We ought to welcome with all our hearts the searching scrutiny, which
students and philosophers of all Christian nations, and of all shades
of belief, whether Christian or not, are engaged upon, as to the facts
on which our faith rests. The more thorough that scrutiny is the better
should we be pleased. We may not wholly agree with the last position
which the ablest investigators have laid down, that unless the truth
of the history of our Lord—the facts of his life, death, resurrection,
and ascension—can be proved by ordinary historical evidence, applied
according to the most approved and latest methods, Christianity must be
given up as not true. We know that our own certainty as to these facts
does not rest on a critical historical investigation, while we rejoice
that such an investigation should be made by those who have leisure,
and who are competent for it. At the same time, as we also know that
the methods and principles of historical investigation are constantly
improving and being better understood, and that the critics of the
next generation will work, in all human likelihood, at as great an
advantage in this inquiry over those who are now engaged in it, as our
astronomers and natural philosophers enjoy over Newton and Franklin—and
as new evidence may turn up any day which may greatly modify their
conclusions—we cannot suppose that there is the least chance of their
settling the controversy in our time. Nor, even if we thought them
likely to arrive at definite conclusions, can we consent to wait the
results of their investigations, important and interesting as these
will be. Granting then cheerfully, that if these facts on the study
of which they are engaged are not facts—if Christ was not crucified,
and did not rise from the dead, and ascend to God his father—there has
been no revelation, and Christianity will infallibly go the way of all
lies, either under their assaults or those of their successors—they
must pardon us if even at the cost of being thought and called fools
for our pains, we deliberately elect to live our lives on the contrary
assumption. It is useless to tell us that we know nothing of these
things, that we can know nothing until their critical examination is
over; we can only say: “Examine away; but we _do_ know something of
this matter, whatever you may assert to the contrary, and, mean to live
on the knowledge.”
But while we cannot suspend our judgment on the question until we know
how the critics and scholars have settled it, we must do justice,
before passing on, to the single-mindedness, the reverence, the
resolute desire for the truth before all things, wherever the search
for it may land them which characterizes many of those who are no
longer of our faith, and are engaged in this inquiry, or have set it
aside as hopeless, and are working at other tasks. The great advance
of natural science within the last few years, and the devotion with
which many of our ablest and best men are throwing themselves into
this study, are clearing the air in all the higher branches of human
thought and making possible a nation, and in the end a world, of
truthful men—that blessedest result of all the strange conflicts and
problems of the age, which the wisest men have foreseen in their most
hopeful moods. In this grand movement even those who are nominally, and
believe themselves to be really, against us, are for us: all at least
who are truthful and patient workers. For them, too, the spirit of all
truth, and patience, and wisdom is leading; and their strivings and
victories—aye, and their backslidings and reverses—are making clearer
day by day that revelation of the kingdom of God in nature, through
which it would seem that our generation, and those which are to follow
us, will be led back again to that higher revelation of the kingdom of
God in man.
* * * * *
The ideal American, as he has been painted for us of late, is a man
who has shaken off the yoke of definite creeds, while retaining their
moral essence, and finds the highest sanctions needed for the conduct
of human life in experience tempered by common sense. Franklin,
for instance, is generally supposed to have reached this ideal by
anticipation, and there is a half-truth in the supposition. But whoever
will study this great master of practical life will acknowledge that
it is only superficially true, and that if he never lifts us above
the earth or beyond the dominion of experience and common sense, he
retained himself a strong hold on the invisible which underlies it, and
would have been the first to acknowledge that it was this which enabled
him to control the accidents of birth, education, and position, and to
earn the eternal gratitude and reverence of the great nation over whose
birth he watched so wisely, and whose character he did so much to form.