him, "I will
show him _how great things he must suffer for my name_." "The Holy Ghost
testifieth," says Paul, "that in every city bonds and afflictions abide
me. Yet none of these things move me." That at least was a true
prophecy. "Seven times," says Clement, "he was in bonds, he was whipt,
he was stoned; he preached both in the East and West, leaving behind him
the glorious report of his faith, and so having taught the whole world
righteousness, and for that end traveled even to the utmost bounds of
the West, he at last suffered martyrdom by the command of the governors,
and went to his holy place, having become a most eminent pattern of
patience to all ages."[80] Hear his own appeal to those who envied his
authority in the church, "Are they ministers of Christ, I am more: in
labors more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more
frequent, in deaths often. Of the Jews five times received I forty
stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned,
thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep:
in journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in
perils by my own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the
city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among
false brethren; in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in
hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness."--1 Corinthians ii. 23.
Man can give no higher proof of his veracity, than a life such as this,
unless it is to seal it with his blood; and this crowning testimony to
the truth the apostles gave. Save the aged disciple, who, after torments
worse than death, survived to address the persecuted church as, "Your
companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus
Christ," they all suffered martyrdom for the truth of the gospel
history.
Let me again remind you that the gospel is not a collection of dogmas,
but a relation of facts; that these twelve men did not preach the death
and resurrection of Jesus, because they had read them in a creed, but
because they had seen them with their own eyes; that they lived holy
lives of toil, and hardship, and poverty, and suffering, in preaching
these facts to the world; and that they died painful and shameful deaths
as martyrs for their truth. You admit these things. Then I demand of
you, "What more could either God or man do to convince you of their
truthfulness?"
The faithful and true witness himself has given you this last,
undeniable test of veracity. With the certainty of an ignominious death
before him, he solemnly swears to the truth of this fact, and dies for
it. "And the high priest answered and said unto him, I adjure thee by
the living God, that thou tell us whether thou be the Christ, the Son of
God? Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said. Hereafter ye shall see the
Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds
of heaven."
Unbeliever, are you prepared to meet him there, and prove him a perjured
impostor?
FOOTNOTES:
[80] Wake's Trans. of Clement, Ep. ad Cor. v.